December 3, 2025: International Day of Persons with Disabilities (PWD), in 3 articles

 December 3, 2025

International Day of Persons 

with Disabilities (PWD)

“My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit as well as physically.” -Stephen Hawking

Part 1 - Utility Wheel Chair Mobile: Inventor Jose Pepito A Rojas

Part 2 - Men and women who rose to fame in spite of their handicaps

Part 3 - Meditation and Reflection - A Travelogue-on-Wheels

Part 1 - Utility Wheel Chair Mobile:  Inventor Jose Pepito A Rojas 

San Vicente Ilocos Sur (Philippines) to the World Series

Dr Abe V Rotor

   Remembering Successful People with Disabilities.

Also in celebration of Philippine National Hero Apolinario Mabini Day, July 23, 2025

The genuineness of an invention lies in the unselfish motive and dedication to serve the “least of God’s brethren,” indeed the greatest service one can contribute to humanity.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature - School on Blog

Features of the UWC Mobile:

• Road Car
• Utility vehicle
• Wheel Chair

Side view of the UWC Mobile shows simplicity in design, made of all-surplus and easy-to- assemble parts, allowing details in innovations and personal aesthetics. Options: TV and radio, GPS, a detachable roof-umbrella easy-to-open-and-fold. It is its simplicity and practicality that makes the UWC Mobile universal, revolutionizing today's two-, three- and four-wheel transports. It is home made.  

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention.  There’s no argument about that.  But taken on another line of reasoning, which to me is on the level of philosophy, invention is the work of a genius whose condition becomes the parameter of the benefits others might be served by such invention.  

For example, Braille writing and reading was designed by a blind inventor Louis Braille to whose name his invention was named. Today his invention is benefitting millions of blind people all over the world helping them become literate and share the world of those whose vision is unimpaired.

John Milton’s sequel of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained is believed to be in the imagery of the inner eye expressed in romantic and forceful epic poetry, while in the case of French impressionist Claude Monet his mural masterpieces evolved from the twilight of his vision that puzzled scientists if he had an ultraviolet eye.    

Can you imagine a deaf Ludwig Beethoven composing Moonlight Sonata for a blind girl wishing to see the stars? 

What motivated Alexander Graham Bell to invent the telephone, and Thomas Edison the phonograph and the cinematic camera but their indomitable courage in conquering their disabilities in learning and hearing, which consequently “brought the world closer.”  

And to think that the great Albert Einstein who split the atom was diagnosed of Asperger's Syndrome, a type of autism, Sir Isaac Newton the father of physics an epileptic, and Stephen Hawkings suffering of a rare motor neuron disease.

Henry Ford had dyslexia, so with Leonardo da Vinci and Walt Disney.  Perhaps the most extreme scenario is the case of Helen Keller who was blind, deaf and mute, and yet she became the light of the world for persons with disabilities (PWD). 

There are many PWDs who have hidden qualities akin, in their own ways, to those of great inventors and leaders.  One of them is our special person, Jose A Rojas, known to his family and friends as Boying.  He was born with a chronic paraplegic disability.  His hobby in electronics and mechanics gadgets led him to put up a home workshop, a local hub, so to speak, for radio and TV repair, for students working on school projects, motorists and hobbyists as well.

Imagine how busy Boying’s workshop is, not only because of his everyday visitors and many friends.  He would keep their attention and interest by sharing his rich knowledge, practical and experiential, about a wide range of things electronic and mechanical. It’s a tutorship school of sort.  

Who would not ponder on his invention, a Utility Wheel Chair Mobile (UWC Mobile)? 

It is a Road Car, Utility vehicle, and Wheel Chair combined. What is amazing is that the parts he used are second hand, and some even came from the junkyard.  

Which reminds me of the Moon Buggy. The inventor is a Filipino, Engr. Eduardo San Juan, a.k.a. Space Junkman. It is said that the “junkyard” provided components in building this wonderful lunar rover which beat all entries, including the sophisticated and all new models. Isn’t the passenger jeepney, signature of Filipino ingenuity, made of war surplus after WWII? And became a symbol of Filipino culture?

  In 1971, the Moon Buggy was first used by NASA during the Apollo 12 landing to explore the Moon. The inventor, Eduardo San Juan graduated from Mapua Institute of Technology. He then studied Nuclear Engineering at the University of Washington. In 1978, San Juan received one of the Ten Outstanding Men (TOM) awards in science and technology.

Here is a brief description on how The Moon Buggy won over all entries. 

