Pat Bauer is a journalist, a curious person by nature, training (University of Michigan Daily), and experience (Washington Post, Los AngelesTimes, and President Carter's White House News Briefing Office).
There are a lot of journalists so that fact about her is not really all that significant. But few, if any professional journalists, bring Pat's passion to the disability field. What is that passion? It is not simply to gather and publish news and commentary.
It is to make a difference in the lives of people who have a disability and their families.
The source of Pat's passion is her daughter, Margaret Muller. Margaret is now 22 years old, a high-school graduate, a tax-paying worker, and a resident of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where she went to school and now makes her home.
Margaret has Down syndrome and, as a very young child, survived cancer. She, too, is a journalist, as we soon will tell you.
Pat makes her mark as a journalist in several ways. She owns a blog, www.patriciaebauer.com, that we recommend. It collects news stories about disabilities into more than 100 categories (from "abortion" to "wrongful birth") and allows a visitor to link to 52 other sites containing useful information about all kinds of disability issues. You may find Pat's blog simply by going to our News Links page.
Pat also publishes "op ed" articles. She has one in the Washington Post about the lives of people with disabilities and, really, about their right to live and their contributions to society.
As a parent, Pat gives keynote addresses to family and professional organizations. Recently, she spoke to obstetricians and gynecologists about pre-birth counseling. Her basic message was simple but powerful: "Tell Them It's Not So Bad." That's what she advised those physicians to tell expecting parents who know that their not-yet-born child has been diagnosed as having a disability. You can find these remarks on her website on the right-hand side if you scroll down to "My Articles and Essay."
It may come as a bit of a surprise to those who think that people with Down syndrome are unable to express themselves effectively to know that Margaret herself has published an article in the Washington Post. You can find Margaret's article, "Margaret's Guide to Down Syndrome," on Pat's blog by entering "Margaret Muller" in the search section.
Coincidence plays a big role in everyone's life. But it's probably not a coincidence that Pat's blog categories begins with "abortion" and ends with "wrongful birth" and some of her writings are about those issues.
Nor is it a coincidence that her son John wrote about the history of involuntary sterilization in California during the first half of the last century. His thesis earned him honors at Dartmouth College (see how happy he and his family are in the photo, taken at his graduation!), where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. John spent two summers working at the Beach Center and is now a first-year student at Yale Law School (where his father had been trained, too).
Like Pat and Margaret, he plans a career as a disability advocate, lawyer, and policy leader.
And now for Ed Muller. Together with Pat, he has spearheaded innovative programs for people with disabilities in Los Angeles and Cape Cod. He might have come to that community service even without Margaret because he grew up in Vineland, New Jersey, where his mother worked at the Vineland State School and Hospital, many years ago.
There is an unbroken circle in the family of Pat Bauer and Margaret, John, and Ed Muller. It encircles Margaret, of course. But it encircles the entire "disability cause."
Like the Turnbulls and the entire Beach Center staff, Pat and her family hold to a single tenet:
Less Able Is Not Less Worthy.
Words to live by in a world needing a disability creed.