The legacy of a place isn’t always found in what it looks like today. Sometimes, it’s found in what happened there and what those events set in motion.
I learned that while sitting inside an aging gymnasium in Los Angeles after a brush fire forced me to take shelter there.
I had just left an Aug. 8 cere-mony at Birmingham Community
Charter High School, where Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass hosted the dedication of Wheelchair Basketball Square.
Paralympic wheelchair basketball players and dignitaries were in attendance, and the event ended with a demonstration game of wheelchair basketball. It was nearly 100 degrees outside, and a documentarian making a film about wheelchair basketball and I were in the parking lot talking about what we had just witnessed.
Then, we smelled smoke. Within moments, ashes filled the air as a sudden surge of wind pushed the smoke across the campus.
Just a few feet away stood an aged, nondescript building. We ducked inside as fire trucks arrived. School security shut the door behind us to keep the smoke out and told us to stay put.
Seconds later, I realized we were in a remnant of the Birmingham Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital. During World War II, it was the site of groundbreaking work in spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation.
And we were in the original gymnasium where wheelchair basketball began in the United States.
The contrast with the school’s new gym was striking. The new facility was modern and air-conditioned. The old gym lacked air conditioning. Its decades-old scoreboard remained, its windows painted over.
Outside, plastic tarps covered water damage. Stucco had fallen away, exposing deteriorating wood beams. Yet sitting there, I realized the old gym still had something the new one could never replicate — a legacy.
As PVA Publications editor-in-chief, I’ve spent years around the stories of the people who built the disability movement. But sitting inside that old gym gave the history a different weight.
I wasn’t reading about it. I was sitting in it.
Earlier that day, I had met David Davis, author of Wheels of Courage. His book tells the story of paralyzed World War II veterans who refused to accept the limitations others placed on them and who helped transform rehabilitation, sports and disability rights.
Our conversation reinforced something I have come to understand: Wheelchair basketball was never simply a game. It became a pathway to advocacy.
It didn’t start that way.
At the Birmingham VA, wheelchair basketball was primarily a rehabilitation tool. Doctors were looking for ways to get young men with SCI building strength and confidence and preparing them to return to meaningful lives.
The first documented game was played Nov. 25, 1946, between patients and doctors. According to the hospital’s Birmingham Reporter, the patients won, 16-6.
It was an immediate solution to an immediate need. No one playing that game could have known what it would become. The men became athletes.
