Editor's Note: This is part two of a five-part series about shattering perceptions of disabilities on the University of Illinois campus.

When Timothy Nugent founded Disability Resource and Educational Services, or DRES, at the University of Illinois in 1948, higher education for students with disabilities wasn’t accessible.

Federal laws that require institutions to accommodate students came into fruition decades later. Ramps on college campuses were a rarity and accessible buses for students with physical disabilities were few in number. Students with mobility problems were not only challenged by accessibility, but they also had to endure stereotypes.

Charles Chapman, one of DRES’ first students, was partially paralyzed from a car accident and had to rely on crutches to get around as a result. The 1955 University graduate can personally recall the prejudice against those with disabilities.

“Except for my close friends, if I was outside somewhere, people would take steps to avoid having any encounter with me,” Chapman remembers. “Whatever I had and however I got it, they didn’t want it,” he added.

Nugent, who does not have a disability himself, was aware of these perceptions. So, without any model, he decided to create the nation’s first comprehensive program on a college campus that specifically addressed the needs of students with disabilities.

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Nugent was hired to teach health education at the Galesburg campus of the University system back in 1948. (Galesburg was a separate campus like the University of Illinois at Springfield, but shut down in 1949). During this time, he founded DRES in 1948.

From the beginning, many of DRES’ students were World War II veterans who suffered permanent injuries during their service. Nugent also launched a comprehensive athletic department so students could play wheelchair basketball, football, archery and other sports. He said that of all of the services DRES provided, the sports program was the most effective.

“It projected these people into the public eye,” Nugent said. “And people would see them and understand they have the same desires, emotions, skills and abilities as all other people, even though they may have to do it in a very different way. It also overcame the self-consciousness many of these individuals had in those days.”

When the Galesburg campus closed, DRES moved to the Urbana-Champaign campus.

Nugent came down the summer of 1949 to make sure ramps were built on some of the main buildings. During DRES’ early years, the University didn’t have buses to take students from place to place. So students relied on their own vehicles and organized daily schedules that ensured anyone who had mobility issues could get to their classes in a timely matter.

But by 1954, Nugent had secured two buses for the University with the help of Greyhound Bus Co., making the University the first institution in higher education to organize bus transportation for students with physical disabilities.

Yet, Nugent’s vision for DRES was not germane only to access. He also wanted his students to be models for people who felt those with disabilities were not as capable as anyone else.

If a student was in a wheelchair, he or she was encouraged to push himself or herself. Or if students relied on crutches, there was no need for anyone to hold the door open for them — they should insist on opening it themselves. Even professors noticed the independence of Nugent’s students.

“It’s so great to have one of your wheelchair people in one of my classes,” Nugent recalled one professor saying, “I said, ‘Oh, I’m happy to hear that. Why?’” Nugent asked.

“Well, all of the able-bodied students are afraid not to come when the weather is bad because that wheelchair guy is there,” the professor replied.

Louise Jones (formerly Fortman), who contracted polio at the age of 18 and has been in a wheelchair since, remembers how serious Nugent was about his students exercising independence when she was on campus in the late 1950s.

One day, she was going to catch a bus to the DRES building (known as the Rehabilitation Center during Jones’ time) but missed it. A young man walked by and asked if he could push her. He happened to be going in the same direction as Fortman, so she agreed. As soon as she heard Nugent’s voice, Fortman, a 1961 University graduate, knew she had made a mistake.

“‘FORTMAN! What are you doing? You push yourself,’” she remembers Nugent yelling. “So I told this kid, ‘Let go of me, let go of me.’ He disappeared, and I started pushing myself.”

Many of Nugent’s students recall stories of him preaching the value of self-reliance, though few of them were aware of the challenges he endured to keep DRES running.

He said his first years of building DRES were fraught with uphill battles with administrators who didn’t support him. He remembers spending as much time tearing down stereotypes about people with disabilities as he did building facilities and creating services to accommodate them. He said many administrators in the University did not want DRES to succeed.

“They thought these people would be an extra cost, an extra liability, a distraction,” Nugent said. “And they also thought, ‘What would they do with a college education?’ That was the attitude then.”

