Frances Gracechild August 1st, 1945 - June 5th, 2017
Join us for a
Celebration of Life for Frances Gracechild
Friday, July 7, 2017
CA Secretary of State Auditorium
1500 11th Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
In lieu of flowers you can make a donation in honor of Frances' memory to Resources for Independent Living by visiting www.ril-sacramento.org.
Messages
Links about Frances
The Sacramento Bee:
http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/helping-others/article159967399.html
Obituary
Frances Gracechild, a lifelong disability and senior rights advocate, who also served as executive director of Resources for Independent Living (RIL) in Sacramento since 1981.
Her death at 71 years old was a surprise to many; her life was remembered in a touching post by Marty Omoto of the California Disability Community Action Network, and she had an impact to many at RIL, Health Access, and the broader advocacy community in Sacramento.
Frances was incredibly welcoming and helpful to me when she was the chair of the Health Access board when I was first hired by the organization in 2001. She served not just as a representative of the disability community, but as a health advocate in her own right–for everything as a major spokesperson fighting for the Patients Bill of Rights to the ongoing effort for universal health care. She stepped down soon afterwards after five years of service, but we continued to work with her on various issues–most notably in pushing back against proposed budget cuts to health and human services proposed by Governor Schwarzenegger and others.
In addition to her decades-long role as executive director of Resources for Independent Living (RIL) Sacramento’s independent living center, she also had been serving, since 2008, as a board member of Sacramento’s Paratransit, Inc. She was a leader in the Sacramento community on a range of issues, and will be sorely missed.
Rest in Power, Frances.