The Euline McCorkle Taratsas Papers document her active role in the disability rights movement, on a local, regional and national level. The papers are organized into three series: Biographical/Personal, Advocacy for People with Disabilities, and Scrapbooks and Collected Materials.
Euline McCorkle, or "Corki," was born on November 26, 1936 in Decaturville, Tennessee. She contracted polio after completing the third grade and spent seven months on the critical list in a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. She was completely paralyzed during this period and required the use of an iron lung. After seven months, continual respiratory support was no longer necessary and she was transferred to the Crippled Children's School in Memphis, where she received her fourth and fifth grade training. She returned to her home near Memphis where she then completed her sixth grade while bedridden via a local homebound schooling program. At the age of twelve, both of her parents died in an automobile accident, and both she and her sister were sent to Ypsilanti, Michigan to live with an older brother and his wife.
For a time, McCorkle was a patient in the children's division at University Hospital and studied to a limited extent at the hospital school. She was then moved to Mary Free Bed, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Through rehabilitation, she was soon able to sit upright in a wheelchair for short periods of time. She returned to the Ann Arbor area and completed her seventh grade work through the homebound program. She was enrolled in a rehabilitation program at the School for the Handicapped in Farmington, Michigan, where she regained some use of her hands and completed her eighth grade work. Shortly after her transfer to the Ann Arbor Convalescent Home, she contracted pneumonia in both lungs and returned to the University Hospital, where she again required substantial respiratory support.
After recovery she returned home and began the homebound program associated with Ann Arbor High School. For one semester in tenth grade, Taratsas attended the high school in a wheelchair. She soon contracted pneumonia again and resumed homebound instruction. She received her high school diploma in June 1962 with high honors from Willow Run High School. In subsequent terms, she earned credits from the University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan and Michigan State in classes related to human services and graduated from Cleary College in Ann Arbor with a degree in business administration.
McCorkle was firmly committed to the advocacy needs of people with disabilities, and contributed to many different organizations in multiple areas, on a local, state and national level. She was the area and chapter president of the National Association of the Physically Handicapped, a charter member of Physically Impaired Association of Michigan, and one of the founders of the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living. Taratsas sat on the Governors Commission of barrier free design and the Presidents Task Force on barrier free design, on the Governors Task Force for Vocational Rehabilitation and the board for the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority. She was the recipient of many awards and recognized for her role as an advocate, from the 1960s to the 1990s.
Taratsas was also an active member of the First Baptist Church of Ann Arbor. On August 26, 1978, she married James Taratsas and also shared custody of James's young son. She died of breast cancer on September 26, 2001.
