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A long, HARD road

April 22, 2009

Julie Cochran Rogers puts the first wheelchair ramp on campus through its paces in 1973. She had told architects their design wouldn’t work, and when it indeed turned out to be too steep, it had to be torn down and rebuilt. In this photo, she was goofing around a bit to make her point for a Lantern photographer.

Julie Cochran Rogers puts the first wheelchair ramp on campus through its paces in 1973. She had told architects their design wouldn’t work, and when it indeed turned out to be too steep, it had to be torn down and rebuilt. In this photo, she was goofing around a bit to make her point for a Lantern photographer.

Julie Cochran Rogers, one of the first students to attend OSU in a wheelchair, made Disability Awareness a way of life

by Patty Hillis Carro

Julie Cochran Rogers spent a lifetime facing “facts.”

Stricken with polio at age 14, spending an endless year encapsulated in an iron lung, struggling with continuing medical issues as she was restricted to a wheelchair, the “facts” she heard were always bleak.

So when she was presented with the “fact” in 1966 that Ohio State was beyond her reach, despite her honors high school diploma, she did as she had learned to do with all the others. She ignored it and blazed a trail instead. Continue reading ‘A long, HARD road’

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