Richard Gould Ed.D.

On February 1st, 2019, Dick Gould took off for an eternal new journey.
Free at last, free at last, he slipped his mortal moorings and sailed into an infinity of new challenges and beautiful adventures.
To all his friends and family, old buddies or new friends, no matter how long they knew him or how briefly, who touched his life in any way and every way, he truly Thanks You All. Dick was born in Everett, MA on December 11th, 1935.
His father passed when he was only five years old. His mother started a corner store to raise her three children, older brother Bill; Dick; and their younger sister Carol. Dick thrived as a youngster and took odd jobs like selling newspapers, delivering groceries for tips, and then working at a grocery store, while fully enjoying his life at school. He also belonged to a church choir, where his maturing baritone voice became a precious commodity. The choir members were always well compensated. As a result of his continued hard work and singing career, coins always filled up his pants pockets, constantly wearing holes in them. One of his mother’s jobs was to keep mending the pockets, soon efficiently doubling the material for reinforcement, Dick recalled. One of his humorous memories was about his high school prom. A friend who was not going to the dance offered his car for Dick’s use. Dick gratefully borrowed it. His date for the prom also happened to be the same friend’s girlfriend.
His mother eventually remarried, and the family moved to West Newberry, MA in the middle of his high school years. Dick realized that country living was very different from Everett. Earning money was not as easy, and the only entertainment for his classmates appeared to be standing at the corner and watching the cars go by. But he got a job at the farm across from his house, and learned all about farming, especially working with cattle, which became his new passion. One night, his mother discovered that a large number of cows were on the loose all over the street. She summoned Dick to do something. Dick went out quietly, located an old cow called Daisy, and whispered in her ear, “Let’s go home.” He held her side gently and they started walking back to the farm together. The rest of crowd followed silently behind them one at a time in a long queue. It was beautiful in the moonlight. Dick’s mother was convinced that she saw a miracle.
A week after his high school graduation, everything suddenly changed when he dove into a pond belonging to a church called Guardian of the Holy Angel. He sustained a spinal cord injury of C5 to C6, which rendered him quadriplegic with no movement or feeling in his arms, body, or legs.
This was years before the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). Today we take for granted the curb cuts and accessible buildings. Back then, the world was largely inaccessible to “quads”: few had electric wheelchairs; they were warehoused in nursing homes; and their average life expectancy was a mere 13 years. In the early days after his injury in the most unfortunate circumstances, however, Dick had the great good fortune to meet one of the most influential people in his life. It was Dr. Donald Munro, a world-famous spinal cord injury specialist, who was running a ten-bed special unit for SCI at Boston City Hospital. After Dick was admitted there, his grandfather—once a sailor, then an iron worker—bumped into Dr. Munro. Grandfather asked the doctor, “When is me boy going to put one foot in front of the other?” Dr. Munro sadly shook his head and said, “I’m afraid there is nothing much I can do about that.” Grandfather replied, “What are you good for, then?” The old doctor answered, “I sometimes wonder that, myself,” and quietly walked away. In spite of his grandfather’s disappointment, Dick thrived under Dr. Munro’s guidance. The physician realized that Dick could absorb everything and was eager to learn. Not only the special survival skills and knowledge needed for people with SCI, but he also trained Dick in medical knowledge and beyond. This precious encounter and training from Dr. Munro helped form Dick into the man he became. Our dear Dick remained active until his ripe old age (although he never looked old). Both professionally and personally, he used his expertise to help people with disabilities.
Dick was one of the first six residents housed at the Boston University Theology Dorm, BCIL’s novel experiment providing an accessible base from which the disabled could attend college or build a career. One day, he encountered a man dressed in workman’s garb, swinging a hammer to make the dorm’s public bathroom more accessible. The worker turned around and said, “Hi, I’m Paul,” reaching out expecting to shake hands with Dick. After a moment’s hesitation (this was a strange man in a public restroom, after all), Dick decided to shake the workman’s hand. Soon Dick realized that this “workman“ was not just a common laborer, but indeed an uncommon physician, Dr. Paul J. Corcoran, who specialized in SCI, and was the preeminent spirit developing the brand-new concept of independent living in Boston. Dick said the little public bathroom was not the place he would expect to make a lifelong friend, but he indeed benefited from this encounter monumentally for all his life.
