Barry Corbet, 1936 - 2004
New Mobility is saddened to report that Barry Corbet, NM's editor from 1991 to 2000, died Dec. 18 after a short bout with bladder cancer. He was 68. Family and friends were at his side in his Golden, Colo., home, and said that he was communicative and comfortable until the end.

Corbet, a widely published author and filmmaker, was also a world-renowned mountaineer and skier before his spinal cord injury. Even so, he once said that editing New Mobility was the best job he ever had. "NM is my enduring love," he said when he retired four years ago.

"Barry's passion for NM stemmed from his own epiphanies about disability," says Jean Dobbs, who worked with Corbet during most of his tenure at the magazine. "He really wanted everyone to know, as he came to know, that life after disability can be full and rewarding. He always said, 'You still get the whole ball of wax.'"

During the first two decades after his 1968 injury, Corbet shot three groundbreaking films about spinal cord injury: Changes, about coming to terms with SCI, Outside, about living an active life, and Survivors, about aging with a disability. In 1980, he wrote Options: Spinal Cord Injury and the Future, now in its 10th printing. The power of Options was one of the things that prompted Sam Maddox to publish Spinal Network: The Total Resource for the Wheelchair Community, which included updates from many of the SCI survivors in Corbet's book. Spinal Network, in turn, led to the launch of New Mobility in 1989.

The magazine operated in the red for several years, but Corbet continued to guide it editorially, even when a paycheck wasn't a sure thing. Jeff Leonard, NM's current publisher, says, "Without Barry, I wouldn't have acquired New Mobility, and the magazine would have folded in 1998."

"He made it the most-read disability magazine in the world," Dobbs says.

Besides being well-known to wheelchair users, Corbet, born in Vancouver, British Columbia, is famous among serious mountain climbers and skiers. Along with fellow Dartmouth College students, Corbet pioneered the "Grand Traverse," a ski route from British Columbia's Bugaboos to Rogers Pass. Corbet decided not to finish his degree and instead moved to Jackson, Wyo., to teach skiing in the winter.

In 1959 Corbet and three others were the first to climb the southwest rib of North America's highest mountain, Denali, which is located in Alaska. Corbet was also one of the first to ascend Antarctica's Mount Tyree.

Back on the slopes of Jackson Hole in 1960, Corbet looked down a seemingly impassable valley. He said to Jackson Hole founder Paul McCollister, "People will ski that--it will be a run." Today that run is named for him, and "Corbet's Couloir," only accessible by tram, is considered the mountain's most famous run.

In 1963 Corbet, a member of the first American team to ascend Mount Everest's west ridge, graciously yielded his place on the summit to his fellow-mountaineers, figuring he'd return some day. Corbet never made it to Everest's summit, as in 1968 a gust smashed his helicopter into the West Maroon Bell, near Aspen, Colo., while he was shooting a ski film. The crash fractured Corbet's spine, causing a T12/L1 injury, and sent him down an unexpected path.

"Because of his spinal cord injury, Barry kind of had two lives," says Dobbs. "And he lived more fully in both of them than most of us do in one."

Corbet is survived by his sons, Jonathan and Mike; his daughter, Jennifer; his brother, Burke, and his four grandchildren. The family asks that any donations be made to Mount Evans Hospice, PO Box 2770, Evergreen, CO 80437-2770.

To read some of Corbet's disability writing, click here for access to his NM articles. A tribute site is online at www.barrycorbet.com. New Mobility's March cover story will further explore Corbet's impact on the disability community, and readers are invited to submit their thoughts here.

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