The month of October is designated as National Disability Employment Awareness Month, a time to reflect, not just on the contributions disabled American continue to make to the nation, but also on the ways these courageous and committed individuals are changing our lives and our attitudes. Today, there is a public monument to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Washington that portrays the former President seated in his wheelchair, an image even his contemporaries rarely saw. The memorial is testimony both to FDR's courage and to the generosity of the great society he helped to create - a society that half-a-century after his death chose to measure FDR's greatness against the personal backdrop of pain and struggle.

Today, celebrities like Christopher Reeves and Michael J. Fox regularly lobby Capitol Hill for funds to support research into spinal injuries and Parkinson's Disease. Mary Fisher, founder of the Family AIDS Network, speaks to the Republican National Convention about a disability many Americans have trouble acknowledging, and walks off the stage to thunderous applause. In 1995, an American named Tom Whittaker becomes the first amputee in history to climb Mount Everest. The same year, a hearing-impaired American named Heather Whitestone is crowned Miss America.

Today, countless men and women with an array of physical disabilities are setting milestones of their own: blind athletes are participating in alpine and Nordic skiing, goalball, judo, power lifting, swimming, tandem cycling, track and field, and wrestling. Amputees are playing basketball and baseball with grace and glory. Marion Clignet transformed the 2000 Olympics into a personal triumph as well when she demonstrated to the world that epilepsy could not stop her from winning a Silver Medal in Track. And all around us, at Customs, and throughout the government, there are men and women who prove every day that courage can overcome any disability.