ENGLEWOOD — A photo greets guests when they walk into Shirley Hall Green’s living room.
It’s Josh Hall standing on his own two feet carrying a little girl on his back.
The snapshot, taken at an encampment for the poor in Washington in the late 1960s, is the first thing you see when you walk into the home and the last thing you see when you leave.
No, Hall isn’t a famous African-American rights leader nor a pioneer of science or medicine, or even a slavery abolitionist.
It’s Green’s son as a teenager — energetic, motivated and healthy.
But the years passed by, the photo faded and with it, a new reality set in.
Behind the wall where the photo hangs today, lies a 53-year-old Josh Hall, resting in a wheelchair, unable to walk, talk or feed himself.
Now, 40 years after the photo was taken, Josh will never be able to carry the weight of a little girl again.
Josh, Green’s eldest son, fell 28 feet from a building he was working on at the age of 32.
The traumatic brain injury he sustained after the fall left him paralyzed.
Curled up in a wheelchair, lifting his head only for his mother and other siblings, the photo of what once was may seem like a distant memory.
But it’s not.
The people in the photos on the living room wall may have changed, but one thing remains constant — the family’s bond, their long lives lived with each other.
And Shirley Green is the glue that holds it all together.
Every afternoon at 3:15 p.m. on the dot, Green’s other son Chris, 45, walks into the kitchen and takes one small cup of applesauce out of the refrigerator. He hides small pills of seizure medication inside the sweet puree and feeds it to Josh.
Shirley says, "I can’t get along without you Chris."
Chris, who suffers from autism, automatically smiles wide and giggles, not saying a word.
Green is 80 years old.
Yes, she takes care of two handicapped sons.
And yes, she sees it as an opportunity, not a detriment.
"You got a choice. Treat everything in life as a stumbling block or a stepping stone," Green said.
Green, an author, college graduate, democratic political supporter and former Englewood English teacher, says she doesn’t let the bumps in the road slow her down one bit.
Take the time Green was a teenager working in a factory in Providence, R.I. in the 1940s.
Two of her fingers were cut off in the molding room. Black girls couldn’t work upstairs, she said.
"I would do the electrical molding. It was hot, sweaty and dirty," she said.
Or the time Green was denied being a Girl Scout and her father made it a headline.
"Colored girls weren’t allowed at the Girl Scout camp. We broke down that barrier," she said.
Green’s father, William D. Wiley, "a voice for change when there were very few others" owned the newspaper the Providence Chronicle, Green said.
At the time, it was one of the only papers dedicated to exposing African-American inequality in the city.
According to Green, the headline that week read: "Scout Camp denies Negro girl."
Days later, the camp opened its doors to black girls.
But "being the first doesn’t mean anything if someone doesn’t come up behind you," according to Green.
As managing editor of her father’s newspaper, Green did just that — she followed the activist suit.
Later, she wrote an investigative piece on how she and other black girls were denied jobs as saleswomen in local department stores.
The first hiring of black salespeople was the result of the Chronicle’s article, Green said.
And her siblings?
George Wiley is the leader of the Welfare Rights Movement and other African-American causes and her other brother was the first black Superior Court judge in Rhode Island.
A shining moment of the family’s civil rights efforts came last year when the University of Rhode Island dedicated an academic hall to the Wiley family, for their tireless African-American activism and historical significance in Providence.
But despite all her hard work, Green fell on hard times.
Brother George Wiley mysteriously disappeared and died in 1973.
Son Josh Hall’s wife left him shortly after his paralyzing fall, leaving Green as Josh’s sole caretaker.
And a week after her 80th birthday last year, Green had surgery to remove cancer in her kidney.
Thankfully, for her children, nieces and nephews, their rock was cured of the disease and Green continues to care for them.
Still Green says, "I’m not only blessed, but no matter what happens in life, God is watching over his own."
Green says her crowning achievement, what she has learned most from in life, are her two sons.
The longtime Englewood resident said she dedicates all the innate activist spirit and effort she has left to fighting for the integration of handicapped people into everyday society.
"Learning to raise a developmentally disabled person is it. All the usual methods of raising a child don’t apply and all adjustments have to be made in life," she said.
"It’s like you’re on a trip thinking you’re heading to Italy but you end up in Holland. Holland has nice tulips."
Green said she would like to thank her other child, daughter Elisabeth, for being her "guiding light."
