The Abilities Story

When Henry Viscardi, Jr. started a work center called Abilities, Inc., in 1952, it was with the proviso that only the disabled would be employed at any level. Furthermore, no charity would beasked, beyond the basic right to work and to compete. Everyone agreed that it was an inspiring human venture. There were no guidelines to teII this handful of pioneers how to get a foothold in business. And when the Center succeeded, its reputation spread across the nation and the world. Everyone agreed that this was a great triumph of the human spirit.Yet behind the triumphant picture is another side, equally stirring, told now in THE ABILITIES STORY. This is the economic struggle, the day-to-day battle to exist, to get work into the shop,to stay in operation, to meet the bills and payments on loans from the bank. Few on the outside understood that business didn't come in because people were sorry, that performancedidn't just happen because legless and armless people were dedicated and sincere and hardworking. Few understood the grim battle and the true victory in terms of crises and near economic disasters. THE ABILITIES STORY is essentially not about disabled people at all, but about a struggle of disabled people in a successful endeavor to support themselves through work. No industrial complex was ever like Abilities; none ever had to meet so many varied challenges and stay in business. None has done it with such determination, in the face of so many unexpected obstacles. None has emerged, in its own way, more triumphantly. This is a book to be read not in pity, but in pride-not merely in what the disabled of Abilities, Inc. have achieved, but in thehighest meaning of a free enterprise system that has made this story possible.