Jo Frances Heiden, Paraplegic's Art, Work Funded Philanthropy, 37

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Jo Frances Heiden, 37, a paraplegic artist who sold gift cards through
her business, J.F. Originals, and used the proceeds for myriad
philanthropic efforts, died of cardiac arrest and respiratory failure
March 25, 2002, at her home in Arlington, Virginia. Long before the
accident that paralyzed Ms. Heiden from the shoulders down, her career
ambition was to combine art and business. She was a University of
Virginia sophomore, when on a hot summer day in 1984, she fell three
stories from the balcony of her apartment while sunbathing. She and
her friends had removed the balcony's protective barrier to get the
full impact of the sun. Dizzy after standing up quickly, she fell. She
endured a year-long, intensive regimen for head-and-neck
rehabilitation, determined to return to school and complete her
degree. Her parents tried to persuade her to stay near home after the
accident so they could care for her, but she insisted on returning to
U-Va. She received a bachelor's degree in 1987 in marketing and
management information systems. At the university, she worked closely
with administrators to make the disabilities code less rigid, and she
attempted to demonstrate that a uniform approach to improving access
did not work. For example, she helped show that bars in bathrooms to
help students maneuver needed to vary in accordance with a student's
height and flexibility. "She helped us really question a lot of our
policies," said Patricia Lampkin, the university's interim vice
president for student affairs. After graduation, Ms. Heiden was a
software engineer in McLean for a firm that became part of Attachmate
Corp. She used her triceps and muscles in her neck and shoulders to
manipulate a device that helped her type. She also designed her own
acrylic see-through device that was less noticeable but still
functional. For daily living, she wanted to be on her own. That
happened gradually. She left her parents' home, spent some time with
two high school friends and then got her own place. Hired assistants
got her up in the morning and put her in bed at night, but she took
the bus to and from work alone. Art was continually part of her life.
While in physical therapy, she persuaded her family take her to crafts
fairs throughout the commonwealth to display her paintings and
drawings. In rehabilitation, she learned to paint with a brush held in
her mouth. She sometimes joked about how that had improved her skills
because she needed greater concentration. In the mid-1990s, an
electrical stimulator that enabled her to reclaim partial use of her
left hand was surgically implanted in her chest. The device bypassed
her spinal cord and activated hand muscles. "After you break your
neck, anything where you don't have to say, 'Can you do this for me?'
is just such a major gift," she told reporters at the time. "The first
time I picked up a hamburger, I was thrilled." In the early 1990s,
some of her work went on a Kennedy Center-sponsored nationwide tour of
works by disabled artists. About that time, she started J.F.
Originals. Her greeting card company's motto was "Art that Rises Above
the Challenge." Her brother and father, both of whom worked for large
Internet firms, began promoting the cards and helping her make
business contacts. The money she earned from the cards -- she sold
more than 300,000 in recent years -- went to buy gifts for
underprivileged children in Arlington. She and her friends would spend
hours buying and wrapping gifts and then distributing them at
community centers. She also started a literacy program, "Books Are
Cool." Children would receive their first book free. With every
subsequent single-page report they turned in to Ms. Heiden, she would
sent out a new book. Ms. Heiden was born in Honolulu, to a military
family that settled in the Washington area about 1980. She was a 1982
graduate of West Springfield High School. In her youth, she did
volunteer work for such groups as Habitat for Humanity, the Christian,
home-building organization. Her brother said one of her regrets about
the accident was her inability to continue such demanding physical
labor. Ms. Heiden spent much effort day-trading and had a startlingly
effective gift for picking stocks that earned her a healthy profit.
She used her money to assist friends. One of her home aides, who was
from war-torn Sierra Leone, wanted to bring four family members to the
United States. Ms. Heiden paid for their travel, an act no one in her
family knew about until recent days.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/metro/obituaries/A33886-2002Mar28.html