Carolyn Crockett

Left: Photo Jacqueline O'Sullivan

Posted by John B. Kelly

Longtime West Fens resident Carolyn Crockett died of cancer last Thursday night.. She has been sick for a few years, and was receiving hospice care at home. She was in her late 40s.

Carolyn was an original NAG member, and came to the group through her involvement in the Fenway Community Development Corporation .

FCDC Executive Director Carl Koechlin captures her contribution to the community:

Carolyn served on our board for several years up until a few years ago and also chaired our property management committee for many years. She exemplified the generous spirit and commitment to others that are essential to any strong community and community organization. We would do well to carry those attributes on with our work. We will miss her.

Carolyn was on the quiet and polite side, and preferred to be active behind the scenes. But like just about everyone with a disability, she knew she had to fight hard for what she -- and most especially, her young nephew, Zachary -- deserved. Carolyn committed her daytimes to caring for Zach, who is severely disabled both physically and cognitively. Her fights for Zachary made her an activist. In a 2000 Boston Phoenix article about the impact of development in the Fenway, Laura A. Siegel wrote:

Gridlock is already a problem. That can be more than an annoyance, especially to people with disabilities. "I once waited 20 minutes for an ambulance to come when I had a child [Zachary] who wasn't breathing," said Fenway resident Carolyn Crockett, who uses a wheelchair. "EMS said they were stuck in Red Sox traffic."

When I finally got up the nerve to try and start a neighborhood access advocacy group, FCDC community organizer Jethro Heiko suggested reaching out to Carolyn Crockett, a disabled member of the FCDC board. She joined right up, and steadied the group with her stock of knowledge, both about opportunities like the Mission Hill/Fenway Trust, and -- just as important in my book -- who and who did not "get it" regarding disability.

It was easier for Carolyn to advocate on behalf of others, like Zack or the other disabled and elderly residents of her building. So our original priority list of curb ramps didn't even include her own not-very-accessible streetcorner, the intersection of Kilmarnock and Peterborough St, because she thought the priorities should be total disasters like the uncrossable broken stone pavers where Westland Avenue meets Hemenway Street.

After she was diagnosed with colon cancer (it turned out that she was unlucky enough to be genetically predisposed), Carolyn cut back on her activities, but continued to care and advocate for Zachary. One of the events she was able to attend was NAG's first protest. Exasperated by the Menino administration refusal to even talk about slowing down the installation of bricks on Huntington Avenue, BCIL and NAG collaborated on a protest in September, 2003 on a just-installed patch of brick in front of the Burger King at Huntington and Gainsborough St..

Carolyn was my hero that day, because she was able to more-or-less neutralize a local and obnoxious counterprotester, who was driving me nuts by holding a sign celebrating brick. "As long as you agree with everything he says, he's really not much trouble," Carolyn said. I'm not sure anyone should have to make such a sacrifice, though..

Last years Access Tour of the Fenway was the last time she felt well enough to come to a NAG outdoor event. Zachary came with his dog and helper, who pushed him in a manual chair along the sidewalks. Zachary's experience made us see how bad some of the new sidewalks were: some of the “cracks” between the concrete panels were so wide that Zack's front wheel fell in.

Carolyn had a wry sense of humor about how farcical fighting for access can be. Like the time she spoke to the nearby McKinley Middle school about its curb cuts being full of snow, only to be told that the curbcut was unshoveled on purpose to create another parking space.

After it became clear that the cancer would be terminal, she debated back and forth about whether to replace her broken old wheelchair with a new one. Her big question: Would it come on time?

It was a good question, as the local wheelchair dealers all take months and years to finish the seemingly endless process of prescription, fitting , order , and delivery. Meanwhile, Carolyn kept seeing wheelchair advertisements on TV promising immediate delivery. So she phoned one of these suspicious outfits on a whim, and was flabbergasted by receiving a new chair within days.

But the chair suddenly had a problem and needed service. So with nothing to lose, Carolyn telephoned the company on a Saturday, thereby traveling further into an alternate disability universe where company representatives react with genuine concern: "But how will you get around without a chair," the rep asked Carolyn.

Carolyn shook her head laughing about how this naïve company didn't get the industry-wide memo about how to be indifferent and unresponsive, not friendly and concerned.

Carolyn was friendly and concerned.