Lifelong Aurora resident Anna Scaggs stood inside Aurora City Hall Tuesday night holding a plaque proclaiming July as Disability Pride Month in Aurora.
Scaggs said the last time she stood in City Hall was in 2011, when she was awarded for a Special Olympics soccer team victory. Now, she stood with one of her former soccer coaches, Alex Engelhardt, and a former teammate, Sean Thompson, as a community leader.
“This means everything to me,” she said.
At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, Mayor John Laesch welcomed members of the Aurora Advisory Commission on Disabilities, Weston Bridges and the Fox Valley Special Recreation Association to accept the city’s official proclamation declaring July as Disability Pride Month in Aurora.
The city stated that Disability Pride Month is a time to celebrate the achievements, contributions and resilience of individuals with disabilities, and to promote inclusion, acceptance and understanding of disabilities.
The city’s proclamation also recognized that the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed on July 26 in 1990, which ensured the civil rights of, and prohibited discrimination against, people with disabilities.
Since her last visit to City Hall, Scaggs has become an ambassador for a group she grew up competing in, the Fox Valley Special Recreation Association, through which she has started giving speeches and traveling the area.
That ambassador program is a recent addition to the Fox Valley Special Recreation Association, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in August. The association provides therapeutic recreation opportunities for individuals with disabilities across the Fox Valley region.
Alex Engelhardt, executive director of the Fox Valley Special Recreation Association, said it meant a lot to coach Scaggs and her friend Sean Thompson, then watch them both become community leaders, then be included in the proclamation celebrations Tuesday for Disability Pride Month in Aurora.
She said the proclamation is an important part of recent efforts by the city and other organizations to better support people with disabilities in Aurora. She said she has seen significant progress in city support for people with disabilities over the last 20 years.
“This just elevates the overall awareness of the city and all the initiatives that the city is doing,” Engelhardt said. “It’s really a community effort to ensure all services are working in alignment.”
The Fox Valley Special Recreation Association celebrated the proclamation Tuesday with Weston Bridges, an independent apartment community for adults with intellectual, cognitive or developmental disabilities that is part of the Bloomhaven development at the old Copley Hospital campus on the city’s near East Side.
Andy Hubble, executive director of Weston Bridges, said the apartment community is often supported by the city.
One example of improved support from the city, he said, was the launch of Aurora Ride Solution, a free, supplemental transportation service created to support senior residents and individuals living with disabilities in Aurora.
Hubble said Weston Bridges residents often rely on Ride Solution to get to and from work, which he said gives people with disabilities the independence to set their own work schedule. In one instance, he said, the service was especially helpful when a resident needed to get home after midnight from work.
“It’s another step that the city has given us that allows us to focus on our residents becoming more independent,” he said.
The city’s Senior and Disability Services Division and the Aurora Advisory Commission on Disabilities also celebrated the proclamation of Disability Pride Month in Aurora.
“We’re so excited to be honoring, recognizing, supporting and advocating for people with disabilities,” said Katrina Boatright, head of Aurora’s Senior and Disability Services Division.
awright@chicagotribune.com
