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In the United States, October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, a time to recognize the accomplishments of people with disabilities and advocate for a future that ensures they have access to equitable opportunities for work. I’ve previously written about how to include people with disabilities at church, and Beelee wrote a great post earlier this year titled, “On National Disability Independence Day, Rank Your Ward Building.”

Of course, it’s important to talk about all the structural and systemic ways we need to become more accessible and inclusive as an institution. But for Disability Employment Awareness Month, I wanted to recognize the contributions of people with disabilities not just to what society normally considers work but also to the crucial spiritual work underpinning our religion. The only examples of disabled people that came to my mind when I tried to think of examples I already knew from church were those in the Scriptures who were healed by Jesus – usually unnamed, and usually “cured” of their disability by the Savior. (To learn more about why this framing is problematic and can deeply hurt people with disabilities, I recommend reading the book Disability and the Way of Jesus by Bethany McKinney Fox.)

Instead, I’ll take today’s post to share the contributions of some people with disabilities. Here are a few people with disabilities from our day who have definitely done a mighty spiritual work:

• Ollie Cantos: Former councilman in the city of West Covina, California, lawyer, and White House staffer Ollie Cantos, who is blind, became the legal guardian of three blind triplets born in Colombia and raised in the United States: Steven, Nick, and Leo. He showed the triplets that being blind did not mean they needed to live in relative isolation as their biological family had kept them previously. All three triplets became Eagle Scouts, with Leo saying, it was “fun because of all the things we got to do that we never knew we could.” All four are converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who have taught and given hope to millions of people with disabilities inside and outside the church. Ollie said, “Sometimes people think our number one prayer is to be healed. That is honestly not on our minds. We just feel the way we are is the way the Lord made us, and because of that, we are grateful for who we are. It is the experience of blindness that positively binds us together, and that’s why we are a family now. We are just here to improve a little every day. We don’t feel that being blind is such a big deal. The real problem that comes with blindness is what people think about blindness; it’s not the blindness itself. God loves us just as we are, and he does not make mistakes.”
• Sterling Wyatt and Christian Wyatt: Sterling and Christian Wyatt were brothers born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. They were wheelchair users with severe mobility limitations whose condition included a prognosis of likely not living past age 30. Still, they wanted to serve missions and, with the help of their retired maternal grandparents, they served full-time missions in Ogden, Utah as referral clerks. They paved the way for other people with disabilities to serve full-time missions in a modified way.

You can read more contemporary stories under the “Articles” section of the Church webpage for Individuals with Disabilities.

Here are a few historical examples, as well:

• James Hendricks: James Hendricks “became disabled when he was injured in a conflict with a mob at the battle of Crooked River in Missouri. Shot in the neck, he was paralyzed from the neck down…In Nauvoo, the couple ran a boarding house across the street from the temple block. At Winter Quarters, they departed for the Salt Lake Valley in the Jedediah Grant company in 1847. In Salt Lake City, Brother Hendricks served as a bishop and helped to fight the cricket infestation by crawling between rows of corn and pounding the ground with his fists. For 10 years, the couple eked out a living by managing a bathhouse located north of the city. They then moved to Cache County, where Brother Hendricks died in 1870.”
• Charles Walker Hyde: Charles Walker Hyde was “born in 1814 in New York state with a congenital defect in his feet and ankles. Charles was 34 when the family left Winter Quarters for Salt Lake City under leadership of Elder Lorenzo Snow, and though he had some mobility with crutches, it is likely that Charles rode in one of the wagons. In 1852, he married, and a year later, at the age of 39, was ordained a patriarch under the hands of President Brigham Young and his counselors in the First Presidency. During his service in the Salt Lake Stake, he gave more than 7,000 patriarchal blessings before his death at age 77.”
• Marianne Fisher and Linda Braithwaite: Marianne Fisher was the first blind person and Linda Braithwaite was the third blind person to have ever sung in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (now the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square). They were part of the choir for 17 years and 20 years, respectively. They advocated for inclusion, mobility tools, and Braille literacy, including Braille music literacy.

It’s so frustrating to see people with disabilities in the church continually framed as needing a cure or only needing to be ministered to, when in fact people with disabilities have always and will always be an important part of the community whose contributions are essential. I would love it if someone someday could go through the Mormon historical archives and personal journals of our ancestors and get more accounts from people with disabilities who made significant contributions to early Church history. I know more stories are out there, but I had a really hard time finding them. If you know of any, please share them in the comments below!