Shortly after Margaret Derby was born, Bill and Mary learned that she was blind and suffering from several developmental disabilities. She would never walk, talk, or have the type of childhood that her siblings enjoyed. Their pediatrician advised them to take Margaret home and to love her in the best way that they could.
This was the early 1960s, decades before the Americans with Disabilities Act; there were very few programs or services in the area to provide support for Margaret or guidance for the Derby family as they navigated their new life together.
So Mary decided to take matters into her own hands. She reached out to other families in Livingston County who were raising children with physical and developmental disabilities, and together with the local chapter of the ARC, they established a residential home in Geneseo that would allow their children to live and work directly in the community. This residential model would spread throughout the state and the nation, forever changing the way people with disables are treated and served.
Although Margaret’s disabilities were so severe that she would never directly benefit from the residential services Mary and Bill fought so hard for, her life and spirit inspired them to continue fighting for the rights and support of people with disabilities even after she passed away in 1988. Today, the residential care model that Mary and her friends struggled to establish in Geneseo has become the norm, and all of the massive, sprawling institutions that defined mental health care in the 20th century have been shut down.
Margaret’s life - and the effect she had on her community - was commemorated when, in 2010, a special residential care facility in Retsof, New York, was named The Hope IRA, after her mother, Mary Hope Derby, who has fought for the past fifty years to ensure that no family will ever feel as isolated and scared as she and Bill felt when they took Margaret home from the hospital.
Please consider making a contribution to The Derby Fund so that we can support organizations such as the Arc of Livingston-Wyoming in honor of the work Bill and Mary have done throughout their lives.
Bill and Mary at the dedication of the Hope IRA in 2010