On The Cover

Charlie Bean on the Eureka waterfront in 2016. Photo by Mark McKenna

The Advocate

Remembering Charlie Bean and his tireless work to bring access and independence to all

By Thadeus Greenson

thad@northcoastjournal.com

California has lost one of its fiercest and kindest advocates.

Charles L. Bean Jr., who took a life-changing accident that left him quadriplegic as a young man and turned it into a relentless mission to make the world a more equitable, accessible place for all, using his soft, firm voice and kind smile to improve the lives of people with disabilities, died in his home the evening of July 16, with his wife, Carolyn Bean, by his side. He was 64.

“The people he was advocating for saw themselves in him and vice-versa, and that’s a really beautiful thing,” says Cindy Calderon, who worked alongside Bean and came to consider him a dear friend. “He just had this way about him. He always liked people, was always kind and liked to laugh. And he just wanted things to work.”

A Yurok Tribal member born Sept. 12, 1956, Bean grew up in the Hoopa area, getting his first job at the Hoopa grocery store at the age of 17 and graduating from Hoopa Valley High School in 1974. Shortly thereafter, he enlisted in the U.S. Army but his service was cut short in 1975 when a motorcycle accident severed his spinal cord.

But Bean would soon become determined not to let his wheelchair define him or even slow him down. Humboldt County Public Works Director Tom Mattson chuckles, recalling how decades later he would regularly find himself yelling at Bean to slow down as he zoomed through one of Old Town Eureka’s many alleyways in his motorized wheelchair, which bore a sticker on the back reading, “Does this wheelchair make my butt look big?” well beyond the posted speed limit of 15 mph.

“Man, he could make that thing fly,” Mattson says.

Shortly after the accident, Bean committed himself to his studies and received an associates degree in accounting from College of the Redwoods, which he turned into a career in finance and consulting with the United States Forest Service, as well as a 10-year stay in China, where he taught English and adopted his daughter Bien Hou. In his younger years, Bean would wheel his manual chair from his Eureka home over the Samoa Bridge and along State Route 255 to visit the bars in Arcata. In 2016, he told the Journal that the “trip back sobered you right up.” Some years later, he and his brother Kenny wheeled from Blue Lake to Willow Creek to raise awareness of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Ultimately, making sure America lived up to the promise of the act would become an all-consuming mission for Bean, one he approached with passion, wit and — most of all — kindness.

Mattson says he first met Bean shortly after being tapped to direct the public works department in 2007. The county was woefully behind in bringing its facilities, programs and services into compliance with ADA mandates — so much so it

would enter into a settlement agreement with the United States Department of Justice in 2008, pledging to make a host of required upgrades, a pledge the county has yet to fully make good on. Bean’s relationship with Public Works easily could have been a confrontational one, Mattson said, but it never was.

“Charlie was just always looking at, ‘How can we improve? How can we do better? How can I help you do better?’” Mattson says. “He was very persistent, though, saying, ‘You have to fix this.’ But then he’d ask, ‘How can I help you?’”

Mattson pauses.

“He was a staunch advocate but also a strong, willing partner,” he says.

It was that spirit of partnership that saw Bean testify in favor of county funding requests, advocate for its efforts and consult with county staff.

In February of 2013, Bean even put on a training for Public Works staff with one of his old manual wheelchairs, giving them a first-hand insight into the experiences of those with disabilities trying to navigate public facilities. According to staff, the experience pushed the county to not just meet minimum accessibility standards, but to exceed them and improve access wherever possible by minimizing slopes, planning for wider areas between obstacles and increasing visibility from all angles.

“It changed our way of looking at things,” Mattson says of the training. “He was the kind of person that could do that, take people and change the way they saw the world.”

For his part, Bean told the Journal in 2016 that so much of his work was simply about making sure those making decisions hear from the people — all of them — who will be impacted.

“People tell me all the time, ‘I made this for you,’” he said at the time of various paths and ramps designed to be ADA accessible. “And I say, ‘You did? Why didn’t you ask me what I needed? Stop looking at the chair, look at the people.”

Bean had a relentlessly persistent — even stubborn — way about him. The county’s public works building has two entries, Mattson recalls, explaining that one allows wheelchair access directly to his office while the route through the other is blocked by stairs. Bean, he said, always

wound up at the bottom of those stairs when he’d come to visit Mattson and would call out for the director’s attention. After several visits, Mattson says he asked Bean why he always chose that route into the building when he knew there was another. “He said, ‘Because when I get to the stairs, I can yell at you and you come,’” Mattson recalls with a laugh, quickly adding that it was Bean’s way of constantly reminding Mattson of the barriers facing those who depend on a chair for access. “He’s just the kind of guy who made this a better community to live in. He was just dedicated to what he was doing and he was always in a good mood.” While Bean’s seemingly unflappable mood is a hallmark in the memories of those who knew him well, it was born in his desire to help people and make change. In a 2016 inter-Charles L. Bean Jr. view with the Journal, Submitted Bean said he would wake up depressed in the mornings but shake it off by remembering how much work there was left to do. Calderon, who vividly remembers first meeting Bean back in 2006, when he rolled into a local transportation conference with a Pepsi in hand and “another Pepsi for later in his knapsack,” says she knew he was often struggling through a series of health issues that had plagued him since that motorcycle accident. “I watched him work so many times in pain,” she says. “He didn’t say he was in pain or show it, but I could tell. But he just had this way about him. He always liked people.” And it was the people — the clients and consumers of the various advocacy agencies he worked for over the years — that drove him, Calderon says. She adds that when she and Bean worked together in the advocacy department of Tri-County Independent Living, Bean would often zip down the hall when someone showed up with an issue. “Even though it wasn’t his job, he would oftentimes be the first one to go out to the lobby to greet a consumer,” she says. “He was just interested in people.” And that’s what ultimately made Bean special, Calderon says, as he worked his way up the California In-home Supportive Services Consumer Alliance (CICA), a

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