Remembering Terri O’Hare
STEG plaintiff Terri O’Hare passed away on August 14, 2023. Below is a letter that STEG Co-Founder Katrina Sanchez shared with the STEG Google Group on March 17, 2024.
Dear “Save the Elena Gallegos” community,
One of our plaintiffs in our lawsuit passed away last August and was profiled today in the Albuquerque Journal, and I'd like to please take a moment to honor her:
Terri O'Hare was a wheelchair user with adult-onset muscular atrophy and a prominent disability activist in Albuquerque. She moved here in 2009 and injected our local political scene with a much-needed dose of vigor and passion for disability issues, and quickly became a regular speaker at City Council meetings and a regular adviser on City development projects. She was highly intelligent and had a really strong, fierce personality -- more than one friend described her to me as a "tough cookie" -- so she certainly ruffled feathers along the way! But her fierceness also made her effective and allowed her to leave behind a tangible legacy.
Terri created Albuquerque's ADA Advisory Council in 2016 and dedicated many years of her life to ensuring that more public spaces in Albuquerque and more public and civic events were accessible to ALL Burqueños, including persons with mobility issues and wheelchair users, persons with visual or hearing impairments, and persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder; you can read through the ADAAC's archived minutes to see the many dozens of small projects that she was involved with over the years. According to her nephew, she also served as a plaintiff in more than twenty lawsuits related to ADA violations. When I first met her, she sent me this link, of an interview she did with PBS, to introduce herself:
https://www.newmexicopbs.org/productions/newmexicoinfocus/ada-advocate-terri-ohare/
She loved nature and found healing and joy in wilderness, and perhaps her greatest passion was fighting to increase accessibility to Albuquerque's beautiful open spaces. Her seminal accomplishment was working with Mayor Berry in 2014 and 2015 to create the crusher-fine accessible Paseo del Bosque Trail that runs alongside the Rio Grande. The significance of this accomplishment cannot be overstated; it opened up the Bosque and Rio Grande for whole populations in Albuquerque, who until then had had no way to visit. In this video about the trail, she's interviewed at the 3:30 and 9:00 minute marks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZhX-xXlB4w
Terri also especially loved the wheelchair-accessible Cottonwood Springs Trail in the Elena Gallegos Open Space. Her personal Facebook page was filled with dozens and dozens of photos that she took on her regular visits to that trail. When Viki Teahan and I posted the official “Save the Elena Gallegos” petition on October 8, 2022, Terri was one of the very first signers and left this comment on the petition wall:
Viki and I were able to get in contact with her and were grateful when she readily agreed to serve as a plaintiff in STEG's lawsuit, even though she was facing a recurrence of tonsil cancer. She endured a painful tonsillectomy / throat surgery in March 2023 but still managed to write an incredible statement for the judge and a scathing letter to Mayor Keller, both of which I've copied and pasted below.
When we won the lawsuit on June 26, Terri was not feeling well enough to attend our celebration, and unfortunately she passed away in August due to complications from her surgery. Even though I crossed paths with her only in the last year of her life, she deeply impacted me. She really showed me that if I want something to change in this city, I need to be the one to do it, because no one else is going to; but that fortunately the world is small enough that one committed, relentless person absolutely can make a difference.
Another friend described Terri to me this way:
"Terri was incredible, probably the most spirited fighter I've ever met. New Mexicans tend to be sort of passive in the face of oppression, so sometimes it's beneficial for transplants like Terri to come and show us how to shake up the status quo. Tremendous strength is required just to navigate the world while carrying disability. The fact that Terri could also volunteer in accountability work is a testament to her tremendous reserves."
I will always remember her passion, creativity, brilliance, and darkly funny sense of humor, which sometimes shocked me even as she made me laugh. Next time you hike the Paseo del Bosque Trail or the Cottonwood Springs Trail, please take a moment to remember Terri and thank her for everything she did to create and protect those beautiful spaces.
