Carrie Dearborn

June 2013

Carrie Dearborn was a writer, comedian, and advocate on disability issues. A former computer operator specialist and downhill ski instructor, Dearborn was 27 in 1981 when she had a stroke resulting from an Arterial Venus Malformation. One of the first AVM stroke survivors, she was kept alive by machines for one month, and spent seven months voiceless. She first lived in the Boston Center for Independent Living Transitional Housing, and for most of the rest of her life lived in the community and using a power wheelchair. Dearborn had gigs doing "sit-down comedy" at neighborhood, heath care, disability, and gay and lesbian groups. She waas an advocate for people with disabilities on issues ranging from transportation access to health care issues. She served on the board of the Boston Center for Independent Living, and was an advisor for many MBTA projects. Her articles, essays and book reviews appeared in Sojourner: The Women's Forum; Equal Times; The New England Women’s Yellow Pages; Gay Community News; Lambda Book Report; Jamaica Plain Gazette; This Brain Has a Mouth; Disability Rag; as well as the Farrar, Straus and Giroux anthology, Whatever It Takes: Women on Women's Sport. She had a degree from New England College and lived in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts with her caregiver of 33 years. She was a member of the National Writers Union. Carrie passed in 2018, and is dearly missed by so many, many friends.  The Boston Globe ran a major obituary for Carrie, recognizing her activism for disability rights.