Joni Eareckson Tada
Novelist
Evangelical writer and radio personality known for her Christian-themed books on the subject of people with disabilities. Her titles include Choices...Changes, A Step Further, and When God Weeps.
At the age of seventeen, she suffered a diving accident that left her a quadriplegic. She later published a memoir detailing her physical and emotional rehabilitation in the years following the life-changing incident.
She established Joni and Friends, a Christian foundation catering to the spiritual needs of disabled people.
She and her husband Ken married in the early 1980s and settled in Calabasas, California.
Like Superman actor Christopher Reeve, she became disabled as the result of a sporting accident.