AMHERST — At the 1988 Paralympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, Tory Dixon took 30 seconds off her best 400-meter freestyle time, claiming one of her two bronze medals at that year’s swimming competitions.
Dixon still vividly remembers standing on the podium as the British national anthem played for the gold medalist, taking pride in her accomplishments.
“Sports did so much for me,” says Dixon, speaking during a Disability Pride Month presentation at Mill River Recreation Area Monday afternoon. “It was a lot of work, but it was fun.”
Her husband, Juan Dixon, is a similarly successful Paralympian, earning medals in powerlifting over the course of three international competitions in 1984, 1988 and 1992.
“When I started doing sports, it was for recreation, physical therapy, that sort of thing,” Juan Dixon said. Because he did it for fun, he eventually moved up the ranks and began medaling.
Both had started with the Western Massachusetts Tigers, a team made up of those with cerebral palsy, which can impair one’s motor ability.
The couple spoke as people gathered under a pavilion a short distance from the site’s full-size swimming pool, where Amherst Recreation has continued to ensure that people of all abilities have access to the water through adaptive equipment.
At the swimming pool, a variety of assistive flotation devices, such as noodles, are on the pool deck, and nearby is a huge selection of life jackets.
There is also a power chair installed at the pool’s edge that a person can sit in and be lowered into the water, or perch above it, and a wider set of custom-made stairs that swimmers can use instead of a ladder.
Brie Dickinson, a lifeguard who has taught swimming lessons, said the adaptive equipment is often based on specific needs.
“Virtually anyone of about any ability has the opportunity to use the pools,” Dickinson said.
In the last couple of summers, a boy mostly paralyzed from his neck down could get into the water and enjoy coming to the pool by putting on a special flotation device that Amherst Recreation got for him.
The town also offers adaptive swim lessons, mostly one-on-one, from noon to 1 p.m. daily during the summer, while open adaptive swimming takes place daily at War Memorial Pool near the high school.
Dickinson said Denise Leckenby, the town’s aquatics director, has prioritized ensuring that anyone has access to the pools.
The Disability Pride Month event was also sponsored by the town’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion department and the Jones Library, encouraging people to use the pool for free that afternoon. The Dixons also participated in a storytime at the Jones Library last week.
Myra Ross, who chairs the Amherst Commission for Persons with Disabilities, said that the Americans with Disabilities Act makes lives better for disabled individuals. Access, she said, is really about figuring out who they are, what they want and how they can get there.
Bob Newcomb, the retired women’s swimming coach at the University of Massachusetts, helped train Tory Dixon before the Seoul Olympics. In the time he has known the Dixons — his wife, Judy, is Tory Dixon’s sister — he said they always emphasize that anything is possible.
“I’ve never heard them say I can’t do that,” Newcomb said.
“When I was young, I determined swimming was going to be my event,” Tory Dixon said, noting she then competed regionally and nationally.
She went to the Paralympic trials at Ball State University in 1988, where she was “over the moon” when she found she had qualified for the games.
The Dixons continue to advocate for the disability community. Tory Dixon works for the Stavros Center for Independent Living, helping clients with independent living arrangements and raising money for the Home Sweet Home program, and Juan Dixon works for the Office for Students with Disabilities at Holyoke Community College, ensuring accommodations for students.
They are less likely to be on their feet these days — Tory Dixon says she’s more likely to use her scooter after years on crutches, while Juan Dixon uses a wheelchair. But Juan Dixon observes that their children have challenged him to lift 225 pounds by the end of September, which he believes will happen if he trains, even if that will be distant from his best-ever lift of 336 pounds.
“I think I could still do it, but we’ll see,” he said.