“During the final test demonstration to select one design from various submissions, his was the only one that worked. Thus, his design won the NASA Contract. His overall concept and design of the Articulated Wheel System was considered brilliant. Each wheel appendage was mounted not underneath the vehicle, but was placed outside the body of the vehicle and each was motorized. Wheels could work independently of the others. It was designed to negotiate crater ingress and egress. The other vehicles did not make it into or out of the test crater. Our Father, Eduardo San Juan, was a very positively charged creative who enjoyed a healthy sense of humor.” Personal Note from Elisabeth San Juan, the proud daughter of Eduardo San Juan

                                             

Boying’s UWC Mobile is an alternative to the ear-splitting noisy motorbike and tricycle (it simply moves around virtually noiseless). It offers a no-pollution alternative to gasoline- and diesel-fed engines (internal-combustion engines). The UWC Mobile is for and of the people. It is a hallmark of a PWD's ingenuity in his own way to be of service to his kind - and humanity for that matter.

Boying Alconis Rojas poses with family and relatives with his three-in-one invention for today's active living, to serve the increasing number of senior citizens, persons with disability (PWD), including the infirmed getting out of their confine, and technology becoming practical and people-oriented.      

Rear view of the UWC Mobile shows a series of standard car batteries conveniently tucked under a plastic armchair. Wall socket charging for a few hours is all that the prime mover, a simple electric motor, needs for a few days' service up to a week or two.

Below: Two of the latest inventions of Boying:

Electronically controlled double lock system, one for the gate with hydraulic hinge control; the other for sliding door (lower photos), both designed for convenience and security. Note local and second hand parts were used in assembling the two inventions.

People on the grassroots are fascinated by simple and functional inventions, even  without the benefit of understanding their scientific explanation.  Among such inventions are Dr Fe Del Mundo’s improved incubator and a jaundice relieving device, Eduardo Quisumbing’s Quink quick drying ink, and Rolando de la Cruz’s mole or wart remover without leaving marks or hurting the patient. More popular ones are the solar panel, rice hull stove, mechanical driers for grains, among others.

On the collective consciousness there are inventions which developed spontaneously and through time lost the identity of their sources. Like oral history, stories passed on through generations (e.g. Epic of Lam-ang) became “literature of the people.” So with many indigenous inventions, which are regarded today as “people’s inventions.”

These are the likes of the jeepney, tricycle, kuliglig (hand tractor cum trailer).  We don’t have to go far.  Balisong  (butterfly knife), kampilan (local sword), kumpit (swift motorized dugout) - and recently, the kurong-kurong, PHOTO a tricycle sans roof, built for transporting rough and heavy materials. (Acknowledgement: photo from Internet.)

On the culinary side we have pinakbet, kare-kare, caliente (ox hide) whose origin are untraceable.  It may be as simple as it looks, but who invented the scissor? Paper clip? Indeed there are one-thousand-and-one inventions likely by the “Unknown Inventor.” 

The genuineness of an invention such as the UWC Mobile of Jose Pepito A Rojas lies in the unselfish motive and dedication to serve the “least of God’s brethren,” indeed the greatest service one can contribute to humanity. ~ 

NOTE: Jose Pepito “Boying Rojas” is the youngest brother of the author’s wife Mrs Cecilia Rojas Rotor. Boying took up industrial education and became proficient in electronics and mechanics by experience and association with his father who was an ardent hobbyist of cars and machines. Boying manages his own shop in his residence in Bayubay, San Vicente, Ilocos Sur.    

“Disability is a matter of perception. If you can do just one thing well, you’re needed by someone.” - Martina Navratilova

Part 2 -   Men and women who rose to fame in spite of their handicaps 

Around us - in our family, among friends, in our community - there are illustrious examples of this rare breed.  We may be among them.  Let's carry on!  

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature School on Blog

Apolinario Mabini, Filipino hero, was an invalid. He was a revolutionary leader, educator, lawyer, and statesman who served the Revolutionary Government, and the First Philippine Republic.

Handicaps build strength and purpose – and achievement.

1. Edgar Allan Poe was a psychoneurotic; Vincent van Gogh, founder of Expressionism suffered mental illness.

2. Robert Louis Stevenson and John Keats had tuberculosis.

3. Charles Darwin was an invalid in later life. PHOTO

4. Admiral Nelson had only one eye he sustained in a fierce naval battle.

5. Thomas Edison and Ludwig Beethoven were deaf.

6. So with Robert Schumann who suffered mental disorder that first manifested as a severe melancholic depressive episode.

7. Charles Steinmetz (German-born American mathematician who fostered the development of alternating current) and Alexander Pope (English poet) were hunchbacks.

8. Julius Caesar was an epileptic. Julius Caesar

9. Lord Byron had a club foot.

10. Peter Stuyvesant last Dutch colonial governor who tried to resist the English seizure of New York wore a wooden leg.

11. Pop star Selena Gomez was diagnosed with lupus.

12. Hollywood actor Tom Hanks his diabetic.

13. TV and film star Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease when he was 30 years old.

14. Stevie Wonder, singer and songwriter, is blind; so with singer-lawyer Andrea Bocelli.

15.  was diagnosed with a slow-progressing form of motor disease that gradually paralyzed him over the decades until his death in 2018, aged 76. Stephen Hawking 

Hawking's contribution to our understanding: the Big Bang, quantum mechanics, black holes and the theory of relativity earlier proposed by Einstein.

