VOICES OF OUR REGION
Suzanne Miazga
Transcript
My name is Suzzane Miazga. I live in the South Hills of Pittsburgh and my family’s always lived in the South Hills and stuff. About four years ago I got married.
To someone who was originally from Erie, PA. So he moved to Pittsburgh for a job…to find a job, and me.
we live in Brookline now.
Initially we went to school together. Or he had graduated from Edinboro University about a year or two before I even went there. But he, being originally from Erie, knew a lot of friends that went to Edinboro. So he hung around campus a lot. So I kinda knew him. He didn’t really know me. But I kind of kept my eye on him. he had long hair and wasn’t very clean-cut in college and stuff. So I like then years later I saw him. We did a presentation together near Station Square for people with disabilities. And he had cleaned up his act and stuff. And got a job and got a house, you know. And then we had to spend several hours on the Access van riding to and from work together because we lived in the same neighborhood. So Access was kind of a driving force in our relationship. It kind of forced us to find something to talk about so.
Interviewers: So you work here now at UCP?
I’ve been here for 12 years now. I’m a rehab specialist. We teach adults with physical or developmental disabilities, like life skills.
Yes
Interviewers: And you’ve always used a wheelchair?
I can…I’ve used crutches off and on for various things but to really… I’m only around like on a daily basis I use a chair because using crutches is not feasible everywhere and…it’s just not a good thing everywhere so.
I know that when I was born I was premature. So at first I think people were just afraid that I wasn’t going to survive. And then like the only things I really know is that my parents after that, after they knew that I was going to be okay, they didn’t really know that anything was wrong up until like I was about a year and a half old before I was diagnosed with anything.
I started out at a special school for like the first 16 or so years of my education and then about that time or little bit before that, I had told my parents, I’m like, ‘Something’s wrong with this picture,’ I’m not learning what my cousins and people like that were learning. And I knew that so I’m like, ‘Something just has to change,’ because there’s…you know I have to be able to function in a world and I can’t function if they’re not teaching me stuff. So I fought like with an advocate from the educational system to get out of my special school.
Pioneer Education Center.
it wasn’t really too hard but I remember like it was a big thing because we had to have a meeting with like the head of the school board, and my principal, and other stuff and… to say why I thought it was a good idea to leave or whatever. Well, and I guess my biggest argument was that if…like I needed to be given a change to…to like academically succeed and stuff.
I mean I said if I fail I’ll come back. And then I never had to go back.
I went from Pioneer to Brashear High School. So I went from kindergarten to like college in like one fell swoop. And they were really nice about making accommodations whenever they needed to as far as, you know, making you fit it and stuff like that. like they were very nice about doing what I needed and stuff. I met like lots of good friends and good people but as you can imagine I met some really not so nice people either so.
I mean but the good friends and my good teachers and stuff they, you know, made it worth it and stuff. And they would help me deal with the other people. Like on principal, at the time I had a really good relationship with them and he said to me, ‘Suzzane, you have to do what you have to do in order to like get people to stop bothering you,’ when they’re, you know crash over in the line or whatever. Because he knew that if he stepped in for me that it would just get worse.
Call us if you need us but otherwise we’ll leave you alone to your own devices and, you know, they’ll get to know who you are. One person that wasn’t very nice sometimes like, she threatened to like cut my hair. And or like people would say, you know, that they wanted to throw me down the steps or whatever. I mean nobody ever did anything… they would just say things like that in order to scare me I guess.
When I finally got to Brashear it was hard but I mean there were aspects of it that were extremely hard like I didn’t see anything like algebra at Pioneer. And I didn’t see like certain subjects. So to tell my teachers I actually didn’t know this because I had never saw it before. They were like, ‘Yeah. Uh huh.’ Okay. So we hear this from every kid in, you know, America and then they got know me and, you know, they could see that like once I could learn something that I did have the ability to retain or something.…So they became my advocates really, really fast and they would do their best to try to help me
Then I just went from high school to community college on the North Side because I knew that I wanted to go to school, but I didn’t want to go away from home right away. Then I was kinda confident enough to say I want to go to Edinboro and try away from home and have fun with it. I like transferred as a junior because I wouldn’t transfer in until they took every one of my credits.
So then it took me about two and a half years to get through to the last two years. Because before that when I went to CCAC it took me from ’87 till ’91. But I had taken some time off of school and…to travel and stuff like that. Because I was a member of Paralympics teams…
…for a couple of years. So I got a chance to travel the world and…see a couple different places. Well, I went to…In 1988 I went to Seoul Korea. And in ’92 I went to Barcelona Spain so it was really nice. And in between there we would go to like national competitions somewhere in the U.S. then on off years of the actual Paralympics games we would go to what they call world games which were somewhere other than a Paralympics city but they were still like out of the country. And there I got to go to London and we traveled to Germany.
I got a chance to swim at the ’92 Paralympics games but by the time the ’92 games came around they were doing this thing with the classification of like athletes with disabilities where they would put people certain types of disabilities in the same category. like let’s say they would put me in the same like heat as someone that was an amputee.
