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aI The Salt Lake Tribune NATION _ Driven toExcel _ i Fromprevious page Those who know him saythat without it, he probably wouldn’t have survived. Sometimes, Rinaldi finds himself lying naked in a hotel, staring at the ceiling as his attendants fuss, turning him, cleaning him, preparing him for the day. Why, he fumessilently, must my bodybe the only one exposed in all its ugliness? Why shouldn’t they be naked,too? It’s taken a long, long time for Rinaldi to accept that his most in- timate -bodily functions must be atuended to by otherpeople. But, he says,it’s worse for peo- ple who becomeparalyzed later in life. Worse to have appetites whet- ted and thensnatched away. When Rinaldi counsels those people, he tells them whathis father and grandfather told him: aont put your mind in a wheel*, too.” Hey i to succeed”at ae school, been chairman of his graduatmca had _even received a aS call from Richard Nixon af. ter writing to the president about Vietnam. Campaigning with a group of enthusiastic students who plastered his posters around town and wheeled him to functions, Rinaldi ousted the incumbenttax collector by 200 votes. The local papercalled it the “greatest political upset in Lackawanna County in over a decade.” Billy Boy was thrilled. And petrified. It was‘one thingto sit at the head ofa classroom,in control, teacl government and literature. It was quite another to be accountable to voters who mightsee only his disability, might question his ability to do the job. “People have always been jealousofBilly,” says his cousin, Annie Brokus. “They think, ‘Wow. Whata greatlife he’s got — this guy has it all. And heis always so brilliant at everything he turns to.” He ran muscular dystrophy telethons. He helped organize Scranton’s first film festival. He wrote a weekly newspaper column, Rinaldi was 32 thefirst time he ranforoffice, a schoolteacherin a wheelchair with an enormous ego and idealistic views about changing the world,or at least his por- short stories, plays that were pertion of it: Dunmore, a town of formed by local theater groups. He 15,000,three miles from Scranton. . worked to promote the Americans He would take on the party maWith Disabilities Act, once bouncchine. He would show his students ing uncomfortably in an antehow democracy works, He would chamber of an Amtrak train from show them that even a disabled Scranton to Washington, just to person could win ifhe worked hard prove to railroadofficials how inenough. accessible their trains were. Rinaldi. had already proved He mastered the computer, ushimself a master at grabbing ating the minuscule amount of tention: He had been voted “most movementin hisforefinger to drag HARDWOODAN pencil across the keyboard, using ‘voice-activation to TheInteratpero decsrcalnd legs,” he said. “It allowed me to explore places I could only dream of” But there were some thi: Billy Boy couldn’t explore, not even in his own mind. “Franklin Delano Roosevelt said people in wheelchairs must reconcile themselves to their isolationor suffer additional misery,” Rinaldi once: wrote. “But he had EleanorandI had noone.” Andthen along came Mary. Ferrario remembers the boy in the wheelchair whosat at the top of the church.Thefirst altar boy in the world in a wheelchair, her mother whispered, and he wasn’t supposed tolive. Twenty years later, Mary met Rinaldi at a fundraiser in Dunmore. The boy who wasn’t sup- Sunday, December3, 2000 oe a the news on election it, Shebought a red rose and to his house- In the midstof— the hoopla, she leaned over his chair and they kissed. “From that moment, I never saw his wheelchair,” she said. “I just saw this woncerful, courageous, interesting man who had such a huge heart and such an apRinaldiwas terrified. “T had spent myentire life pretending to everyone but my parents thatI was physically more capable than I was,” Rinaldi said. “I didn’t want to reveal my true dependencyto anyone,especially not to a woman, who, no matter how beautiful, no matter how wonderful, wanted to share every last bit of space, including the only place where I ever had any privacy, my ownbed.” So, although he wrote her endless love poems, it was a long time And it ws 13 years before he agreed to marryher. Mary was captivated. And when Mary pushes her husband’s before hesaid,“I love you.” SCOOTERS! Dum no oeacrng has arrived for work. Mary and several attendants have spent four petite forlife.” posed to live had done a lot of things he wasn’t supposed to do: graduated from college, become a teacher,written plays. $49.99 wheelchair down the corridors-of the: courthouse and into his first- at | poor he feels ice-cold much of the time. For two months in winter, he runs his office from Punta Gorda, Fla. His doctors say that simply catching a cold could kill him. Rinaldi has been the clerk ofjudicial records for 19 years. His office oversees all documents relating to thecivil and criminal divisions of the Lackawanna County Court. The criminal division, up a narrowflight of steps on the third floor, is practically inaccessible to him.Rinaldi has beenlifted there only three times. But heis sensitive to charges thathe isn’t up to the $55,000-a-year sheets “like a load from a cargo ship”he says. Or a monster. Mary hushes him impatiently. 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