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ME, TOO: Reichenthal helped
improve campus accessibility.
Courtesy Jeffrey Reichenthal |
there wasn’t much
that Jonathan Reichenthal let stand in his way, especially
if it came to watching his favorite football team. A
devoted Cardinal fan since early childhood, he went
to every home football and men’s basketball game
while he attended Stanford. When he discovered there
were no wheelchair platforms in Stanford Stadium’s
student section, he and his friends immediately went
to the Diversity and Access Office with a special request.
Jonathan ended up exactly where he wanted, with his
friends from the Band and Axe Committee—on the
field.
A tireless advocate for improving access for the physically
challenged, Reichenthal died September 26 in Palo Alto
of acute respiratory failure. He was 23.
Born with muscular dystrophy and confined to a wheelchair
from the age of 10, he graduated from Gunn High School
in Palo Alto, where he was a network administrator and
NASA intern. Choosing Stanford was “kind of a
no-brainer” for him, says Reichenthal’s
mother, Irene McGhee. “He’d loved Stanford
all his life.”
Reichenthal often felt people in wheelchairs were assumed
to be intellectually deficient, and he made a point
of speaking up in class as soon as possible, says McGhee,
“so the teacher would know he was smart.”
Unable to take notes, “he had to remember lectures,
work out physics problems in his head, things like that.”
At Stanford, he reveled in dorm life, tutored other
students and interned for Xerox. He was treasurer of
the Axe Committee, his most cherished affiliation. And
he left a lasting imprint on campus as a result of his
work with Rosa González, director of the Diversity
and Access Office, who says Reichenthal became her personal
consultant. He came into González’s office
“nearly every other day” for four years
with an access-improvement suggestion. He and González
toured the campus before scheduled renovations, finding
spots where a wheelchair ramp could be installed or
a curb cut. His recommendations were instrumental in
the addition of elevators in the Kimball and Branner
residence halls, a redesign of the gated entrance to
the Dish, and numerous other campus modifications. Says
González: “There isn’t anywhere on
this campus that I don’t think of him. He had
a big impact.”
After graduating, Reichenthal designed websites and
continued to work with González, using technology
like voice recognition software to evaluate the accessibility
of campus websites.
Reichenthal loved gardening and cooking, wanted to
eat every ethnic cuisine possible and had the ability
to live completely in the moment, says his father, Jeffrey.
“He wanted people to recognize him as being a
complete person who enjoyed his life.”
At an October memorial service on campus, the Band
arrived to salute the loyal Axe Committee member. Besides
the fulfillment of his one demand (an annual party in
his honor with hats, sushi and poetry—especially
haiku) it was a sight Reichenthal would have enjoyed
most of all. “From beginning to end, he was a
real Stanford man,” says McGhee.
In addition to his parents, Reichenthal is survived
by his sister, Alison, ’04, and his brother, Will. |
