Sandi's Goodby Message

To Disability Connection Family and Friends:

How many ways can I say thank you, I can’t count the ways!!! I’m no Emily Dickinson but 25 years plus with the most incredible organization anywhere ever deserves some thanks! Please be patient while I share a few..

Thank you Access All Areas for giving a scared 30 year old single mom a chance and a path. Thank you Deborah Cunningham for seeing some potential, the verbal head smacks and the start of my disability power.

Thanks to the 10th ADA Anniversary Torch Relay for making me learn email and other computer skills and introducing me to some new life long friends, Judy Neal and Tim Wheat, to reconnect with others like the late Louis Patrick, current Board member Gary Smith and others that had introduced me to disability world on my first staff run.

From Deborah’s assistant and secretary in the 80’s, some “Centered” projects in the 90’s to the 2000’s honor of Program and Assistant Director then Executive Director in 2015. Wow, so much life, so much learning, sharing, laughter and tears and all the people who have shared the good and bad times at Memphis Center for Independent Living, thank you.

A huge thank you to the staff throughout the years and especially those who stuck through the lean times after Deborah died or came back to help us pick up the pieces like my friend Renee who made the other half of me for our 1st year in 2000, 2001 as new management at MCIL as Renee tried to turn me from Mom to Boss to the IL team.

Michael Heinrich went from full-time volunteer to the Tech Administrator to bookkeeper when Renee retired. Somewhere in there he became my guy and he still hangs in there, thanks babe!

Our VISTA volunteers became a vital resource to staff and we gained a fantastic Independent Living Specialist who has introduced the Center to Blind culture and the Center to that community. Today Christina is the Outreach and Development Manager and still serves as senior IL specialist because she has the touch.

The rest of team with the help of friends, family and consumer helped select the new name for the Center of Disability Connection Midsouth to clearly share who we are; people with disabilities connecting others to resources, providing peer support, training, nursing home and youth transition and above all teaching others how to be their own best advocates and that the change begins with each of us.

My retirement was expected by everyone but the reality of this new life is just sinking in or will begin to after the Italian supper. The Board is hard at work to find the right new Executive Director to lead DCM and I know that the team and Center will be good as Tim Wheat, Program Director steps up as Interim Director while the search continues. Please give your best wishes and support to Disability Connection Midsouth during this time of incredible opportunities!

Thank you DCM for helping me find my voice, to own my disability and my power to make a difference, sometimes one ‘starfish’ at a time… Lead on my family of advocates and don’t count me out because I will continue to advocate as if my life depends on it because we all know, It Does! Are you in?

Love you all!

Sandi, formerly the Boss