... With rehabilitation behind him and an uncertain future ahead of him, Lucier--as some of his hospital buddies already had--opted to check out a place in Mexico that promoted freedom and a new beginning for paraplegics and quadriplegics. After contracting with one of the West Roxbury hospital attendants to accompany him, Lucier was on his way to spend Christmas of 1963 at George Ray's place in Quadalajara. ...

Charlie Newbold was 23 years old when an auto mishap left him a quadriplegic in October of 1961. "The accident happened in Spain," he explained. "I was actually stationed in France and should have returned stateside, but had my Army tour extended by three months when the Berlin Wall went up." ...

... Asked about when he thought about checking out Quadalajara, Newbold replied, "My friend Joe Cicero is the one who really pushed us to go." Charlie Newbold was in the same situation as many. "I grew up in the Bronx. My mother lived in a three-story walk-up." Not exactly wheelchair friendly accommodations. "I'd never have gotten out on my own. We had guys living at the hospital for thirteen, fourteen, and even seventeen years. After a while, you just figured that was the way it was going to be." ...

JoAnn Raway first experienced Quadalajara in November 1964. "I went on a three week vacation to Las Fuentes with my sister Luella and our friend, Roselyn Mahowald." While Charlie Newbold and Bronx VA buddy Joe Cicero were discovering their newfound freedoms at George Ray's Place, the three women from Minnesota simultaneously vacationed in Las Fuentes. "Paul Patino and Larry Kegan ran the place," JoAnn recalled. That was where JoAnn initially met fellow Minnesotan Tom Kirch, along with Joe Darichuk and Senors Patino and Kegan. "We were ready to return home when we saw the living conditions at Las Fuentes--and the dining room. I can still remember the plastic plates with cigarette burns." Apparently, guys (especially those who escaped institutional living) tended to overlook such minor details. ...

Keith Ziegler was one of those few quadriplegics who went on to college after sustaining a spinal cord injury in 1960 at the age of twenty-one. Ziegler, another "Cold Warrior" who had earlier been stationed with the Air Force in Morocco, spent the next six months hospitalized in Denver before being transferred to the Long Beach VA. With the help of his parents, Keith returned to his now-modified and wheelchair accessible home in Colorado, and to an uncertain future in higher education. After three years, it became apparent that Ziegler's pursuit of a college English degree was becoming increasingly more difficult. His parents could only do so much, and full-time attendant care for a quadriplegic student on his own was way beyond his financial means.

In 1965, Ziegler read an ad in the Paraplegia News about this place in Mexico ...

Jerry Fesenmeyer took his first trip to Quadalajara in 1965. Fesenmeyer was neither a "Cold Warrior" nor someone trying to escape the cold weather, although no stranger to cold weather, having grown up in Iowa. Jerry was a World War II veteran who had been shot during combat in Okinawa in May 1945. "I couldn't tell you what day I was shot, I was out before I hit the ground. They built a hospital, of sorts, over the hole I fell into. It was the second or third week in May. I was later transferred to Corona Naval Hospital.  There were forty-two of us with spinal cord injuries on two wards. Nobody knew nothing about nothing." Indeed, most people with spinal cord injuries prior to World War II died within a year or two. Fortunately for Fesenmeyer his paralysis was at L1 (first Lumbar vertebrae), and the medical community was now responding to the growing need for a better understanding of spinal cord injury.

A couple of years of hospitalization left the para from Iowa unprepared for what to expect. "You couldn't go anywhere. You couldn't find a place to live. Hell, nothing was fixed for wheelchairs."

After bounding around different hospitals, from Southern California to Chicago, Fesenmeyer wound up at the Birmingham VA in Van Nuys, CA. Upon his discharge the good shape para managed to survive--and thrive--post SCI. "I was married three times," he confided. "I had a number of jobs, mostly in electronics. I remember being hospitalized in Hawaii before they brought me to Corona. After my third divorce, I figured it would be a good time to quit my job and go lie on the beach!"