Dearborn Commission on Disability Concerns

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Kim Bretton Hetrick. Life is a daily challenge for all people.~ I am determined to meet the test, learn from it, and take what positive lessons that I can.~ Opportunities to create, achieve, and work with others, help me grow and become a more interesting, more effective human being.

After working in administrative and training positions in the automotive and other industries, and as a chef & restaurateur, I was seriously injured in a motor vehicle accident.~ Learning to deal with the chronic pain and physical disability was incredibly difficult, but it is a challenge that is a normal part of living.

Learning to deal with the economic miserliness and inhumanity of an insurance company that viewed me as a drain on the economy was far more difficult, because reducing a human being to a cipher is, literally, adding insult to injury.~ It is not a normal part of living, but a sad example of cruelty and short-sightedness.

Determined to stay out of a nursing home, I enrolled in college, and renewed my teaching certificate.~ I taught, for most of the next twenty years, at a prestigious private school in the Detroit area.~ I was appointed head Librarian, in an effort to enable me to continue working, but had to retire on disability in 2001.

The Dearborn Commission on Disability Concerns has made it possible to put my knowledge and skills to work for the benefit of my community, and for other people with disabilities.~ It's a hard working Commission that, with the help of other concerned citizens and our city government, gets things done.~ I am proud to have been part of this worthy effort, and hope that the commission continues working, for many years to come.