There wasn’t much that Jonathan Reichenthal let stand in his way, especially if it came to watching his favorite football team. A devoted Cardinal fan since early childhood, he went to every home football and men’s basketball game while he attended Stanford. When he discovered there were no wheelchair platforms in Stanford Stadium’s student section, he and his friends immediately went to the Diversity and Access Office with a special request. Jonathan ended up exactly where he wanted, with his friends from the Band and Axe Committee—on the field.
A tireless advocate for improving access for the physically challenged, Reichenthal died September 26 in Palo Alto of acute respiratory failure. He was 23.
Born with muscular dystrophy and confined to a wheelchair from the age of 10, he graduated from Gunn High School in Palo Alto, where he was a network administrator and NASA intern. Choosing Stanford was “kind of a no-brainer” for him, says Reichenthal’s mother, Irene McGhee. “He’d loved Stanford all his life.”
Reichenthal often felt people in wheelchairs were assumed to be intellectually deficient, and he made a point of speaking up in class as soon as possible, says McGhee, “so the teacher would know he was smart.” Unable to take notes, “he had to remember lectures, work out physics problems in his head, things like that.”
At Stanford, he reveled in dorm life, tutored other students and interned for Xerox. He was treasurer of the Axe Committee, his most cherished affiliation. And he left a lasting imprint on campus as a result of his work with Rosa González, director of the Diversity and Access Office, who says Reichenthal became her personal consultant. He came into González’s office “nearly every other day” for four years with an access-improvement suggestion. He and González toured the campus before scheduled renovations, finding spots where a wheelchair ramp could be installed or a curb cut. His recommendations were instrumental in the addition of elevators in the Kimball and Branner residence halls, a redesign of the gated entrance to the Dish, and numerous other campus modifications. Says González: “There isn’t anywhere on this campus that I don’t think of him. He had a big impact.”
After graduating, Reichenthal designed websites and continued to work with González, using technology like voice recognition software to evaluate the accessibility of campus websites.
Reichenthal loved gardening and cooking, wanted to eat every ethnic cuisine possible and had the ability to live completely in the moment, says his father, Jeffrey. “He wanted people to recognize him as being a complete person who enjoyed his life.”
At an October memorial service on campus, the Band arrived to salute the loyal Axe Committee member. Besides the fulfillment of his one demand (an annual party in his honor with hats, sushi and poetry—especially haiku) it was a sight Reichenthal would have enjoyed most of all. “From beginning to end, he was a real Stanford man,” says McGhee.
In addition to his parents, Reichenthal is survived by his sister, Alison, ’04, and his brother, Will.
