Encouraged by prominent citizens, including Nobel Prize winning novelist Pearl S. Buck, and radio and television personality Dale Evans Rogers, who wrote of family members with mental retardation, parents across the country began to organize and demand better services for their children.
 

DISABILITY AS AN ILLNESS

One of the most prominent role perceptions of persons with disabilities has been that of the sick person. Disability as an illness or disease resulted in the construction of institutions that in many ways resembled hospitals. Superintendents of institutions were often physicians. Many facilities were called "state hospitals" (for people with mental illness) and "state schools" (for people with mental retardation); and living areas were referred to as "nursing units" or "wards." Interaction with individuals living in the institutions was termed "therapy" or "programs." A person's case records were referred to as "charts."