Wright State’s first director of the Office of Disability Services has died

Pat Marx (at left), then Director of Wright State's Office of Disability Services speaking with Robert Kegerreis (middle), Wright State University's second president and Jeff Vernooy (at right), Wright State's current Director of Disability Services at the first National Conference of Disability Service Providers held at Wright State in 1977.

Patricia Marx, the first director of Wright State’s Office of Disability Services, died Friday, Feb. 18^th in Corrales, N.M. Marx died at the age of 63 after battling breast cancer for 20 years.

Marx lead the Office of Disability Services from 1970-1980 at a time when there were no more than a dozen such offices at universities across the country, according to current Director of Disability Services Jeff Vernooy.

“She laid the cornerstone for our department. She was a person with great ideas, and many of those ideas and services have led us to be the institution that we are today,” said Vernooy.

Marx will be particularly remembered for being driven to make all campus buildings accessible to disabled students and faculty. She formed the architectural barriers committee, which helped retrofit existing campus buildings with handicap accessibility and worked with architects to make sure future buildings were equally equipped.

“It was all she thought about, trying to get the program up and going,”said her husband, Barry Garlitz.

Led by Marx, Wright State’s office of Disability Services was up and going in 1970, decades before the Americans with Disabilities Act was created in 1990.

“They needed somebody to pile-drive the ideas, and she was a great fit. She had a real stick-to-it-of-ness, a real ability to override resistance,” said Garlitz.

Marx also helped pioneer the personal assistance program at Wright State. The program provides student employees to help disabled students with essential tasks like bathing and dressing. Vernooy says Wright State is one of just 50 universities that still provide the program today.

“She was a very caring person, and she took her job at Wright State and the others very seriously,” said Garlitz.

After her time at Wright State, Marx went on to work for Monsanto at the Mound in Miamisburg, and a decade later took a job as the chief operating officer for Lovelace Respirator Research in New Mexico. She worked there for 15 years.

Marx will be remembered with religious services Thursday night and Friday morning at the San Ysidro church in Corrales.