Terri on the Bosque Accessible Trail she helped create
Terri’s photos of the Cottonwood Springs Trail
Terri's Plaintiff Statement for STEG's Lawsuit
I use a manual wheelchair full time and asked the city's former Open Space director Matt Schmader if there were any accessible trails across the city from the bosque trail, near the mountains. He mentioned the Cottonwood Springs trail in EGOS, in the Kiwana's section of the open space with a paved trail the city created years earlier.
When I visited that trail I couldn't believe my eyes. It was right in the foothills, and rose about 60 feet gently upwards, through gorgeous scenery I'd never experienced so close up. The trail includes a pavilion with latilla beams and seating, and at the end, a duck blind for viewing wildlife. I rolled this trail as the sun was becoming golden on the west mesa, and I was thrilled at the close up mountain views. The only other trail with this feeling and natural significance is the accessible bosque trail north of Central Avenue near the Bio Park that continues north about a mile and a half. I use both trails as my time and strength allow.
I was involved in city advocacy efforts to get the accessible bosque trail approved and past the local Sierra Club that had organized their vocal members against it. These two trails are the only accessible trails for wheelchair users, blind folks, folks with stability and mobility issues and other disabilities that prevent them from using narrow, unstable trails in natural spaces.
The EGOS trail is only one significant reason I am involved in advocacy to keep this beautiful space as it is. When I don't have time or the strength to unload my wheelchair and roll the trail, I often sit in my vehicle near the south side trailheads and roll down my windows and simply look around. I watch the light change on the mountains, watch birds and critters dart in and out of the pinions, I feel the total quiet, and I settle myself.
If a visitor center is built it will negatively impact this peaceful setting. It will increase parking issues, including accessible parking availability. The construction will impact the rare quiet of this open space and the creatures that live there. A 'visitor center' will fill EGOS with more people crowding the mountain trails and the accessible trail. If people in the community want to experience EGOS, they can come use it as it is, they do not need an 'education center'.
Terri's Letter to Mayor Keller
Dear Mayor Keller,
I want to add my voice to others who have expressed opposition, (No) to the potential development in the Elena Gallegos Open Space.
Parks and Rec seems to not understand there is an existing deed that limits this kind of construction in the former land grant/donated land to the city. No structures of any kind matching this 'education building' description are allowed. I am sure other advocates have made this very clear.
I want to make something else clear. The city has only two, (2) ADA accessible trails in the city, in natural, undeveloped surroundings. They are the bosque trail that is crusher-fine surfaced, and the paved, winding foothills trail in the Elena Gallegos Open Space. These trails are far different from a flat, paved running track at a high school which could also be considered 'ADA compliant'.
I am attaching images I've taken of the trails that now are accessible to folks like me who use a wheelchair. These could be an elderly person who slow-walks and needs stable footing, a stroller for kids, or folks who have any other number of conditions that make accessing real nature next to impossible. These two trails are all we have in the city environs that put us within feet or inches of undeveloped, beautiful surroundings for recreation. Our chair wheels (or feet) don't get stuck in sand, in pits from horses or bikers or rocks, because the trail surfaces and widths allow safe use of the trails.
If Parks and Wreck gets their way, one of the trails, the Cottonwood Springs trail in the north section of the Elena Gallegos Open Space, will be negatively impacted. The site construction would close access for parking near the trail, and make the trail unuseable. After this proposed construction is done, the impacts on the trail use will be negative with clogged trail use, clogged parking access and in general, too many users who don't really need an accessible trail will make a negative experience for those who do need it.
The proposed development plan would ruin this trail, and what it offers users with disabilities: rare, beautiful and inspiring access to the natural beauty of our city and surrounding geography. Critters scamper a few feet from us as we roll past. Birds fly overhead, the tram dangles magically, the light shifts on the mountains, the city below becomes almost pretty. The trail offers great cardiovascular exercise for us, too. It rises about 60 feet from start to finish, and gives users a mild workout among a gorgeous setting.
The entire Elena Gallegos Open Space deserves preservation and protection, from the trail heads, to the arroyos, to the Cottonwood Springs accessible trail, to the minimal infrastructure. It needs to be left alone, as is.
Please do NOT allow the city to move forward with any plans for development at Elena Gallegos Open Space.
Sincerely,
Terri O’Hare
Trail user, disability advocate