Former State Rep Kathryn Epton Dies

Thu., Nov. 19, 1998

By Pat Sciuchetti pats@spokesman.com

At first, Kathryn Epton fought for her own son.

But over time, her work as a 4th District legislator and advocate for the disabled came to change the lives of thousands.

Epton, a long-time Valley resident and former Democratic state representative, died last week, just a few months after cancer forced her to curtail her work for the handicapped. She was 86.

“She was still testifying before groups, way into her 80s,” said Dick Boysen, executive director of the Spokane Guild’s School and Neuromuscular Center. “Disabled people in this state have probably lost their most effective voice.”

Epton’s son John, who had cerebral palsy, was the one who first taught her about the challenges faced by the disabled. She spent years, inside and outside of the Legislature, fighting for a state law requiring public schools to serve the handicapped.

The law became reality in 1971 and later spread nationwide.

Epton also pushed for funding and programs that allowed the disabled to move out of institutions and into homes in the community. She founded the Merry Glen Home and School for the Handicapped in 1962. A similar program, called the Epton Center, opened in Pullman. The Epton Center later moved to Washington State University. It remains there today, although it no longer provides living quarters for the disabled.

State laws protecting the handicapped are still sometimes referred to as “Epton laws,” Boysen said.

Epton initiated some of that legislation while serving four terms as a Valley legislator in the 1950s and ‘60s. She later worked as a social worker, continuing to testify and argue for programs to help the handicapped. She herself co-founded one of those programs: the Easter Seal Society.

Besides her community work, Epton raised five children and spent years caring for her husband, Valley physician John W. Epton, who was seriously burned in an auto accident in 1966 and suffered a stroke in 1969.

Epton continued her work after she was widowed in 1975, only giving it up a few months before her death.

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