Douglas Martin, who was stricken with polio at age 5 and grew up to be a successful advocate for the disabled, helping pass the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988, has died. He was 55.
Mr. Martin died Friday night in his Los Angeles home when the ventilator he used 24 hours a day malfunctioned (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
The advocate, who spent more than two years of his early childhood hospitalized in an iron lung, used a wheelchair the rest of his life. The effects of the polio included low stamina and respiratory difficulty, although he could breathe on his own while he was awake.
A native of Naper, Neb., Mr. Martin earned a major scholarship to the University of Nebraska but was turned away when officials saw his wheelchair.
“I made a vow then and there that I would pursue my education and use it to make sure this would not happen to anyone else,” Mr. Martin once said..
He moved west to attend UCLA, where he found “the climate was milder, the barriers were fewer and the environment was very accommodating.”
Mr. Martin earned simultaneous bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1973 and a doctoral degree in urban affairs two years later. He became a department scholar and in 1972 was the first disabled person to be named a UCLA Chancellor’s Fellow.
He spent years as a lobbyist for passage of legislation to help the disabled. In 1989 he returned to UCLA as special assistant to the chancellor in charge of compliance with those laws.
At that time, 75 percent of the campus buildings were largely inaccessible to people with disabilities. He supervised the conversion of them all.
Under his tenure as disabled-affairs compliance officer at UCLA, enrollment of students with disabilities increased markedly, to 1,082 by 1996 from 237 when he arrived.
During his years away from UCLA, Mr. Martin worked extensively in California’s capital and in Washington. In addition to the state disability laws he helped pass, he worked with Congress on the Americans with Disabilities Act and to assure Medicare and other benefits for disabled people with jobs.
Mr. Martin considered his most gratifying achievement the decade-long effort that led to the signing of the Employment Opportunities for Disabled Americans Act in 1986.
The act revised Social Security laws and Supplemental Security Income regulations to eliminate rules that halted benefits when disabled people were employed. Under revisions Mr. Martin helped achieve, the new rules encouraged the disabled to seek and retain jobs.
Mr. Martin was awarded the national Distinguished Service Award from President George Bush’s Committee for Employment of People With Disabilities in 1990.
“The rejection by the University of Nebraska haunted me all my adult life,” Mr. Martin told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “They saw the visible disability but could not anticipate my motivation and dedication.”
He is survived by his wife of eight months, RaeLynne Rein, and his mother (the name of Mr. Martin’s wife as published has been corrected in this text).
