Benjamin Ricci Memorial Service
A memorial program titled “Remembering Ben,” honoring the late Benjamin Ricci of Amherst, professor emeritus of exercise science and longtime advocate for the mentally retarded, will be held Sunday, March 26. Ricci died after an extended illness on January 21 at the age of 82.
The memorial program, co-sponsored by the Advocacy Network and the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation, will begin with refreshments and a social hour at 2 p.m., with scheduled speakers at 3. Among the scheduled speakers are:
* Attorney Beryl Cohen of Boston, counsel for the Ricci case from its inception
* John Hodge, U.S. Air Force retired
* Mary McCarthy, former DMR commissioner
* Gerald J. Morrissey Jr., commissioner, Department of Mental Retardation
* Sal Panzera, president of Parents and Friends Association of Monson Developmental Center
* Dana P. Snyder, professor emeritus
* Representative Ellen Story of Amherst
* Advocacy Network Board of Directors members:
Erni Booth
Richard Gowen
Ed Orzechowski
Everett Kosarick
Donald Vitkus
Ricci was a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, author and recipient of numerous academic and humanitarian awards. He taught at UMass Amherst for 36 years, joining the faculty in 1950 as an instructor in Physical Education. Ricci was the author of three books on physiology, was a member of Sigma Xi and Phi Kappa Phi, a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Academia Medica di Roma. He retired from the faculty in 1986.
He was principal plaintiff among a group of parents, the Belchertown State School Friends Association (now Advocacy Network), in a landmark 1972 class action suit against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that brought sweeping changes in the care of individuals with mental retardation.
The case, Ricci v. Greenblatt, resulted in a 1973 consent decree by U. S. District Judge Joseph L. Tauro that continues to safeguard the rights of mentally retarded residents in Massachusetts today.
When their first-born son Bobby was diagnosed as mentally retarded, Ben and Virginia Ricci wer told by doctors and school officials told that placement at Belchertown State School was their only option. In the fall of 1953, the couple admitted Bobby to the Belchertown facility, a traumatic event that led to Ricci’s passionate devotion to fighting for the rights of the retarded.
Ricci later chronicled his family crisis, the inhumane conditions at Belchertown, and the subsequent decades-long court battle against DMR in "Crimes Against Humanity," a book he published last year. Original papers and documents related to the Ricci case are now archived in the W.E.B. Du Bois Library.