Courage, Inc.

"Why should I bother with my body," said Martin, a cerebral palsy victim and a brilliant student, "when it is so much easier to work with my mind?" Ellen, another patient, had a slight limp caused by a spinal injury at the age of two. It did not prevent her walking indoors, but she insisted: "I just can't cross the street." And Mr. Juskalian, a paraplegic, kept the hospital in an uproar by being disagreeable to everybody.

All these people, in varying degrees, were physically handicapped. But their worst trouble did not lie in their weakened or useless muscles. They had crutches in their minds. Ridding the physically handicapped of their mental crutches is the job of an organization that has already changed the lives and attitudes of Martin, Ellen and Mr. Juskalian. Its name: Courage, Inc.

Courage, Inc. was started by Dr. Camille Kereszturi Cayley, a Hungarian-born pediatrician who led an active life until, in 1952, she fell twelve feet from a porch while sawing a tree branch. In a few seconds she became paralyzed from the neck down. While learning to live with her disability at Manhattan's famed Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, she made some professional observations about other handicapped patients. Her conclusion: without help and encouragement, many would go home and just give up. She got together several patients, founded Courage, Inc. on the same principle as Alcoholics Anonymous: people can best be helped by others with the same problem.

The organization's 250 handicapped members--ranging from college professors to mechanics--take over where the professional staff leaves off, drawing patients into their social life, helping each other overcome mental blocks, trying to find jobs and work out transportation problems. Although most Courage members live in the New York City area, several other cities have already asked to set up chapters. Courage's President Philip Guba, 35, a corporation lawyer who caught polio in Indonesia 2 1/2years ago, is currently working with Courage's 21 directors to broaden the organization. Their goal: a nationwide Courage, Inc. As for Founder Cayley, she has become a practicing psychiatrist, although still confined to a wheelchair, and at 53 is busier than ever. She now drives her own car, leads an active social life. Once the women's long-distance swimming champion of Hungary, she can still swim a three-quarter-mile-wide lake. Says she: "It's not the degree of disability that counts, but the person's attitude."

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