In 1973, Dick took a job as Clinical Director of the Spinal Cord Injury Unit at Middlesex County Hospital in Waltham, MA. As administrator, he was responsible for hiring and training personnel, psychological counseling for staff and the disabled residents, as well as serving as liaison to the state, federal, and private sectors. He also co-developed an alternative system for independent community living for the severely disabled, which was later incorporated into the BCIL program.
In 1974, Dick was named Deputy Director at the Boston Center for Independent Living. Significantly, he was the first severely disabled individual to take such a position. He was responsible for administration, with emphasis on developing models for creating the independent living program for the severely disabled. He established the first housing sites for BCIL, and developed the evaluation process by which clients were chosen as particants. He was involved in psychological counseling, education, and was an inter-agency liaison.
To get funding for the PCA (Personal Care Attendant) program, he worked side-by-side with the legislature. It seemed nearly impossible to convince politicians and medical professionals that people with severe disabilities could live independently, hiring and training their own personal care attendants without the supervision and intervention of medical institutions and agencies. The idea was to create a direct working relationship between the severely disabled person and his or her PCA. As a result of Dick’s initiative, the PCA can be trained for an individual’s unique needs and schedule, while establishing a better and longer relationship, also achieving efficiency, and cost effectiveness. During one of the hearings at the State House, a politician asked, “What if there is a fire at night?” Dick answered, “That’s the last thing we would worry about. The worst thing for us is to decay and perish institutionalized in a nursing home.” Some time later, Dick headed to the State House to request funding for nighttime attendants. A legislator asked Dick why they needed that. Dick calmly answered, “What if there is a fire?” That was the humble beginning of the PCA program in Boston.
Dick led the expansion of BCIL into accessible apartments in various Boston neighborhoods, opening the opportunity for many other young people with severe disabilities to move out of chronic care facilities, live in the community, and hire and supervise their own PCAs. The successful BCIL model has since been copied by over 500 other new IL centers across the country.
Meanwhile, Dick pursued his college education in Psychology at Boston University. Dr. Corcoran, at that time a professor at Tufts Medical Center, arranged for a fellowship in Neuropsychology with Dr. Homer Reed, which made it possible to achieve Dick’s professional goal. Neuropsychology became his passion and his identity. He practiced as a Clinical Neuropsychologist for over 35 years. He served various populations, including people with traumatic brain injuries, learning disabilities, and other organic brain dysfunction of all kinds. In 1995, he was invited to Honolulu, Hawaii for a year to help establish a neuropsychology clinic at a private school for children with learning disabilities. He initially declined the offer, twice. Then, he thought better of it, asking, “What am I doing? Someone is willing to pay for me to live in Paradise.” The rest is history. The latter part of his career, he worked more closely with the vocational rehab counselors at the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission.
Dick recalled that while he spent many years in various hospitals and institutions, there were countless occasions when he found himself stuck hopelessly in the system or situations where there appeared to be no way out. Sooner or later, however, he always found so many amazing people who came along just in time to help him move forward whenever he needed help most.
Also, his dry sense of humor was one of his weapons to go through the difficult challenges he faced over and over again.
In 2009, Dick moved to a brand new condominium in Natick, MA by chance, just because one of his old friends volunteered to wave his paddle for him during the auction. It was a brand new experience for him, as he realized the neighbors here were not just anonymous residents. He enjoyed and admired his new neighbors for their great laughter, interesting adventures and life stories, intellectual stimulation, and most of all their kindness, generosity, and friendship. It was most fortunate and an honor to be able to spend the last chapter of his life surrounded by so many amazing friends, or more accurately, newly adopted family members.
Dick loved poetry, history, science, literature, nature, to name just a few of his passions. While practicing as a neuropsychologist, his idea of relaxation was to start writing his reports as soon as he got home from work. He also was constantly educating himself by listening to lectures or reading books from various fields. He was a very kind and proud man, a man of integrity, with a great sense of humor. He used to say that what had happened to him, breaking his neck and going through what he had to endure, he would never wish on even his worst enemy—not that he had any.
There were many more challenges and adventures throughout his life. He was a great story teller, but unfortunately it never occurred to him to write them all down. He took all those tales with him, leaving us behind to relate a few as best we could, in his memory, which we cherish with the deepest gratitude and love.


Written by Dick’s Oriental Flower, Kanako, With Thanks to Dick’s partner in crime, Dr. Paul J. Corcoran, And Dr. Dian Fox, Professor Emerita, Brandeis University