Last year, employment for Americans with disabilities reached the highest number on record, according to the Kessler Foundation, though many advocates say better hiring and workplace practices are still needed.
Before the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990, many people with disabilities were openly denied work, including Sammy Mabe.
Mabe has been working as a switchboard operator at LewisGale Hospital in Pulaski for fifty years. He has cerebral palsy, and when he was looking for employment in the early 70s, he said he was turned down more than a dozen times.
“I was looking for a job and I’d go places and they say, ‘we don’t have anything for you to do.’ It was like they didn’t want me in there.”
Mabe has a college degree. But when employers saw that he walked on crutches, they turned him away.
Then, finally, he got a job, working for the local hospital in Pulaski. Five decades later, the hospital’s CEO Sean Pressman says he’s one of their best workers. “He’s always there with a smile and a joke. But he’s also very serious when the time comes to be serious. He’s someone that we can all rely on,” Pressman said.
Mabe said he’s recognized everywhere in town. “Some of these people are grown up and they will say, ‘when I was a baby when I got sick you called a doctor for me.’ So it makes me feel good that I have helped somebody along the way.”
Mabe doesn’t plan on retiring anytime soon. He’d like to start a support group for other people with disabilities to help them find work.
