The podiatrist put her in the hospital for six weeks, the beginning of many hospital stays.
“Going into my junior year, I was first chair alto saxophonist. I marched in the band and turned flips on the trampoline, played volleyball and was a softball pitcher, home-run hitter at the ball park outside New Paris. I was the kind of kid that was always active. If there was nothing going on, I created something,” said Kessler.
Her parents, Betty and Frank, of New Paris, are deceased now. Her father died in 1975 and her mother died in 2000.
“They didn’t let me flounder. I was a kid that was in everything — and then nothing. The only time I left the house for two years was to go to the hospital or doctor’s office,” Kessler said.
In 1962, she had tutors teach her so she would meet requirements to graduate with her class. “I got so sick I could not go to school and I missed junior and senior year. I was more upset about missing school than I was being sick,” said Kessler.
In 1971, when she applied to be a full-time student at Miami University in Oxford, she wrote an essay for admission where she pointed out that she had a severe form of childhood arthritis.
In the fall 1972, when she was a sophomore, she was climbing eight flights of stairs to her math class, when she noticed a service elevator.
She went to the assistant dean of women and asked for a key to the elevator and was refused. She was told that it kept handicapped students from attending.
“When that assistant dean of women looked at me and said there are other places for those people, I didn’t know that I was handicapped,” Kessler said.
“I went to my room and cried and then I got mad. I made it my mission to talk to the president and ask the Lord for guidance,” Kessler said.
She ultimately got a key to the elevator and then began looking for other unmarked metal fire doors that could be elevators.
In 1973 the rehabilitation act was passed. The federal law said any domain that receives federal money must be accessible.
“From October 1972 until October 1974 when I had paper assignments in my classes I had it relate to adults with disabilities, education of students with disabilities, architectural standards for federal codes to build ramps, curb cuts and handicapped parking spaces,” Kessler said.
Then she gathered her material and took it to the president of Miami University, Phillip Shriver. She handed him the copy of the federal code for the rehabilitation act. She pointed out that Miami might lose federal funding because they weren’t in compliance with architectural accessibility.
President Shriver set up a committee and he sent Susan a letter asking her to be the handicapped student on the committee. They worked on a report in 1975 learning where the building had the most traffic, seeing if it was inaccessible and whether it had an elevator and if it was four stories, it had to be on the first plan of accessibility changes. An elevator shaft was built on the back building and it matched the old bricks perfectly.
In 1979, she received her master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling of adults with disabilities at Miami and she wanted to be the first administrator for handicapped students. While working on her masters she received a graduate internship with the student counseling service. She provided services to students who were temporarily disabled.
“When I got my masters in ’79, I had been hired to be a permanent counselor in the student counseling service and I would get to continue working with the temporarily disabled,” said Kessler.
In 1986, Governor Richard Celeste appointed Kessler to a state counsel with people of disabilities.
Kessler has been a resident of The Greenbriar Assisted Living in Eaton since May 2005 because of a fall she had when she lived and worked in Columbus.