16. Helen Keller was the first deaf and blind person to earn a college degree. She published 12 books, and campaigned for women’s rights and labor rights her entire life. Helen Keller 

17. Franklin Roosevelt one of the greatest American presidents ever, had polio and was paralyzed from the waist down. FDR can take partial credit for both ending the Great Depression and defeating Nazi Germany. 

18. John Nash Jr., an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to game theory, differential geometry, and the study of partial differential equations suffered of Schizophrenia.

19. Christy Brown (PHOTO), an Irish writer and painter had cerebral palsy and was able to write or type only with the toes of one foot. His autobiography My Left Foot was made into a Academy Award winning movie.

Cerebral Palsy.

20. Demosthenes, a Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens was able to overcome stammering through great determination and practice. He is regarded as the father of the art of oration.

     

We don’t have to go far to illustrate this mysterious law of compensation.

1. Pres Manuel L. Quezon had tuberculosis.

2. Apolinario Mabini was an invalid. 

3. Senator Herrera is a polio victim, so with the late columnist Art Borjal.

4. Grace Padaca (PHOTO)
Politician and Broadcaster

5, Fernando Kabigting - Painter After a stroke paralyzed his right hand and blinded his left eye in 1999, Fernando had to learn how to paint with his left hand. His works are exhibited here and abroad.

6. Raymond Martin - Paralympic Athlete, born with Freeman Sheldon Syndrome,

7, Michael Barredo - Businessman, Radio Personality, and Former Philippine Sports Commissioner, a passionate advocate for people who are blind, recipient Paralympic Award,

8. Roselle Ambubuyog - Mathematician, scholar and Motivational Speaker lost her sight as a child.

9. Arnold Balais - Paralympic, Power Lifter, Swimmer, and Mountain Climber won multiple gold medals over the course of his career.

10. Romalito “Rome” Mallari - Actor deaf, nominated Best New Actor Golden Screen Award, and well-received at the Cannes Film Festival. PHOTO

11. Jovy Sasutona - Painter lost the use of his hands, spent decades using his mouth and feet to paint vibrant Filipino life.

12.Jomar Maalam Swimmer first amputee athlete

13, Raymond Martin Athlete 2012 Paralympics,

14. Michael Barredo Business Owner, Radio Personality, and Former Philippine Sports Commissioner. a passionate advocate for people who are blind..

15. Fatima Soriano (PHOTO) is a blind Philippine singer, motivational and spiritual speaker,

This is just a short list of many people who rose to fame in spite of their disabilities and other circumstances in their lives that would defeat an ordinary person. They represent the triumph of the human spirit that keeps humanity alive and determined.  They serve as shining stars in the dark hours.  They are soldiers on the front line of a battle that tests courage, goal and meaning of life. 

Around us - in our family, among friends, in our community - there are illustrious examples of this rare breed.  Most likely you are one of them.  Carry on!  

Acknowledgement: Internet reference

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” -Francis of Assisi

 

Part 3 - Meditation and Reflection - 

        A Travelogue-on-Wheels

Painting and Text by Dr Abe V Rotor

Reflection and Meditation - A travelogue-on-wheels, painted by the author, 2016. Courtesy of St Paul College Ilocos Sur (SPCIS)

Take me into the scenery, though by imagination, make it virtually true; for I have missed life on the road, life in sports, life in adventure;

Take me to where the sun seeps through the leaves and cast a thousand art of figures and views, in kaleidoscope colors and designs;

Take me to where the leaves fall and make a litter on the forest floor, where new life arises, where the cycle of seasons goes on and on; 

Take me to where the birds sing in the trees, where the fowls roam, the crawlers play hide and seek, where crickets fiddle, cicadas sing;

Take me to where the night breaks into dawn, the sun rises in glorious rays and beams, where dewdrops reflect into a myriad of pearls;

Take me where twilight  heralds the coming of night in silence and peace, the world in deserved rest amidst stars and fireflies; 

Take me to the edge of the land by the sea and lake, to where the river flows in tranquility, the streams and rivulets sing sweetly;    

Take me to where the pond reflects the blue sky, clouds building into rain, and birds flying on their route at the urging of nature; 

Take me into the horizon, beyond the measure of this view, that I may discover more to add into the richness of this masterpiece;

Take me to where my prayers of thanksgiving, my reverence for life are offered in humility, respect and adoration to the Great Maker. ~

 Ilocos Upland  in acrylic on canvas (5ft x 12ft) by A V Rotor, 2017 

Image to Ponder

"When you hear the word ‘disabled,’ people immediately think about people who can’t walk or talk or do everything that people take for granted. Now, I take nothing for granted. But I find the real disability is people who can’t find joy in life and are bitter.” -Teri Garr  

Lesson on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio 738 DZRB AM, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday