Wade Blank; Minister Championed Rights of Disabled

Wade Blank, 52, who led a national rights movement on behalf of disabled people. Blank, head of the Denver-based Atlantis American Disabled Attendant Programs Today, lobbied to make buses, street corners and other public places accessible to the disabled and worked to allow them to live independently instead of in nursing homes. A Presbyterian minister, Blank was not disabled himself but was inspired to help the disabled after working in a nursing home in the mid-1970s. He was the subject of a TV movie, “When You Remember Me.” He drowned Monday off Baja California while unsuccessfully trying to save his son, who also drowned.