Margaret Nosek
A young blonde white woman, smiling.
Margaret Nosek, from a 1984 newspaper.
Born
Margaret Ann Nosek

January 25, 1952
Schenectady, New York
DiedNovember 21, 2020
Houston, Texas
Other namesPeg Nosek
Occupation(s)Professor of rehabilitation medicine, researcher

Margaret Ann "Peg" Nosek (January 25, 1952 – November 21, 2020) was an American academic and disability rights activist based in Houston, Texas.

Early life and education

Nosek was born in Schenectady, New York, the daughter of Stanley Michael Nosek and Regina Ann Nosek (née Bernatowicz). Her father was a mechanical engineer.[1][2] She was diagnosed at age 2 with a progressive form of spinal muscular atrophy, and used a wheelchair.[3][4] She was raised in Ohio, and graduated from Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio in 1974, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She earned a master's degree in music history from Case Western Reserve University in 1976.[5] She moved to Texas to pursue a doctorate in music theory at the University of Texas at Austin;[1] she instead completed a second master's degree, in rehabilitation counseling, in 1982, and a doctorate in rehabilitation research, in 1984.[6][7] In 1993, she was named one of the Outstanding Young Texas Exes by the university's alumni association.[8]

Career

Nosek, an accomplished composer, oboeist and recorder player, taught music courses at Baldwin Wallace College while she was in graduate school in Cleveland and Austin in the 1970s.[1] She worked with disability rights activists including Judith Heumann, Lex Frieden, Ed Roberts, and Justin Dart in the 1980s, in the organizing and strategizing leading to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.[9] She was co-author, with Yoshiko Dart, Yayoi Narita, and Justin Dart, on an influential working paper, "A Philosophical Foundation for the Independent Living & Disability Rights Movements" (1982).[10] In 1983, she testified before a Congressional hearing on access to voting for disabled citizens,[11][12] and participated in a public transit protest in El Paso.[13]

Nosek was a professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Baylor College of Medicine. She was director of Baylor's Independent Living Research Use Program, and director Baylor's Center for Research on Women with Disabilities, which she founded in 1993. She was also an adjunct professor in the College of Nursing at Texas Woman's University in Denton. In 2014 she joined the staff at TIRR Memorial Hermann, to create a dedicated women's program in the hospital's outpatient clinic.[6] She was president of Health Care for All Texas,[14] and in her later years became interested in the possibilities of Second Life for organizing and outreach to people with physical disabilities.[1]

Nosek held grants from the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.[6] She received the Disability Achievement Award from the American Public Health Association in 2007,[15] and the 2017 Garrett Award from the American Rehabilitation Counseling Association.[16]

In 2018, Nosek was an inspiration and central figure in "Breath", a site-specific work of music, dance, and visual arts, performed at Rothko Chapel in Houston.[17]

Personal life

Nosek described her domestic life in a 2009 essay titled "A Happy Compromise", explaining how she lived with several paid longterm attendants and their children, to whom she was close. "It takes about 60 percent of my salary to live like this, but I happily pay because it's the price of my freedom," she wrote.[18] She died in 2020, aged 68 years, in Houston.[1][19]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Obituary: Margaret Ann Nosek" ACRM (November 25, 2020).
  2. ↑ "Stanley Nosek Obituary". The Plain Dealer. September 18, 2002. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
  3. ↑ "New Clinic in City Fills Void". Austin American-Statesman. February 27, 1979. p. 12. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
  4. ↑ Nosek, Margaret A. (February 1, 2000). "Overcoming the odds: The health of women with physical disabilities in the United States". Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. 81 (2): 135–138. doi:10.1016/S0003-9993(00)90130-8. ISSN 0003-9993. PMID 10668764.
  5. ↑ Nosek, Margaret A. (1974). "The Recorder in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries — Part II". Bach. 5 (4): 18–24. ISSN 0005-3600. JSTOR 41639935.
  6. 1 2 3 "Women's Disability Researcher and Activist Joins TIRR Memorial Hermann". Memorial Hermann. Fall 2014. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
  7. ↑ Coggins, Cheryl (May 19, 1984). "Wheelchair will roll to Ph.D. rite tonight". Austin American-Statesman. p. 12. Retrieved December 29, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ↑ "Their Brilliant Careers". The Alcalde: 46. May–June 1993.
  9. ↑ "Pioneers of Inclusion – The Independent Living Movement". National Inclusion Project. December 22, 2019. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
  10. ↑ Nosek, Peg, Yayoi Narita, Yoshiko Dart, and Justin Dart. "A Philosophical Foundation for the Independent Living & Disability Rights Movement" (ILU Working Paper No. 1, 1982).
  11. ↑ Elections, United States Congress House Committee on House Administration Task Force on (1984). Equal Access to Voting for Elderly and Disabled Persons: Hearings Held Before the Task Force on Elections of the Committee on House Administration, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninety-eighth Congress, First Session, on H.R. 1250 ... Washington, D.C., July 14, 1983, March 8, 1984; Atlanta, Ga., October 12, 1983. U.S. Government Printing Office.
  12. ↑ Phillips, Jim (November 3, 1982). "Disabled Voter Protests Inaccessibility of Polls". Austin American-Statesman. p. 16. Retrieved December 29, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ Cantu, Rick (June 28, 1983). "Wheelchair Protesters Stop Bus". El Paso Times. p. 1. Retrieved December 29, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ "About Us". Health Care for All – Texas. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
  15. ↑ "Disability Section Award Winners". American Public Health Association. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
  16. ↑ "2017 Award Winners". American Rehabilitation Counseling Association. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
  17. ↑ ""Breath," a site-specific work, created by the Transitory Sound and Movement Collective for the Rothko Chapel". Rothko Chapel. January 24, 2018. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
  18. ↑ Nosek, Margaret A. (November 30, 2016). "A Happy Compromise". Muscular Dystrophy Association. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
  19. ↑ Ackerman, Todd (November 29, 2020). "Margaret Nosek, advocate for Houstonians with disabilities, dies". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
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