Advocate opens home for those who have no place to go
Renee Wallace was stricken with polio at age 5 and wasn’t supposed to be able to walk, but she did. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, she also experienced other serious illnesses she wasn’t supposed to survive — but she did.
“My mother used to tell me, ‘ Take care of yourself. You’re not a very strong girl’,” Wallace said, on the eve of her 89th birthday. “So I think I always worked and tried harder, just to prove I was stronger than everyone thought.” Wallace said she’s a bit of a rebel. “When we graduated from high school, most of my classmates went to the University of Michigan, so I went to Cornell. If everybody else was doing it, I did something else,” she said.
A mother of four and a grandmother, Wallace said she has been gifted with a tremendous amount of energy throughout her life.
“I think it was something I was born with, and I’ve felt fortunate, being able to do what I do. I broke my hip in my 70s, so I’m a little slower, but I’m still working,” she said.
The centerpiece of her career has been Vita-Living, a Houston-based 501(c)3 nonprofit agency that provides long-term care and support services for adults and children who have intellectual and developmental challenges such as autism and cerebral palsy. Vita-Living is an advocate of integrated community living and a specialist in the care of individuals with complex disabilities and behavioral challenges.
But establishing the first group home for adults with these disabilities in Houston — the beginnings of Vita-Living — Wallace and her husband, Stan, learned to clear often impossibly high hurdles to reach their goal.
Their journey began with their third child, Ricky. At 17 months, he wasn’t talking, he never slept, was constantly moving and had an unusual gait.
They were living in Detroit in 1957, when they made the trip to the University of Michigan to consult with a leading pediatric neurologist. They were hoping for a diagnosis — and were stunned with the physician finished examining their son and diagnosing him with a severe mental disability.”
“When we got Ricky’s diagnosis, our youngest son was only 2 weeks old,” Wallace said, “and the physician also said he would never grow mentally or socially — and he was right, but I didn’t want to hear that,” she said.
Four years later, when Wallace went to enroll her son in school, the door was closed, with “no, we don’t take those kinds of children.”
Admitting she once believed Ricky was educable, Wallace explored other possibilities. “When I visited the state school, conditions were so awful, I had to stop the car on the way home and throw up,” she said.
At that time, there were no schools — public or private — for the mentally disabled, and it remained that way until 1975, Wallace said.
Eventually, in 1946, they found the Vineland Training Center in Vineland, New Jersey, and with mixed emotions, the Wallaces admitted their son to that program, a decision that meant Wallace would go to work so they could afford the tuition.
In the interim, she began work on her master’s degree in nutrition while working as a dietitian.
“I had gone to work at the state hospital and noticed many children were dying of aspiration pneumonia, where they inhale fluids into their lungs. I began noticing they were feeding the children while they were lying down, often with their heads hanging off the beds,” she said. “One night I went home and asked my husband to try to feed me applesauce while I was lying down. It was impossible.”
By working with occupational, physical and speech therapists at the hospital, Wallace was able to develop positional and feeding guidelines for the hospital to use and incorporated her research findings and the protocols she had developed into her master’s thesis.
When her husband’s job brought him to Houston, Wallace continued to be confronted with and made to clear more hurdles.
“When we started Vita-Living, the state said we couldn’t do it, but we did. I knew people in Austin, which I thought could help us since I had been working at the Center for the Retarded (now ARC) in the residential program,” she said. “I knew they had licensed group homes, but they were for people more mildly afflicted.
When she asked what standards we would have to meet to establish a group home for more mentally challenged adults, the people in Austin told Wallace there were no standards — they had never licensed a home for ‘people like that’.”
After adapting, modifying and innovating new systems and procedures so the state would license homes for adults who were not able to speak, read or write, Renee and Stan opened their first home 31 years ago.
“My husband brought in the money. I never asked where or how, but he was in PR and knew a lot of people,” she said. “When Stan died in 1989, I didn’t know if I could go on, but along with the hurdles, I’ve had so many angel-onmy-shoulder moments. As an example, Irving Pozmantier came to work on the board 20 years ago. I was told he was a very busy man and didn’t have time. However, at age 84, Irving continues to be active,” she said.
Wallace said Vita-Living continues to serve people no one else serves.
“We’ve also never asked anyone to leave,” she said. “Not serving those needing help was not an option. What if someone had said, ‘It costs me too much to serve Ricky Wallace, so come get him,’ what would I have done?”
But as another birthday approaches, Wallace is not retiring and is stepping up her advocacy efforts.
“Texas is 50th in funding help for people with disabilities, and Harris County has a 12-year waiting list for people needing residential living, companion care and case management,” she said.
Today, Vita-Living operates 18 group homes serving 70 individuals. It also serves 350 adults and children in their homes in seven counties, providing case management and helping find services, education, jobs, physicians and making it possible for them to live in the community.
“Texas is 50th in funding help for people with disabilities, and Harris County has a 12-year waiting list for people needing residential living, companion care and case management.” Renee Wallace, Vita-Living founder, Houston
Vita-Living also was chosen as a charity partner for the 2015 ChevronHouston Marathon.
One of Vita-Living’s board members was helped by the agency’s Community Living Assistance and Support Services (CLASS) when he was 6 or 7 years old.
“Since then, he has earned a college degree and lives on his own,” Wallace said. “He is in a wheelchair, has severe cerebral palsy and owns an online and in-store antiques business.”
The reason for his success? It’s due to Wallace changing the status quo, because she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.