In that column, “French court decision sparks outrage,” I talked about a French appeals court giving children the right to sue their mothers' doctors for allowing them to be born. The rule applies to children with Down syndrome, sickle cell, cystic fibrosis, spina bifida or other conditions from birth that might have been detected by ultrasound. French gynecologists stopped performing ultrasounds because of the ruling.

        Mr. Gugel, 41, sent me an e-mail. His subject line read: “WE ARE AS GOOD!!!” I singled it out immediately among a few dozen more routine messages.

        “I don't know what kind of doctors they have in France,” he wrote, “but don't they take the same oath that other doctors take here? I also don't know where people get off saying that children that aren't what they call "normal' don't have the right to live.”

        The eighth of nine children to grow up in the family's Price Hill home, Mr. Gugel, now 41, was the only one born with cerebral palsy. He went to Condon School, crawled up and down the steps in his family's two-story home, and was proud to graduate from Western Hills High School as his nondisabled brothers and sisters had done.

        When he was in his 20s, his mother told him that relatives had given her a hard time about having a child with a disability. They tried to tell her she must have done something wrong.

        “I told my mom I didn't blame her for my disability,” he told me on the phone. “The way I figure it, you are who you are. God made me the way I am, not my mother, and I figure He put me on this planet to let other people with disabilities know we can still live full lives.”

        When his mother died 10 years ago, Mr. Gugel was unable to continue living in the home where he had lived for 31 years. With the help of other people with disabilities, he learned to live independently. Since 1995, he has lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Westwood with his wife, Kathy, who also has a disability. The fifth-floor apartment isn't accessible, but as he puts it, he “manages.” He uses his power wheelchair when he goes out, and maneuvers by crawling or employing arm strength to pull himself up to do what he needs to do while at home.

        An avid sports fan, Mr. Gugel attends most of the Reds and Bengals games, and volunteers with Independent Living Options and as an Everybody Counts follow-up speaker in area elementary schools. In early September, he received his first computer and is rapidly becoming addicted to the Internet and e-mail.

        Highlights of his newfound joy of Web surfing are some indication of how Tom Gugel feels about his own life.

        “I found a site where you could send a holiday greeting to the Armed Forces,” he says, and a piece of candy to a firefighter, and cans of food to needy individuals in New York and Washington, D.C.

        Tom Gugel is just an ordinary guy, managing as best he can, who happens to have cerebral palsy and use a wheelchair.

        “Sure,” he says, “when I was a kid and my sisters had to push me around the neighborhood in a manual wheelchair. I wished sometimes I could walk. But I never, never, wished I hadn't been born.”

        His mother never wished it either. He considers himself blessed to have had parents who valued him, disability and all.

        “When,” he asks, “will the rest of the world figure out that we can be just as productive as they are?”

        Or, put another way: “WE ARE AS GOOD!!!”
        Contact Deborah Kendrick by phone: 673-4474; fax: 321-6430; e-mail: dkkendrick@earthlink.net.

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