Lucy Gwin (January 5, 1943 – October 30, 2014) was an American disability rights activist. She published ''Mouth'', a disability rights magazine.

Early life and education

Gwin was born in

Beech Grove, Indiana Beech Grove is a city in Marion County, Indiana, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city's population is 14,717. The city is located within the Indianapolis metropolitan area. Beech Grove is designated an "excluded city" under Indiana ...

, the daughter of Robert Willard Gwin and Verna Bodine Gilcher Gwin. Her father worked in advertising and her mother was a teacher who later designed window displays for department stores. She graduated from Thomas Carr Howe Community High School in Indianapolis in 1960.

Career

Gwin ran a restaurant in

Rochester, New York Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...

and wrote advertising copy as a young woman. She wrote a "strong and vivid" memoir, ''Going Overboard'' (1982), about her year spent working on an oil rig ferry in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

. She was working on another book, tentatively titled ''The Marriage Conspiracy'', and lecturing on the subject of marriage, in the mid-1980s. Gwin was disabled following a car accident in 1989. The abuses she witnessed in her stay at a rehabilitation facility afterward fueled her concern for the rights of institutionalized people. The facility was eventually closed as a result of her efforts and the investigations that followed. In 1990 she began publishing ''Mouth'', a disability rights magazine. "She gave a place for what would be perceived as a radical disability rights voice, and she was fierce in that voice", explained colleague Bruce Darling in a 2021 article. "Everyone was a little scared of her." She worked closely with photographer Tom Olin and writers Josie Byzek and Dave Hingsburger, among others. ''Mouth'' ran for 109 issues, before it ceased publication in 2008. Gwin joined other disability rights activists in protesting the legalization of

assisted suicide Assisted suicide, sometimes restricted to the context of physician-assisted suicide (PAS), is the process by which a person, with the help of others, takes actions to end their life. Once it is determined that the person's situation qualifie ...

outside the

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in 1997, telling a reporter "I'm not going to die for Jack Kevorkian or anybody just because they think I'm not pretty to look at".

Publications

* ''Going Overboard'': ''The Onliest Little Woman in the Offshore Oilfields'' (1982) * "Don't give us death by pity" (1997)

Personal life and legacy

Gwin married three times, and had two children. She died in 2014, at the age of 71, at her home in

Washington, Pennsylvania Washington, also known as Little Washington to distinguish it from the District of Columbia, is a city in Washington County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. The population was 13,176 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 censu ...

. There is a collection of her papers, including a run of ''Mouth'' magazine, at the

University of Massachusetts The University of Massachusetts is the Public university, public university system of the Massachusetts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The university system includes six campuses (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, University of Massachusetts Lowell ...

. A biography of Gwin, ''This Brain Had a Mouth'' by James M. Odato, was published in 2021, with an introduction by Nadina LaSpina.

References

External links

* Video of James M. Odato speaking abou
"Researching and Writing about the Life of Disability Rights Activist Lucy Gwin"
(2022), posted by the

New York State Archives The New York State Archives is a unit of the Office of Cultural Education within the New York State Education Department, with its main facility located in the Cultural Education Center on Madison Avenue in Albany, New York, United States. The ...

on YouTube
Lucy Gwin reading her 2001 essay "I'm Not With Them"
on YouTube {{DEFAULTSORT:Gwin, Lucy 1943 births 2014 deaths American women writers American disability rights activists American magazine editors People from Beech Grove, Indiana