Fred Fay died on August 20, 2011. A quadriplegic since age 16, he co-founded a support network for disabled people and played a major role in winning backing for the federal Americans With Disabilities Act.

One day after shooting hoops in his backyard, Fred completed two flips from a trapeze; on the third try he fell 10 feet and broke his neck. Despite his devastating fall, neither he nor his parents lowered their expectations. A few days after the accident, with Fay immobilized in a rigid frame that periodically rotated him ("like a human rotisserie," he joked), his engineer father devised a clip that enabled him to hold a pencil and do his trigonometry homework while upside down. His mother found a pair of prism glasses that let him read a book propped on his chest.

Fred completed high school and in 1967 graduated from the University of Illinois, where he later also completed a PhD in educational and rehabilitation psychology.

"Each of us has a choice how we view our situation," he said in "Understanding Our Differences," an educational video. "You have the freedom inside your head to decide who you are going to be and how you are going to react to the funny, strange, pitying attitudes other people have. You'll always have that freedom, no matter what else."

This profile is excerpted from an article in the LA Times by Elaine Woo (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/04/local/la-me-frederick-fay-20110904). The article includes links to videos about Fred's life and work. There is also a short Wikipedia article about him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fay).