A NEW NAME AND EXPANDED AUTHORITY FOR THE COMMITTEE 747 



try's disabled. The time has come for us as elected representatives, and as a nation, 

 to direct our energies in a manner reflecting our commitment to handicapped persons. 



When the Washington Star published an article in April 1978, pointing 

 out the obstacles a young disabled visitor encountered in visiting the 

 Kennedy Center, Museum of History and Technology, and the Library 

 of Congress, Teague fired off letters to the officials concerned to find 

 out why action was not being taken to correct the situation. In re- 

 marks for the Congressional Record, Teague colorfully stated : 



Maybe we could understand and appreciate this young man's plight, the dilemma 

 which faces millions of elderly and handicapped citizens who visit or try to conduct 

 their business in Washington, D.C., if we were to lose our parking spaces, restrict 

 ourselves to wheelchairs for a week, and had to come crawling to the floor of the 

 House of Representatives every time we had a rollcall vote. 



Wherever Teague went, he looked at the effect of existing facilities 

 on problems which handicapped people encounter, and then went to 

 bat to correct them. When he encountered difficulties in airports for 

 handicapped people to make connecting flights, he wrote to Frank 

 Borman, president of Eastern Airlines and Representative Harold T. 

 Johnson (Democrat of California), chairman of the House Public 

 Works and Transportation Committee. When he heard about a Houston 

 condominium designed especially for disabled people, he sent Roodzant 

 and consultant Matthews down to make some tape-recorded inter- 

 views, and helped spread the gospel on the value of enabling the handi- 

 capped to enjoy "independent living" in good surroundings outside of 

 institutions. If somebody had trouble boarding a train, he was after 

 Amtrak to get them to live up to their literature advertising they 

 offered assistance to disabled passengers. From all over the country, 

 people wrote Teague about job problems, architectural barrier prob- 

 lems, or simple lack of understanding by people in authority, and all 

 these letters were carefully answered and the situations usually 

 straightened out by Teague or the committee staff. 



SPACE-AGE TECHNOLOGY TO AID ELDERLY AND HANDICAPPED 



Five Science Committee members also serving on the House Select 

 Committee on Aging — Watkins, Lloyd, Mrs. Bouquard, Hollenbeck, 

 and Dornan joined with Representative Claude Pepper, chairman of 

 the House Aging Committee in a February 13, 1979, letter to Fuqua 

 urging greater application of developing technology to aid the elderly 

 and the handicapped. The letter urged joint action and joint hearings 

 between the two committees, with emphasis on the work of NASA 

 and the Department of HEW. 



