About Never Fade Away: Untold Stories of Developmental Disability
An oral history podcast where we explore the untold stories of people with developmental disabilities. Produced by LADD, a leading nonprofit advocacy and services organization for people with disabilities in the Midwest, Never Fade Away preserves personal narratives from Ohioans with developmental disabilities—before and after the ADA.
Each episode features stories from individuals who lived through institutional systems, such as the Columbus State Institute and Orient, alongside younger voices who have only known integrated classrooms and evolving opportunities for independent living. These oral histories reveal resilience, challenge, change, and hope.
Neurospicy host Kate Siahaan-Rigg guides these conversations with empathy and creative insight, bringing these memories into the present. Never Fade Away is a tribute to lives lived, rights hard-won, and futures still unfolding
David & Susan: Revolutionizing Developmental Disability Services, Rights and Visibility
Meet David and Susan, who have decades of experience between then leading LADD, one of the most innovative and revolutionary disability services organizations in the USA. How do you move from institutions and segregation to true community inclusion? In this special episode of Never Fade Away, host Kate Siahaan-Rigg interviews former LADD Executive Director David Robinson and current CEO Susan Brownknight about the philosophy, innovations, and hard-fought battles that transformed d...
12 May 2026
Lynne: Reclaiming Life after The Orient State Institute
Lynne survived things most people cannot imagine. In this episode of Never Fade Away, Lynne shares her firsthand memories of living with an undiagnosed developmental disability inside the infamous Orient State Institute, where residents were identified by numbers instead of names, forced into labor, and denied dignity and family connection. But this is not only a story about institutionalization. It’s also a story about resilience, music, art, independence, and self-determination. After livin...
14 Apr 2026
Phyllis: Phyllis: The Life and Calling of Direct Support Professionals
In this episode of Never Fade Away, host Kate Siahaan-Rigg speaks with Phyllis, a direct support professional and coordinator at LADD in Cincinnati who has spent more than four decades working alongside people with developmental disabilities. Through Phyllis’s story, we hear not only the evolution of a career—but the evolution of an entire field. She shares vivid stories from the field—moments of humor, challenge, and hard-earned wisdom—including early gaps in training, encounters with exploi...
9 Mar 2026
Edwina: Hard Truths about being sent to an "Institution"
In this episode, we meet Edwina, who shares a powerful and deeply personal account of her childhood, beginning when she was taken from her home at the age of nine or ten and placed in the Columbus State School, where she lived for twelve years. Some of these recollections are difficult, emotional and candid so listeners should be prepared for her unvarnished truth. Edwina recalls being transported in a sheriff’s car and suddenly separated from her family, without a clear explana...
10 Feb 2026
Tim: Living and Thriving with Cerebral Palsy
In this week's episode, I am talking to Tim, an avid sports fan and a popular employee at LADD. Currently living on his own, he’s the winner of the Spirit of Independence Award. Tim shares insights into life as a person with cerebral palsy, discussing growing up with a service dog, education with and without the assistance of aides in the classroom, and challenges like moving out for the first time, learning to cope with anxiety, and the significance of speaking up for oneself. This is his st...
4 Oct 2025
Sis And Her Brothers: How one Family started a Disability Services Movement
In this episode, we meet the remarkable Sis Geier on he eve of her 70th birthday, along with her three brothers, Peter, Rodney, and Jeff. These four siblings are the children of the dynamic community organizer Peggy Geier, who, along with friends and other community leaders, started LADD in 1975 to help people with developmental disabilities live, work, and connect. Fifty years later, LADD continues to break ground for people with disabilities as a powerful force for inclusion and equity in C...
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