Tom
Kohler is and will be a life-long Savannahian.
He is married to Betsy, and they have two enjoyable teenage
daughters, Alice and Lucy. As coordinator of Chatham-Savannah
Citizen Advocacy, he invites people into a variety of personal
relationships with individual people whose lives are being
diminished because of prejudice toward disability. Tom is
active in a variety of formal and informal civic and other
organizations and plays a leadership role in the Jim Collins
Bar Alumni Association, the Savannah plant swap, Leadership
Savannah and MOM (Men of Mind). He is a regular contributor
to Letters to the Editor in the Savannah
Morning News. Other interests include collecting
and exhibiting local African-American advertising art, gardening
and dancing to rock and roll.
Born in New York
City, Susan Earl is a Savannahian by
choice. She is married to John, and their daughter, Emily,
attends the Savannah College of Art and Design. Since 1980,
working with the Georgia Infirmary, she has enjoyed being able
to connect people who are elderly or disabled with community
supports. She is a past
or present member of: 20/20-New York Woman Photographers,
The
Ossabaw Island Project, The Storytellers, Midtown Supper
Club and the Chatham-Savannah
Citizen Advocacy program committee. She has exhibited her
photographs in galleries around the country and likes photographing
people,
listening to John Coltrane and walking in Forsyth Park.
She has been a citizen advocate since 1989.
Citizen advocacy is
a relationship based form of protection and advocacy for people who are
socially devalued within the larger culture. The role of the staff
is to meet individual people, learn their ‘long stories’ and
match a well connected citizen in a voluntary relationship with a person
who because of prejudice toward disability is living a diminished lifestyle. The
advocate can assume one of many roles, some informal, such as friend, some
formal such as legal guardian. Sometimes an advocate will stay
invoved in a person's life for a very long time, maybe even forever. Other
times people stay involved in hopes of making a shared accomplishment and
then agree to part company.
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