United Spinal Updates

In Memory of My Friend Marilyn Golden

Marilyn Golden: 1954-2021

The sheer irreplaceability of some people—the yawning gap left by their passing—is so stark and so difficult to deal with. Marilyn Golden, my friend of well over thirty years, died the other day, and I realize now that she’s gone, how much I loved and respected her.

Marilyn, a Senior Policy Analyst at the Disability Rights and Education Defense Fund (DREDF) in the San Francisco Bay Area for decades, was an expert. Her expertise was not limited to accessible transportation and accessible building design—although on those subjects, I watched her hold her own with the most hostile transit operators, the most reluctant builders, and the most reticent government officials. Her true expertise, however, was getting people to do what she wanted them to do.

Marilyn, a wheelchair user since sustaining a spinal cord injury in college, was compelling, persuasive, and solid as a rock. She was smart—most times, the smartest in the room—funny (and even more importantly, she thought I was), and someone you wanted to spend time with. We realized that we appreciated each other more than other people appreciated us when we were battling transit and its USDOT and Congressional supporters to make transit accessible and ensure it forever with ADA.

Marilyn spent more days per year in Washington, DC than Donald Trump as President. After ADA passed, she and I, and other disability advocates, worked with small, medium, and large transit operators and USDOT to craft an implementing regulation for the transportation provisions of the ADA. Marilyn articulated the disability community position in a manner that made hostile transit operators understand us. She would go on to train many transit systems’ leadership in the decades to follow. Transit considered her a colleague, not an adversary.

President Clinton appointed Marilyn and I to the US Access Board. There, she made federal agency bureaucrats realize that adequate access standards can be the difference between social viability and isolation, employment or dependence—inclusion or exclusion.

Marilyn traveled all over the country—in fact, the world—explaining, cajoling, persuading, and has thousands of disciples. I preach the gospel according to two of my closest friends and mentors: Paul Hearne and Terry Moakley, who like Marilyn, are gone. I hear them all of the time in things I say or write. Thousands of people with disabilities will preach the gospel according to Marilyn Golden, some knowingly and some because her vision has become society’s.

I have not mentioned dozens of Marilyn’s accomplishments—her partner, her family and her educational background—but I have to mention how painful and how profound Marilyn’s loss is to me. She was a contemporary, a friend, a confidante, and a co-conspirator. She was also a warm, loving person. I will treasure her memory and her friendship. She was a truly accomplished advocate, and a better friend.