He said he ran DRES during its first eight years without funding from the University. The money came from federal funds and other sources of money raised outside of the University, he said. It was only in 1956 that the University allocated funds to the Rehabilitation Center’s budget, which he used to hire a secretary and a physical therapist named Chuck Elmer.

Elmer said he heard of the turf battles Nugent fought but never had to serve as his reinforcement. Nugent did all of the fighting for his staff, Elmer recalls.

Besides funding problems, the wheelchair sports teams Nugent organized were not allowed to be called Fighting Illini. Until 1986, they were named the Gizz Kids. The women were Ms. Kids.

The accessible buses Nugent secured weren’t paid for by the University; Greyhound Bus Co. donated them. The company even paid for the maintenance of the buses for a number of years afterward.

But not everyone held negative views toward Nugent or the students he worked to help. Some University employees came to his aid. He said he established relationships with deans in each of the University’s colleges, which produced various results. Some of the deans would allocate funding from their budgets to make their college’s bathrooms accessible, for example. However, as the program grew and years passed, Nugent fought less often.

Nugent said it was DRES succeeding year after year that helped to change the negative attitudes some University officials held against him and his program.

“It isn’t something that happened in an instant,” he said. “It was a gradual change in attitudes and perceptions. Not only did I have to fight for it, the students I had had to fight for it. And they did a good job.”

Nugent retired in 1986 after 36 years of leading DRES. He said he took one short vacation and never a sabbatical during that time. But the University did give him a new Cadillac, which he drove for 22 years. During his career, several U.S. presidents, including Richard Nixon, offered him White House positions dealing with disability services. He turned them down. Nugent said he had no interest in politics.

The student population that makes up DRES in 2009 greatly differs from when Nugent founded the program. Most of DRES’ first graduates had obvious physical disabilities. Today the majority have disabilities that are not visually obvious such as Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and Asperger Syndrome, or AS.

Brad Hedrick, director of DRES, said this shift in student demographics has challenged his unit to think about access in broader terms — one of which deals with technology.

“The problem in the information age is the technologies that are being used change very rapidly,” Hedrick said. “Buildings go up slowly but Web sites go up very quickly. So if they are inaccessible, it rapidly escalates into a very significant problem and a barrier for those with disabilities for whom those technologies were not well-designed or suited.”

Hedrick also said that society and higher education have made great progress in terms of accessibility, but inclusion must also be a priority when leveling the playing field for those with disabilities.

That is why Nugent is particularly proud that Beckwith Hall, a residence hall designed to help students overcome challenges associated with their physical disabilities, will be incorporated into the new residence hall being built on Gregory Drive.

One person who has an appreciation for Nugent’s legacy is President B. Joseph White. He calls Nugent a personal hero and considers Nugent’s career of opening the campus to students with disabilities as “the most distinguished chapter in the history of this University.”

“It’s the most significant contribution we’ve made to the world,” White added.

He said he knows about the battles and attitudes Nugent fought during the initial years of DRES’ existence but added that it often takes a tenacious person like Nugent to challenge the powers of the establishment.

“Opening access is always a battle,” White said. “It was a battle in the Civil Rights Movement. It was a battle for women to vote. It was a battle when it came to desegregating education. It was a battle when it came to desegregating housing. These were all about access. It was a battle at the University of Illinois when it came to opening up access for people with disabilities.”

Though he has been retired for more than 20 years, Nugent doesn’t keep a typical retiree’s schedule. He spends much of his time guest lecturing around the Champaign-Urbana area and the nation.

Nugent still attends the National Wheelchair Basketball Tournament he founded back in the late 1940s. He has yet to miss a tournament.

Since Nugent felt leading and building DRES didn’t allow him the chance to vacation, one would assume his calendar wouldn’t be full since he’s retired. Yet, the 86-year-old consistently schedules appointments weeks and even months ahead of time — essentially maintaining a lifestyle similar to the one he had during his 36-year career at the University.

So even when he is free to control his time however he wishes, it doesn’t appear that he’s willing to give himself a break either.