Fifty years ago, a group of women advocates from the Allegheny County chapter of the Arc of Pennsylvania set out to visit state institutions and other facilities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Their mission was to investigate concerns that Arc Allegheny had received from worried parents about the treatment of their sons and daughters.
The leaders of these visits – Jean Isherwood, Barbara Sistik and Ginny Thornburgh—were themselves mothers of children with disabilities. The substandard and often appalling conditions they witnessed at Polk State Center in Venango County and other state-funded facilities spurred the women to action. Their detailed reports to governmental authorities and unrelenting advocacy led to significant changes and helped launch the movement to replace institutional care with home- and community-based services.
“We were mother bears,” recounted Ginny Thornburgh in a 2011 oral history recorded by the Temple University Institute on Disabilities.
Thornburgh’s characterization of herself and her colleagues inspired the title of a feature article, “We Were Mother Bears: The Women Who Shaped Western Pennsylvania’s Disability Rights Movement,” about the women’s advocacy in the Summer 2024 issue of Western Pennsylvania History Magazine.
The article – written by Tina Calabro, Outreach and Preservation Manager for the Western Pennsylvania Disability and Action Consortium, and Sierra Green, senior outreach archivist at Heinz History Center – also covers the advocacy of Pittsburgh mother Patricia Clapp, who served as president of the Arc of Pennsylvania, and other local women during this important chapter of disability history.