They wanted to do it more like…like well you’re missing a leg and…and you can’t use your leg. So we’ll put you together with you and they thought somehow this was a good thing. And it wasn’t always a really good thing. But it…we had to go through it and do it in order to kind of show them how…how unfair it was and for them to say, ‘Well, yeah it wasn’t that bad,’ or you know, ‘That’s the way it’s going to be because that’s going to save us money because but we kind of took it as that was their way of kind of pushing people with CP out or with more significant disabilities out because they wanted people that were…that looked better on TV.
Or like people that could get themselves in and out of the pool or people that didn’t need like so much assistance They never said all that but we just kind of interpreted that
Interviewer: What was the toughest thing about traveling to the games?
Accessibility. That’s the whole thing was just…It was just getting places. They had a really good setup like we usually stayed like especially if it was the Paralympics facility we stayed at some place like that was the actual Olympic village kind of place. But and so that was pretty much as accessible as we were going to get. And there’s a lot of places that like, you know, in Europe and…and Asia there were like unisex bathrooms and stuff like that. And that doesn’t really work for people with disabilities too well because you trying to get your chair in places that blocks the door that you’re thinking, okay, if someone else comes in here it could not necessarily be a…
…a female. And like if a guy walks in not only am I going to be mortified but he’s probably going to be like, what the heck are you doing here?n, but we all kind of knew that ahead of time and we would make jokes about it and stuff. And people would try to take care of us as best they could and stuff but those of the things that make the stories of your travels interesting I guess…
I really, really liked the experience of going to like being at Korea but traveling there all that many hours on a plane was really, really hard for me. In the like 24 hours that I was on the plane, actually between layovers and everything else that we went there, about 24 hours. I went to the bathroom one time because I didn’t eat. I didn’t drink. I didn’t do none of that because I’m like body don’t even think about it. And then by the time I had to go I’m telling you I was so stiff and stuff that I could not move.
And so one of the coaches had to come, pick me up and like and kind of like create a hold thing like a baby, and like car…actually carry me through the aisle and stuff.
Interviewers: Okay. So what did you do when you graduated?
I looked for a job for about a year, a year and a half and then I got connected with UCP. A friend of mine had written a letter to someone at UCP saying that she knew me, we had developed a friendship and that I had been somebody that was looking for a job.
...she was working with the project at the time and she said, hey we got this letter about you. And we were wondering if you’d be interested in working with our project when the project was ending and I was afraid to like lose my job so I was kind of like how can I stay on and stuff. So they ask me if I wanted to substitute teach and so that’s how it kind of happened. Then I substituted for about a year or so. And then when a full time position became available I applied and I got the position.
Interviewers: So tell me about the people in your life that have influenced you the most.
Got to be, got to be, got to be, got to be, my parents first and foremost because they’re the people that...I mean being an only child especially I just remember them being behind me all the time saying, you know, you can do it.
And they kind of gave me the confidence to…to do things that I wanted to do and the ability, not only confidence but the ability to actually be able to do those things.
Interviewer: What are you most proud of in your life?
I guess most recently would have to be honestly this getting married in a sense that, you know, it gave me an opportunity to say like I can do things away from like the supportiveness of my family. And I can have like an independent life and stuff like that because that was…I loved Eric but that was very scary for me because I’m like I’m trusting somebody else to do this, this…
Interviewer: How did your parents feel about you getting married?
They really liked…I mean it was a lot easier because they liked Eric and stuff and they got along with him and they…I mean they said that he was a good guy that was. And we were going to be able to provide for each other in the way that we both had a job. You know, he had a house that we were going to be able to make accessible and…and, you know. We could then together have enough resources to be able to make each others lives better and stuff. And he could have support that maybe at one time he didn’t have either because a lot of his family is still in Erie.
So it wasn’t real easy for him to ask for help or even have help if he needed help. So for me to be there to say, you know, now if you need help with something or whatever, like I’ll be there for you. It was really good. And like now he kind of says, like there was one thing he really wanted to do like when he moved on his own was figuring out how to crack an egg. So, he said, you’re like the most expensive egg cracker I ever got. But it’s all because I can do that now and so things that were difficult for him before I can do, and things that I can’t do he can do. So it’s nice because we compliment each other very well instead of having to have like double attendant care and stuff like that, usually we can help each other through a lot of situations.
We go out a lot. We have fun.
Eric cooks for me. his mother taught him how to cook and make Polish things and so it’s really good. And then I can help him like clean up and stuff like that so.
Interviewers: What’s been the biggest challenge in your life?
I guess sometimes the one thing that kind of bothers me the most I guess is sometimes people’s attitude. Like when I want to be positive or I want to try something and people are like, nah you can’t do that.
that annoys me but I mean challenge, I don’t know. I’m just going to go through life thinking well I know what kinds of things I can’t do so it doesn’t really bother me too much. I just kind of do what I have to do.