Betsy Laitinen, indomitable advocate for those with disabilities

In a simple parenthetical aside, Betsy Laitinen could use words to acknowledge one of the most obvious parts of her life and in the same moment lift herself and others beyond the wheelchair she needed to get around.

"She was very smart and well-spoken and would say the funniest things," said her niece Anne Colpitts of Chestnut Hill. "I got an e-mail from her a few weeks ago, and it began, 'I was just sitting here (for a change).' "

It was a joke about the wheelchair she had used for more than 25 years, but anyone who had spent time with Mrs. Laitinen knew her dry humor worked on more than one level. She may have sat, but she didn't sit still. An advocate for the rights of those with disabilities, she spent years working with agencies on everything from improving medical care to ensuring that people can live independently even when they need significant assistance with basic daily tasks.

Mrs. Laitinen, who had a neuromuscular illness akin to muscular dystrophy, was with friends for their annual girls' weekend on Cape Cod when she could not be awakened Saturday, and she died at Falmouth Hospital. She was 45 and had lived in Chestnut Hill.

"When you were with Betsy, you did not at all see her disability, you did not at all see her fragility, you did not at all see how at risk she was day to day," said Dr. Robert Master, president of the Commonwealth Care Alliance.

"What you saw was a person who was vibrant, empathetic, talented, engaged, and who always - both on a professional and a human-relations level - seemed to make everything better," he said. "Betsy personified where the disability human rights movement wants to go. How do you see the person and not the disability? How do you see the person with all her capabilities and not see someone in a wheelchair?"

Barbara Hantz, a longtime friend and the administrative director of Boston Community Medical Group, said that "the word 'can't' was not in her vocabulary. The word 'why' was. If you said, 'You can't do that,' she would say, 'Why?' "

Growing up in Weston, the fourth of five children, Elizabeth M. Colpitts was not slowed by her illness until she was 9 or 10, said her brother Richard Colpitts of Peru, Maine, her next oldest sibling. Even then, she was more active than many able-bodied friends.

"She was very social so she was always over at someone's house," he said. "I think her best and strongest trait was interpersonal skills. She was either on the phone or with someone constantly, and that defined her life into her 30s and 40s. She had a way of bringing people together who wouldn't always see themselves together."

After graduating from Weston High School, she went to Bryant College in Smithfield, R.I., her first experience living away from home. By then, walking had become difficult "so she had to learn how to use an electric wheelchair," her brother said. "And she had to learn how you party with your friends and still find your way back when your battery dies."

For several years, she was in charge of advocacy at the Boston Center for Independent Living and later managed member services for the community medical alliance program of the Neighborhood Health Plan. She also had chaired the board of directors for Boston Community Medical Group and had worked with Tufts University School of Medicine, helping medical students learn how to treat disabled patients.

"She was teaching them how to approach people with disabilities, what things to be sensitive to and be aware of," said Mary Glover, a nurse practitioner who is director of the Boston Community Medical Group. "She thought it was an important thing for the profession and for people with disabilities, and she really enjoyed it."

With students, as with anyone else Mrs. Laitinen encountered, she taught by example.

"Betsy was probably the one person in my life who led me to believe that the handicap does not control the life, but that the individual determines the life," her brother said. "Betsy was never dominated by her handicap. She used her handicap as a means of access, a means of challenging others in life. She saw it as an opportunity - in her case for advocacy."

In the early 1990s she married Peter Laitinen, a paraplegic who worked as an analyst with Medicaid.

"We have beautiful pictures of the two of them at their wedding, dancing in their wheelchairs," her brother said. "I had never seen it before, but it was gorgeous, seeing the two of them out on the dance floor. It's probably one of my fondest memories. They were a great couple together."

Then, in the summer of 2001, she collapsed at a train station and slipped into a coma. When she awakened a couple of months later, her husband had died. Meanwhile, she could no longer see as well, and for a time could not speak.

"And yet, she used that, too, as an opportunity and began meeting with other people who had gone though a similar experience," her brother said. "Most of us would be deep in depression and would be buried for years. She went back to work two years later."

Master said that "at the time you'd say, 'Well that's too much. We all have a limit and at some point we throw in the towel.' Betsy didn't."

A couple of years ago, Mrs. Laitinen decided to visit Hawaii, where she had traveled before. With her don't-say-can't attitude, she negotiated airlines that forgot a passenger with a wheelchair was coming and airports that sometimes left her waiting for an hour before providing services she had arranged weeks in advance.

In Hawaii, she did virtually everything with her friends - except swim. Instead, Hantz poured seawater over her feet on the beach. "I said, 'Come on, you have to feel the ocean,' " she said.

The trip was worth the challenges, Mrs. Laitinen told the Globe. "I think you can do anything you set your mind to with a lot of planning and friendship and achieve the dream," she said.

In addition to her brother and niece, Mrs. Laitinen leaves her mother, Roberta (Patch) Colpitts of Falmouth; two other brothers, David Colpitts of Texas and Glenn Colpitts of Sudbury; and a sister, Lynne Lewis of Braintree.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday in Westgate Church in Weston. Burial will be private.