Strachan’s treatments at Johns Hopkins did not cure all that ailed him, but he regained nearly fifty pounds. Still, he was, as he described it, “obliged to live, of course, on a most rigid dietary regimen.”49 It was during this stay at Johns Hopkins that Strachan would become committed to disability rights. In 1940, he developed the plan for the AFPH though the organization did not take off until 1942. In the meantime, he eked out a living doing research, writing, and performing some legislative work, while investigating disability issues in his free time.50
Strachan approached the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) in 1941, seeking information and offering his service to the organization. A group of Gallaudet University-educated deaf leaders had founded the NAD in 1880 to represent the interests of deaf Americans and to address discrimination against deaf citizens nationally. Initially, Strachan suggested that the organization needed representation in Washington, writing to NAD president Tom L. Anderson that he had scoured House and Senate documents but could not find any pending proposals to advance the welfare of deaf Americans where he had found many for blind people. Also, in searching for organizations he might devote his time and expertise to, none of his Washington acquaintances pointed to the NAD.51
At first, NAD leaders seemed receptive to Strachan. Anderson responded to Strachan’s original inquiry, “We need such a man as you in Washington, the worst way.” He also noted that the organization did not have the finances “to pay for help of the sort we really need.” Anderson outlined two key areas in which the NAD hoped to gain ground in the national political scene. The organization wanted Congress to establish a “Bureau for the Welfare of the Deaf” in the DOL, and it hoped to end arbitrary restrictions that civil service positions be filled by hearing individuals. Strachan responded with a good deal of insider knowledge, critiquing the NAD’s present strategy and suggesting more fruitful paths that ranged from rewriting the bill to placing the proposed bureau in the FSA, recruiting different sponsors, and pushing simultaneously for legislative and executive action. He also wrote that he was willing to work to demonstrate his abilities and perhaps position the organization to afford a Washington office in the future.52
The relationship soured shortly after it began. Strachan overwhelmed NAD leaders with lengthy letters and plans for legislative, organizational, and fundraising drives.53 After numerous exchanges and a meeting with NAD leaders, Strachan developed a two-part plan. The first part contained his recommendations for amending the NAD’s bureau proposal and pushing for its enactment. His suggestions ranged from working with all groups who might benefit from the bureau’s services, including hard-of-hearing and deafened individuals, to launching an all-out education and publicity campaign to secure support from the general public. The second part of his plan focused on the development of a “Washington Service Bureau.” This bureau would essentially be a national lobbying office that would push for favorable legislation and provide information to members about Civil Service examinations, government programs and jobs, members’ “rights, privileges, and prerogatives, as citizens of the United States,” and recourse when confronting discrimination. Strachan suggested that the NAD launch a membership campaign, expand its membership to include individuals “Deaf in whatever degree,” and develop new types of memberships to encourage donations. He also advised that the NAD should consider offering other services such as sick, death, and hospital benefits.54
Anderson responded with a mixed assessment. He reported that he and other NAD leaders were generally behind his plans for revising and securing the passage of the welfare bureau bill but strongly against the Washington Service Bureau. Anderson conveyed other board members’ assessment that “Mr. Strachan undoubtedly isn’t familiar with the great multitude of the deaf,” in that he seemed to think that the rank and file could be roused into action through the Washington Service Bureau when the board knew “they raise the devil about the NAD because the NAD doesn’t get jobs for them, although that has never been the NAD objective.” Essentially, NAD officers proposed to use deaf leaders, working to stimulate interest in wider society, to replace Strachan’s plan for rank-and-file action. Still, the NAD hoped to hire Strachan if he would “work along the lines indicated in Part I alone” and agree to “certain control over [his] activities.”55
Strachan took offense and fired off an angry nine-page letter. He defended the need for a legislative office and took issue with NAD leaders’ characterizations of rank-and-file members. While Anderson and others felt that members would not get behind action and the Washington Service Bureau, Strachan argued that many average deaf people felt “THAT THEIR OWN LEADERS, BY THEIR LACK OF ACTION, ARE THE BOTTLENECKS” (emphasis his). He also claimed that the key to ensuring members’ access to jobs was through government action. Strachan wrote that it was a “fatal mistake” to assume that passing any law would solve the problems of deaf Americans. Instead, he asserted that any law would be just the beginning of the work. Strachan took particular exception to Anderson’s desire to exert “control” over his efforts, writing, “if you talk to responsible people in any such fashion as this, they will promptly tell you to go to Hell!” Further, Strachan questioned “the ‘intent,’ interest, and enthusiasm necessary on the part of NAD officers to make an effective campaign.” He concluded that he was “deeply interested in helping the Deaf, in fact, ALL the Physically Handicapped” and vowed to continue working with or without the NAD. Ultimately, he suggested means by which he would be comfortable working with the NAD, but the damage was done. Anderson replied, “The utter impossibility of our expecting to come together in a common understanding of all the angles presented by the project you ask the NAD to sponsor, by mail, grows more and more apparent with each slap you choose to deal out to me and my responsible associates when we attempt to exercise a reasonable degree of restraint, or present our viewpoint.” The correspondence continued for another month, but it was clear that Strachan and the NAD were on radically different pages.56
Strachan’s communication with the NAD hinted at the strategies he would employ in the AFPH and revealed the temper that would get him, and his organization, into trouble. The experience also shaped his opinion that people with disabilities lacked “the means and the leadership to come forward and properly present their cases for public consideration.” His opinion notwithstanding, a number of organizations had long represented disabled constituents, including the NAD.57 New Deal, wartime, and postwar politics grew that number.
Another long-standing organization was the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), founded in 1920 by disabled World War I veterans, who were troubled by the lack of available services and the inefficiency, lack of coordination, and confusing mountains of paperwork required for the services that did exist.58 During World War II, the organization aimed to “preserve America’s freedoms,” “equalize burdens and profits of war,” and improve the lives of “America’s disabled defenders.” DAV leaders sought to do this by pushing for growth of the military, efficient mobilization of labor on the home front, limits on wartime profits, greater pay for servicemen and women during and after service, disability insurance, and more thorough medical record keeping by the various branches of the armed services. Disabled veterans, the DAV maintained, needed the organization. It sought to expand what would count as a service-connected disability, increase the benefits disabled veterans received, soften VA guidelines for determining disability, harshen the punishment for feigning disability to gain benefits, expand vocational training and job placement programs for disabled veterans, extend hospital care for individuals with service- and nonservice-connected disabilities, expand the number of VA facilities, and provide greater financial support to the dependents