As she wheeled her chair to the podium to lead the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of a recent Toledo City Council meeting, Joy Parker thought to herself what most would be thinking in that moment before the council members and about 50 people in the audience.
“I just hoped I wouldn’t forget the words,” the 55-year-old quipped.
As a tribute to Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month, Toledo City Council worked with the Lucas County Board of Developmental Disabilities to have individuals served by the Board lead the Pledge of Allegiance at two of their meetings.
March 27 was Joy’s first trip to One Government Center in downtown Toledo and first time attending a city council meeting. “It was really interesting to see how they run their meetings,” she said.
Joy has been served by the Board for about 10 years. After her parents passed away within almost a year of each other, she found herself alone for the first time in the home she was living in with them. She had never received services from the Board because, as with most things since her Cerebral Palsy diagnosis at Age 2, “Mom’s attitude was, well, we’ll just figure this out.”
And they always did.
“I was a pretty indoorsy kid,” Joy recalls. “I read a lot and was in my imagination a lot.”
She turned that love for reading into a PhD in English Literature, which she earned from the University of Toledo in 2002.
Dr. Parker was a part of the faculty at Owens Community College for 20 years until she retired on Sept. 30, 2023. She taught English Composition, English Literature, Humanities, World Religion, Art History, Leadership, a little bit of everything.
Sometimes students wouldn’t realize she was the teacher of the class and would be shocked when Joy rolled her wheelchair to the front of the classroom and turned to face them and lead the class.
How accessible was the campus at Owens? “I had to figure things out but that’s been my entire life. It can be really annoying. Owens was generally good but there were times when accessibility was a problem.”
2023 capped off what she calls “a fun roller coaster ride” of years that started with COVID and all the post COVID complications, which she beat, RSV, which she beat, and Stage 4 Breast Cancer, which she learned on Dec. 4, 2023, she had also beaten.
A big credit for all that, Joy says, is her SSA Candice Landrum, and the rest of her team at Lucas DD, who were instrumental in finding her a new living situation. The loneliness of the nursing home she had previously resided in was causing her major depression.
“Every day I wake up grateful that I am not in that place anymore,” Joy said.
She currently resides in a home owned by Careology Health Services and could not be happier.
“Joy is just a peach and a pleasure to work with,” said Candice Landrum, her SSA at the Board.
She capped off 2023 by attending Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners at her niece’s home, the first time she was able to attend a family function in more than 3 years. Her niece’s husband built a wheelchair ramp just so they could have an accessible entrance for Aunt Joy.
Joy says even early on in her childhood, despite her disabilities, she always maintained a humble perspective. “There’s a lot of people who have it worse off,” she recalled thinking to herself.
Resilient through it all, she might be retired but shows no signs of slowing down, especially after all that she has been through.
“Maybe God had my back,” she said. “I hope.”