by Claire Martin, Denver Post
Feb. 6, 2005
Tobi Hale, who died Jan. 24 at age 55, lived a life that an edgier Horatio Alger might have written, overcoming abuse and addiction to become a respected activist and possibly the first 40-something wheelchair-using, legally blind, openly lesbian university homecoming queen.
Born Anne Marie Kunkel in Marshalltown, Iowa, she left town shortly after graduating from Le Grand High School. She trained as a medical technician in Minnesota and married Nathan Hale.
The job, and the drug-tolerant 1970s, encouraged her to try cocaine, methamphetamine and various street drugs that held her in thrall for nearly 20 years. Her addiction left her increasingly isolated as she withdrew from her friends, her family and her treasured cats.
She focused her life on getting high, looking for the next usable vein as soon as she withdrew the needle from her first hit. Over time, she ruined most of her veins. After several unsuccessful attempts to get clean, she decided that the pain from withdrawal was preferable to the agony of finding a hit.
In 1983, she got a divorce and checked into Denver's Aquarius Center rehabilitation clinic, emerging drug-free that October. Three months later she enrolled at Metropolitan State College of Denver.
She spent seven years earning her bachelor's degree.
When she graduated in 1991, Hale won several awards, including the prestigious MSC President's Award in recognition of her academic achievement and community service. Hale's grade-point average was just shy of 4.0.
She devoted hundreds of hours to feminist activism. She spoke freely about her years as a junkie and about the years when she was an incest victim.
"She talked about being in a stoned stupor, how she never would have imagined being in college and active in the community and living as healthily as she was," said Katherine Lineberger, a fellow Metro State student and close friend. "We used to joke that if adversity builds character, then we were the biggest characters in the world."
She went on to earn a master's degree from Highlands University in Las Vegas, N.M. By then, chronic rheumatoid arthritis forced her to use a wheelchair. As a lark, she decided to run for homecoming queen.
She was 44, openly lesbian and legally blind, with short, graying hair and enormous glasses. She campaigned as "the oldest, fattest, shortest candidate."
For the requisite pageant dance competition, Hale spun her wheelchair around the stage as others danced around her. For the talent portion, she came up with a comedy routine that included what she called "precision wheelchair driving" as a recording of Patsy Cline's "Stop the World" played.
The approving smiles from university administrators turned frosty a year later.
Hale and another disabled student blocked the campus cafeteria doors with their wheelchairs, protesting the cafeteria's failure to comply with handicapped-access laws. Hale and Daniel Benavidez held signs reading "If we can't eat, neither can you," preventing caterers from delivering lunch to a nearby regents' meeting.
"We are not going to be good little crips ... when the whole thing is about civil rights, not doing us favors," Hale told the Albuquerque Journal.
Upon receiving her master's degree, Hale continued her confrontational activism. She became president of the Colorado chapter of the National Organization for Women. She worked on coalitions advocating accessible, affordable health care, seniors' rights, women's rights, environmental causes and other issues.
"She had a wonderful time of doing things that usually you don't think of people in wheelchairs doing," said her longtime partner, Beverly Todd.
Hale rafted down rivers in remote canyons. She snorkeled on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. She went camping with a group that arranged backcountry trips for people with disabilities, stashing her wheelchair with a portable ramp on a packhorse.
When Hale and Todd met author Nevada Barr at a Rocky Mountain National Park lecture a while ago, Hale described her backcountry camping trips. She urged Barr to include a disabled character in her next book, "Hard Truth," which is set in the park.
"I sort of said, 'Yeah, sure, good idea,' the way one does with ideas one has no use for," Barr recalled. "But the idea took root, and the book is partially from the point of view of a paraplegic woman."
Hale continued her activism until she was hospitalized last month and became too frail to speak much. She never forgot her homecoming title. Sometimes she wore her tiara to poker games and parties.
Besides Todd, who lives in Estes Park, survivors include Hale's parents, Ruth and Ray Kunkel of Le Grand, Iowa; and brother Paul Kunkel of Moville, Iowa.
Her family suggests memorial donations to the Diane Price- Fish Cancer Foundation, the Hospice of Estes Park, handicapped-accessible transportation programs or the Tobi Hale Memorial Bench at the Estes Valley Dog Park.
Published by
Denver Post
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