Davis
Asking “What now?” leads to a world of change and adventure.
Change comes in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it’s a mural, bringing color and light to those who view it. Other times, it’s a business that provides new opportunities and hopeful growth. Or maybe it’s something as seemingly simple as finding ways to include others. Our 2024 Possibilitarians are all about growth and helping their communities—and our state—reach their full potential through a variety of methods and means. Because they see them—the possibilities. And those possibilities are endless, just like their ideas, drive, and passion.
Eric Thompson is paralyzed from the chest down and, despite that fact, he’s an avid outdoor adventurer. He’s always loved to paddle and ski and spent his early adulthood, before the accident that changed everything, turning those passions into paying jobs. He traveled the country guiding groups down the most relentless whitewater. He spent his winters working as ski patrol for resorts. He developed lifesaving skills as a wilderness emergency medical technician. Thompson had the perfect nomadic life, he says, full of thrills and freedom.
Fast forward to 2012 in West Virginia, covered by the snowy aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, when he was involved in a car crash that transected the outdoorsman’s spine and dealt a crushing blow to his torso.
He barely remembers the crash, or the rescue that followed. He clearly remembers when the doctors told him his injuries were so severe that he would likely spend the rest of his life with paralysis. And he remembers thinking, “That sucks”—then, simply, “Now, what am I going to do about it?”
Thompson endured an extended hospital stay and months of physical therapy. He learned more about his new normal that now included full-time use of a wheelchair. And when he was strong enough, he headed west to Oregon, the last place he’d lived before that fateful visit home. He collected his belongings there and gained valuable insight along the way.
“Here I was, traveling alone, paralyzed from the chest down and trying to figure out how to maneuver through the world around me with this disability,” Thompson says. “And as I crossed the country and came back again, I realized that the worst place I’d seen all along in terms of accessibility was ‘Welcome home, West Virginia.’”
Thompson vowed to be the change. He created Access On The Go, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building the outdoor accessible economy by ensuring that outdoor recreation is accessible to those with disabilities. “One in four Americans has a disability,” he explains. “That’s the largest minority in the United States, and West Virginia has the highest incidence of disability per capita in the nation: one in three adults. And just because someone is living with a disability, it doesn’t mean they don’t seek the same fun, adventure, and quality of life as able-bodied people. They just might need a modified way of doing the same activity. It’s really not a lack of demand—it’s a lack of supply.”
Thompson and his organization started small, knocking on the doors of businesses in the town of Thomas and imploring business owners to install ramps in place of stairs. His goal from the start has been to raise awareness and lower the threshold for change, making it as easy as possible for businesses. In fact, a large part of his advocacy efforts center on educating business owners about tax incentives that have existed since 1990 as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act. “If a business starts today, they can get $100,000 over the next five years in incentives to improve access. They really can do the right thing while improving their bottom line.”
Access On The Go is scaling up and turning its focus to high-traffic tourism areas like Snowshoe, the Greenbrier Valley and New River Gorge areas, and the Potomac Highlands in order to demonstrate the tangible benefits of better serving customers with disabilities. He is also working with convention and visitors bureaus throughout the region to create travel guides for visitors with disabilities that inventory accessible infrastructure in communities—like parking ramps, buildings with lifts, accessible hotel rooms, and more.
Thompson himself is a shining example of how a person can thrive while living with a disability. Paralysis from the chest down took away much of his core strength, an absolute necessity for traversing the whitewater of the country’s fastest rivers. So, he worked with industry experts to create HandiCraft, an adaptive whitewater outfitting system using the Creature Craft inflatable platform that enables anyone with physical impairment to enjoy the rush of the river. You’ll also regularly catch him riding around town on his adaptive mountain bike and enjoying fresh snow on adaptive skis.
“You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it,” Thompson says. “I’m hopeful that we’re getting really close to reaching a turning point in this state for accessibility, adaptive outdoor recreation, and broader economic development. That gives all of this profound meaning for me, that we might play a small part in making universal accessibility a defining feature of West Virginia.”
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