Word: thompson
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Minnesota courts. Five years ago, a drunk driver crashed into Sharon's car, killing her niece and leaving Sharon brain damaged and in a coma. She regained consciousness some weeks later, but could not speak and could move only her right hand. With the help of her roommate, Karen Thompson, an associate professor of physical education at St. Cloud State University, Sharon, then & 27, struggled to learn to sip from a glass, comb her hair, communicate with a typewriter. "We learned to play again, to laugh again," Thompson recalls...
...been lovers before the accident, the Kowalskis forbade her to visit anymore and eventually moved their daughter to a nursing home 180 miles away. In 1985, after a yearlong legal battle over custody and visitation rights, the court awarded Sharon's father full guardianship. The Kowalskis' lawyer maintains that Thompson's visits left Sharon depressed. Moreover, he argues that Sharon has the mind of a six-year- old and cannot express her wishes reliably. Thompson denies these claims and points to Sharon's typewritten responses to a neutral questioner indicating her desire to return to St. Cloud and have Karen...
Last week disabled- and gay-rights advocates in 21 cities held rallies demanding that the courts "Free Sharon Kowalski." In Minneapolis demonstrators wore buttons proclaiming BRING SHARON HOME. Thompson's supporters argue that as an adult, even a severely handicapped one, Sharon should be free to control her own destiny. "We are asked to let you rest in peace, Sharon," declared Disabled Rights Activist Jaime Becker at the Minneapolis rally, "but you are not dead. You are alive! And next year you will be free...
...rights activists compared the case with that of the lover of an AIDS patient who finds himself ignored or reviled by the victim's family. Thompson says she thinks the Kowalskis "would rather see their daughter a vegetable than a lesbian." Thompson recalls that Sharon once told her that homosexuality was practically a "hanging offense" on the Iron Range...
Administration: Suzanne Davis, Susan Lynd, Clementina Allured, Melissa August, Sharon Boger, Donald N. Collins, Joan A. Connelly, Eileen Harkin, Susanna M. Schrobsdorff News Desks: Brian Doyle, Waits L. May III, Jacalyn McConnell, John F. McDonald, David Richardson, Pamela H. Thompson, Diana Tollerson, Joanne Waugh, Ann Drury Wellford, Jean R. White, Mary Wormley...