Guest speaker motivates at 'DREAM' team luncheon

  • Published
  • By Rebecca Amber
  • Staff writer
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  Disability Rights Employment Awareness Month wrapped up Oct. 28 with a luncheon at Club Muroc. At the capstone event, guests heard from guest speaker Eric Lipp, founder and executive director of the Open Doors Organization in Chicago, Illinois.

Lt. Col. Christopher Budde, 412th Communications Squadron commander, said that the DREAM team's goal is to inspire a culture of taking care of others. Melissa Billingsley, a volunteer puppy raiser with K-9 Companions for Independence served as an example of that kind of attitude.

Billingsley attended the luncheon with four service dogs in training and spoke to the group about what her mission entails. She shared that the puppy raisers volunteer at their own expense and the dogs, when they complete their training, are assigned at no cost to their disabled counterparts. Only 30 percent of the dogs the company breeds will complete their training and be assigned to a person who needs them.

After lunch was served, Lipp stood before the audience and shared his story. One day before his 30th birthday, he was diagnosed with Von Hippel Lindau disease, a disease which affects about 1 in 70,000 individuals. Because of his condition, doctors discovered a tumor growing on Lipp's spinal cord. 

Lipp underwent surgery to have the tumor removed and when it was over he was told he might never regain the ability to walk. His right leg is fitted with a carbon fiber brace and has very little feeling. His left leg has no feeling at all.

"I spent my first week in the hospital doing nothing but complaining," said Lipp.

He recalled the six months he spent watching TV in his hospital gown and attending physical therapy - completely unmotivated. Each day, he sat next to a man trying to regain motion in his arms. The man had been hit in the neck by his neighbor's clothes line and collapsed.

Every day, the man tried to lift his arm just a little higher and one day, he did.

"I was like man, give it up because you aren't getting any better," said Lipp.

What came next was turning point for Lipp. 

"He said, 'listen here. I'm going to hold my grandkid if it's the last thing I do, so if I move one finger at a time -that's enough...I promise you one day young man, you're going to see me holding my grandkids,'" said Lipp. "It turned my life around when I saw him do that because I really understood that he's accepting what he's doing and I have to accept what I do because this is life now for me and for him."

Lipp quit his job in the computer business and started the Open Doors Organization, a non-profit global consulting company for international businesses on customer service for people with disabilities.  

Though Lipp was now determined to focus on his quality of life, he still had to learn about the changes that came with living with a disability.

"Living in Chicago, living in downtown, we had a lot of homeless people and I used to walk by and think nothing of it, but then as I had my disability and walked with a cane I came under attack a few times because maybe I looked a little bit weaker than I once was," said Lipp.

He also learned that if he stood in a business meeting he was looked at differently than if he stayed in his scooter.  Lipp shared that disabilities come in all shapes sizes and forms. In fact, people with disabilities make up the largest minority worldwide. 

"Why is that? Because it does not make a difference who you are, what you look like, what you believe in, where you're from, where your family's from. None of that makes a difference; you could walk right through those doors there and join our club any day. We do not discriminate."

For that very reason, he encouraged them to see the American Disability Act as a civil rights law.

He recalled a time when he took his children to a café in Chicago where the restaurant is upstairs with a gift shop on the first floor. As customers ascend to the restaurant, there are animatronic animals and a volcano - a whole show to see. But, lipp and his family were ushered in the back and through the kitchen to a freight elevator. Because of the accommodations made for his disability, his family missed out on the full experience.

"Is that equality? Because to me it really isn't. It's what they call reasonable accommodation and that's okay too," said Lipp.

He went on to explain that it's not the law itself, but the spirit of the law that should be observed.

"Make access part of the plan because a lot of times when you design it for us, you design It for everybody."

Lipp ended his presentation with a story about his grandmother who died less than two years ago at the age of 94. Each day when Lipp was in the hospital his grandmother would come in into his room and he would cry and ask her, "What am I going to do?"

As she prepared to leave his room each night, she would say, "Listen to me - In life you only get what you give."

Lipp would think about the fact that he couldn't move; he couldn't even go to the bathroom on his own. He felt he was getting more out of television than he was out of life.

But she continued to share that message faithfully. Finally, the night after the man next to him lifted his arm, Lipp held his grandmother's hand and said, "I get It."

"I quit my job and I started Open Doors because I finally understood that in life you only get what you give."