Always challenged, never bored

Peggy Schneider leaving post at ILS after 30 years

By Fred Petrucelli

A shack at 1619 Independence St., under the sustained and mercurial handling of Peggy Schneider, has developed into a place of emancipation for a special segment of the population.

For 30 years, Mrs. Schneider's spirit of inquiry, self-searching and openness brought hope and achievement to people with disabilities in an organization known as Independent Living Services Inc.

The design of the nonprofit entity, under her leadership, has been significantly successful and has achieved a unique place among such programs.

At her retirement, scheduled for Nov. 1, she is being recognized as a director who demonstrated a spirit of intelligent inspiration of a broad nature. ILS was laboriously and carefully crafted with attention to design, dedication and the love of cause.

Hundreds of people with developmental disabilities are now able to live independently in the community, thanks to Mrs. Schneider's ideas that not only promised good and meaningful values but produced a climate of expectation.

"It's been a wonderful career," she said recently while delving into the past, a time when people with developmental disabilities, such as mental retardation, cerebral palsy, autism and related conditions, had only the options of living with family or being placed in an institution.

Mrs. Schneider feels a sense of privilege to have held the job that "I so dearly loved. It has been one challenge after another but it always was a rewarding process."

Throughout the years, Mrs. Schneider has worked as an advocate for services for people with disabilities, working particularly with legislators and with parents and family, trying to keep them informed of the issues of the day.

"I attempted to make them aware of when they should be concerned and take action on behalf of their relative with disabilities," she says.

The beginnings were meager in 1970 when Mrs. Schneider, Mrs. Alan McGee and Mrs. Jon Guthrie and the late Lucy Belle Markham authored a grant proposal to obtain funds to set up a community home for young men with mental retardation outside the Arkansas Children's Colony (now the Conway Human Development Center).

With a budget of $12,500, the founders located a small building on Independence Street. A photograph of that structure holds a prominent place on a wall in the director's office of today's ILS.

"I had been working as an assistant physical therapist at the Children's Colony at this time. And when I was encouraged to take over the project, I believed as they did that people with mental retardation needed a chance to live and make a life for themselves in the community. So, Independent Living Services was begun as a private, nonprofit agency with a purpose of providing residential services and employment opportunities for adults with mental retardation."

It was purely a voluntary effort at start. She eschewed a title, she recalls, but she does remember her first pay check.

"I was paid the handsome sum of $450 a month."

That little shack, which was remodeled and restructured by volunteer groups in the city, has been transformed into a facility that offers people with developmental disabilities a chance at independence.

There they have the opportunity to learn skills that allow them to become self-supporting with a job and an apartment of their own. Others may need to remain in sheltered living situations, yet receive training to enable them to reach the highest level of independence possible, Mrs. Schneider says.

Never being bored in her work has been one of her strengths.

"In all the years of volunteering and working as executive director of ILS, I have always been challenged and never bored. I never wanted to work anywhere else, because I felt that what we were doing here was worthwhile for people with disabilities. This has truly been a job worth keeping."

Her memories of being on the job are many and poignant.

"I remember sharing with residents the excitement of getting that first real job. Talking about their first date; the first time to shop for their own clothing. I remember sharing all those personal achievements as people became responsible for their own lives."

Peggy Schneider marvels at the growth of the agency whose services now include group homes, in-home care, apartments, an adult learning center, case management and home and community-based waiver services, which is a flexible funding source that allows individuals to cho-se services that best fit their needs.

All this is a far cry from the days when the executive director, maintenance person, bookkeeper and clerk/typist were the same person or when there were only two persons on the staff and the terms "assets" and "liabilities" were foreign or when all ILS records fit in the back of the director's car.

Sophistication has now set in. For example, ILS's newest service, Profiles, is an adult learning center where clients can experience a wide variety of subjects from sign language to computer skills. The program has heavy emphasis on skills that help people succeed in the community, she said.

If she had to choose one aspect of her work considered the most meaningful, she would point to the beginning of community programs that gave people with disabilities the chance to reach their dreams during their adventures of daily living.

Mrs. Schneider's vitae lists her education from Clinton High School to the University of Arkansas and the University of Central Arkansas, institutions that gave her degrees in science and community service counseling. She has worked as a legal secretary, school teacher, a physical therapist and executive director.

"To get to my teaching job at Bigelow, I had to cross the river by ferry each day and sometimes get stranded on a sand bar," she recalls gleefully.