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Gadsey’s move to Missouri signals more advocacy for state’s disabled

ST. LOUIS – Some people seem to be born to lobby for a specific cause or group of people. They combine a natural affinity for advocacy with passion and life experience to represent not only their interests, but the interests of people they want to help.

Kevin Gadsey is just such a person.

Gadsey works as a government affairs coordinator for Paraquad, an organization that seeks to provide empowerment and enrichment for people with disabilities through independent living. He speaks with legislators and other members of government to explain the struggles of the disabled community and to find solutions that would benefit them.

“We work with people of all kinds of disabilities, and we value all people who have those disabilities,” Gadsey said. “We want them to be full members of society, contributing in the way everyone else does. That’s kind of customized for every person. We work very hard to help find the options in the community where people can be integrated and not necessarily living in assisted living homes or nursing homes.”

He just joined the company seven months ago, but he has worked as an advocate for people with disabilities for much longer.


Gadsey grew up in Tennessee in the 70s and 80s after being born with a condition called Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita, a congenital joint condition which causes joint contractures and causes muscle weakness. He uses a wheelchair or motorized scooter to cover long distances.

“[It is] not much of a burden, but there are some challenges associated with it, more societal barriers than individual barriers,” he said.

Kevin Gadsey, government affairs coordinator for Paraquad
Kevin Gadsey, government affairs coordinator for Paraquad

As a child, he visited St. Louis often, and during one trip to the Magic House in Kirkwood, he managed to talk his way into using the facility’s three-story slide, even though the staff at the facility had reservations because of his disability. They thought he could hurt himself.

And they were right.

On his second trip down, he raised his legs up to gather more speed and got them caught on the side of the slide and ended up tumbling and somersaulting the rest of the way down, ending up with a headache at the bottom of the slide.

However, despite the hiccup, he saw the incident as a success – noting that having his choice and ultimately failing was a simple part of growing up that should not be restricted from him just because of his disability.

“One thing that really frustrates me is when well-meaning folks want to protect people with disabilities or just ‘keep them safe,’” he said. “I call it disability purgatory because folks are never allowed to experience the failures that lead to individual growth and success.”

He also cheered for the Chicago Cubs and the Kansas City Royals, gaining years of insight into what it meant to support an underdog cause.

Gadsey was one of the first disabled students integrated into his school system, and he said he did not face any significant challenges there. He graduated high school, the year the Americans with Disabilities Act went into effect (it was signed by George H.W. Bush in 1990). College, however, presented some roadblocks.

“In college, I realized there were definitely some problems here,” he said. “I started becoming an advocate on campus.”

Gadsey met with faculty and members of the administration of the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville to make the college experience more accessible and welcoming to disabled people.

He graduated with a journalism degree in 2000, but college kickstarted his interest and passion in advocating for those with disabilities.

After working as a reporter for a year, Gadsey moved back home to help take care of his father, who had been recently diagnosed with cancer.

“Once my dad’s cancer situation had become resolved, I knew I wanted to do something different,” Gadsey said. In 2004, he applied for positions at independent living centers all over the country, including a job at Paraquad, but he eventually settled on a position in Juneau, Alaska as a as an independent living advocate, a job which allowed him an opportunity to tackle the political side of issues he cared about. He worked with a legislator in the Last Frontier’s state capitol to change the antiquated language in government statutes pertaining to disabilities, and it was there he got his first taste of working on bills and legislation.

However, after a particularly harsh winter that featured 50 inches of snow accumulating over the course of just a few days, Gadsey decided to move further south. He stayed in Alaska, but decided on Ketchikan, a city of 13,000 near the tip of the state’s southeastern archipelago bordering British Columbia. There, he worked at the Southeast Alaska Independent Living Center as the Ketchikan program director.

In Ketchikan, Gadsey discovered the town had little experience in providing accessibility for people with disabilities and that the disabled population had never had an experienced advocate with a disability fighting for them.

“I learned on the fly how to create a grassroots movement to bring about some of that change,” he said. “We catalogued about 100 different curb cuts and sidewalks that had accessibility issues. We were able to get better access to the airport. At the state level, we were able to get funding for public transportation. Alaska was one of three states prior to that that had never funded public transit in any way.”

His advocacy group, which started with only four people sitting around a coffee table in Ketchikan grew into an eight group program made up of 64 individuals by the time he departed.

“I felt we had a really good run in Alaska, but it left me with some lingering questions about how to do things even better,” Gadsey said.

He left the state in 2013 and traveled to the University of Ireland – Galway to pursue a master’s degree in public advocacy and activism, earning top marks throughout his tenure. Now, he works at Paraquad.

“Coming to St. Louis and Paraquad has been wonderful because we’re on a team that’s doing it all,” he said. Paraquad acts not only as an independent living center or an advocacy center, but the 45-year-old organization, one of the oldest of its kind in the nation, also provides assistive technology, health services, a health and wellness center, personal care attendants and many other services for people with disabilities who want to lead an independent life.

“It’s been a bit of a learning curve, learning how Missouri’s systems and laws affect people with disabilities here,” Gadsey added. Even so, Gadsey has hit the ground running. He is currently working to get suggestions to the legislature on how to improve and modify the Ticket to Work Health Assurance (TWHA) Program, which he said is under-utilized in Missouri compared to the rest of the nation. He also wants to get work done on a bill to increase asset limits for the people self-accessing Medicaid.

Gadsey also worked with Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Glendale, on passing the ABLE Act, which allows the creation of disabilities savings accounts if the person with disabilities is diagnosed before the age of 26.

When Gadsey is not working on legislation, he educates legislators who may not have much personal life experiences with the disabled. He tells them not to think of the disabled as unable or incapable, instead asking them to focus on providing what is necessary to allow them to help themselves.

“I work to try to bring the stories and the knowledge of 20 percent of society who have disabilities,” Gadsey said. “I work to bring that selective knowledge and my experience in a short synopsis to the legislators to help them be able to learn what life is like for people with disabilities and where some of their opportunities are for them to give opportunities to people with disabilities.”

What does he tell those legislators? The same things he would tell young students when he spoke at schools in Alaska.

“It is about maximizing a person’s strengths, minimizing their weaknesses, and valuing what they can do.” he said.

Update: A previous version of this story stated Gadsey graduated from college in 1992, when that was actually the year he graduated high school.