Mary Ann Jones, 63; head of Westside Center for Independent Living

Mary Ann Jones, executive director of the Westside Center for Independent Living in Los Angeles who devoted the last three decades to working on behalf of people with disabilities, has died. She was 63.

Jones, a Burbank resident, died Sept. 23 as a result of pulmonary embolisms at Kaiser Permanente Panorama City Medical Center, her husband, Don, said.

A past president of the California Foundation for Independent Living Centers, Jones was a leader of the advocacy effort for people with disabilities.

“She was a committed, hard-working yet gracious leader who dedicated her life to furthering the cause of disability rights,” said Aliza Barzilay, interim executive director of the Westside center.

Most recently, Barzilay said, Jones was trying to improve the healthcare system to incorporate the needs of people with disabilities, advocating for affordable and accessible housing for people with disabilities, and educating those who have experienced domestic violence.

“She worked very hard on community accessibility and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is really about equal access to ensure a level playing field for people with disabilities,” Barzilay said.

Jones, who was born Jan. 20, 1944, in Omaha, had an affinity with people with disabilities. She had been a quadriplegic since she was 23, having broken her neck diving off the end of a dock while on a family camping trip in Minnesota with her husband and their 2-year-old daughter, Wendy, in 1967.

“We had no idea what a spinal cord injury was,” recalled Don Jones, who met Mary Ann when they were seniors in high school and married her a year after graduation.

Between hospitalization and undergoing rehabilitation at the Sister Kenny Rehabilitation Institute in Minneapolis, he said, “it was about a year and three months before she was able to come home.”

When his wife was injured, he said, “there was no Americans with Disabilities Act.” Restaurants did not have wheelchair access or wheelchair-accessible bathrooms, for example, and there were no curb cuts, he said.

“There was no consideration of access anywhere for wheelchairs,” he said. “It’s so different now from what it was then.”

Don Jones said it took his wife about seven years after her accident before “she started to kind of come out of her depression and start to get active.”

While majoring in communications at what is now Minnesota State University Mankato in the late ‘70s, she began volunteering for the local United Way chapter “and just getting very involved in all the disability stuff at that point,” he said.

After graduating with honors in 1981, Jones went to work in the communications department at the rehabilitation institute.

After moving to Chicago in 1982, she became director of public relations for the Schwab Rehabilitation Center, and a couple of years later she became director of communications for the National Easter Seal Society, a nonprofit serving people with disabilities, where she worked for five years.

A few years after moving to Burbank in 1989, she joined the staff of the Westside center, first as grants and public affairs manager and then as development director.

She became executive director in 1996 and held that position until her death.

Jones also was the center’s leader in launching Living Independently in Los Angeles, an online resource for disabled people in collaboration with UCLA

As an advocate for people with disabilities, Jones “was incredibly level-headed and calming and focused,” her husband said.

“Other people would get angry, write nasty letters, threaten and wail and moan, and Mary would just calmly talk to people, raise money, advocate for legislation, write grants, make contacts and just slowly bring everything together and make progress.”

Although she was not confrontational, “she never backed off and never took any guff from anybody at all,” he said.

“She was adamant about really what the Westside Center for Independent Living is all about, which is stated in its name: get away from this wheelchair-bound mentality and get on to being a person with a disability who’s active in society.”

Among the many honors Jones received for her work were a Los Angeles County Commission on Disability Access Award and a Pioneer Women Award from the Los Angeles City Commission on the Status of Women.

In addition to her husband of 44 years and their daughter, Jones is survived by two brothers, Dennis and Curtis Nordell.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Tuesday at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, 11555 National Blvd., Los Angeles.

The family requests that contributions in Jones’ memory be made to the Westside Center for Independent Living, 12901 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066.

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dennis.mclellan@latimes.com