BLEAK PROSPECTS

And he was right. But the world he would enter as a quadriplegic was almost irrepressibly bleak. There were no electric wheelchairs, no touch-tone telephones, no sidewalk ramps or other public accommodations for anyone on wheels. At the time, Claggett wrote, the only public laws regarding people with disabilities were designed to discriminate, such as Chicago’s Municipal Code 36-34, which forbade anyone with a deformity “to be allowed in or on the public ways or other public places in the city.”

The only jobs available for disabled people were largely menial and paid far below what others received for performing similar tasks.

After spending 138 days in the hospital, Mr. Starkloff was returned to the home of his divorced mother, Hertha Starkloff, in University City. There she acted as his primary caregiver with the help of aides while working a full-time job in real estate.

Mr. Starkloff learned to use the phone and, for a time, began selling insurance and entertaining his legions of friends who would come to visit. But the home care proved too much for his mother, who was then 57. The responsibilities were draining her both physically and financially.

At the time, the federal government paid $30,000 a year for nursing home care, but nothing to families who wanted to keep their loved ones at home. So on Oct. 23, 1963 — four years after the accident — Hertha drove her son to St. Joseph’s Hill Infirmary in Eureka, during which Mr. Starkloff remembered, “No words were spoken.”

As Mr. Starkloff recalled for Claggett’s biography, “This was it, the end of the road. I was going where people go to die.”

But in fact, it was at St. Joseph’s Hill where Mr. Starkloff found a purpose and meaning in his life, and not incidentally his wife.

THE LIFE-ALTERING DREAM

At first, Mr. Starkloff passed the hours at St. Joseph’s by creating a rich fantasy life. “I would create a family, give each member a name and how each person looked,” he told Claggett. “Sometimes I would create baseball teams, memorizing imaginary players their batting statistics, wins and losses.”

Later, Mr. Starkloff would use his imagination to create works of art. He met a Franciscan brother who taught him how to manipulate a paint brush, using his teeth. For the next several months, Mr. Starkloff would work in the infirmary studio for six hours a day. Mr. Starkloff’s paintings were shown in exhibitions, written about in the local press and they created an income.

Even so, Mr. Starkloff chafed at his lack of independence. He remembers the bus tours that would come to St. Joseph’s Hill where he would be shown off to the visitors. A Franciscan brother would bring the tour to Mr. Starkloff’s room while he was lying down and invite them in to see his paintings.

Claggett wrote: “Tousling Max’s hair as though he was an obedient dog, Brother Patrick would exclaim, ‘Isn’t it amazing? He actually holds the brush in his teeth! Considering how he paints, I think Max is pretty good,’ he’d beam.

“Departing, several of the women would pause, look down at Max and say, ‘Isn’t it nice that you have something to occupy your time?'”

Over the years, Mr. Starkloff began to read up on and get in touch with other people with disabilities and those who were advocating on their behalf. One was Gini Laurie, who asked him point-blank, “What are you doing in a nursing home?” Laurie, who was blunt and outspoken, often would say, quadriplegics “need a pair of hands that they can direct. They do not need to be buried alive in a nursing home. They need to live their lives as they choose.”

By 1970, Mr. Starkloff had given up painting and devoted himself to what he called his “life-altering dream.”

“I dreamed of an apartment complex built for people with disabilities in which they could live and work,” he told Claggett. “It was a utopian environment for people with disabilities where they could also be entrepreneurs. And it wouldn’t just house people with disabilities. Anyone could live there.” He would later name it the Para-quad project.