Brooke Ellison, Prominent Disability Rights Advocate, Dies at 45

One ​​of Harvard's first quadriplegic graduates, she became an author, professor, and powerful voice for people with disabilities.

Brooke Ellison, who after being paralyzed from the neck down following a car accident as a child, graduated from Harvard and became a professor and dedicated advocate for disability rights , died Sunday in Stony Brook, New York, on Long Island. She was 45.

Her death, at a hospital, was caused by complications of quadriplegia, said her mother, Jean Ellison.

< p class=" css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">By the age of 11, Brooke was taking karate, soccer, cello and dance lessons and singing in a church choir. But on September 4, 1990, she was hit by a car while crossing a road near her home in Stony Brook. Her skull, spine, and nearly every major bone in her body were fractured.

After waking up from a 36-hour coma, she spent six weeks in hospital and eight months in a rehabilitation center. And for the rest of her life, she depended on a wheelchair operated by a touch keyboard, a ventilator that delivered 13 breaths per minute, and, ultimately, a voice-activated computer for typing.

"If she survived," her mother said in a telephone interview, "at first we thought she would have no cognition."

But Brooke recovered better than expected. His first words after waking up in the hospital were, “When can I go back to school?” and "Will I be left behind?"

We are having difficulty retrieving the content of the article.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode, please exit and sign in to your Times account, or subscribe to the entire Times.

Thank you for your patience while we let's check access.

Already subscribed? Log in.

Want all the Times?