CARRBORO - When Ellen Perry was a toddler, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Shortly after, she overheard her mother say she would never speak.

But Perry remembers thinking "Yeah, I will." Speech therapists placed peanut butter on the roof of her mouth to strengthen her tongue. Eventually, she learned.

Perry, now 51, displays that same determination when she advocates for people who are disabled.

She is a community leader in Carrboro, where she is a fixture in her motorized wheelchair. She travels to conferences, as far away as New Mexico and Hawaii, to speak about disability and self-empowerment as a part of her business, Advocacy in Action. She exercises by walking with an assistant through Carr Mill Mall.

Perry's resolve was born not out of encouragement, but from being told no.

Besides her mother, a doctor said she would never talk, or walk. After she completed the fifth grade in her native Wake County, she was placed in a special school for students with disabilities. When she cried because she could no longer attend school with her siblings, a teacher said she had emotional problems.

Perry says the teachers underestimated the students' abilities.

"I could never go to college," she said. "The teachers didn't teach me enough." If she had gone to college, she said she would have studied special education.

Perry's happiest times occurred away from the school, when her Girl Scouts group traveled to Camp Mary Atkinson on nearly 300 acres in rural Johnston County.

One leader took 19 Girl Scouts, all with disabilities, camping in tents.

"We didn't really have any problems," Perry said. "I loved it."

Perry sat around a campfire and learned practical skills.

"I do knots," she said. "I know how to do it all."

By then a teenager, Perry helped teach the younger students. The experiences at the camp, away from those who labeled her less capable, helped shape her.

"I learned how to lead that way," she said.

Hard adjustment

In the 1980s, Perry took a job swiping students' cards in the Granville Towers cafeteria. She had to adjust to living away from home and had a dozen roommates in two years.

"I called my mom every night," Perry said. "I call her every night still."

In 1989, Perry joined the Town of Carrboro's Transportation Advisory Board after then-mayor Ellie Kinnaird asked her to apply.

"People with disabilities did not have a voice," Perry said. She spent 12 years on the board and served as chair. She got automatic doors installed at Town Hall.

"That began her career as an activist," Kinnaird said.

After the appointment, Perry began volunteering in other ways. She has organized family activities for Carrboro Day since 1995 and the Carrboro Music Festival since 2000.

In 1996, she served as the mailing coordinator for Kinnaird's state Senate campaign, overseeing 100 volunteers. Later, she served as volunteer coordinator.

"Nothing stops Ellen," Kinnaird said.

Disability activist

Much of Perry's work is devoted to disability activism. She is a project coordinator for Peer Connections, where she helps people with developmental disabilities set health and wellness goals. She is the coordinator for Real Advocates Now Emerging, or RANE, a group that works to make the area more accessible.

Perry was awarded the 2008 Jack Hefner Award from the N.C. Council on Developmental Disabilities. That same year Carrboro proclaimed Aug. 7 "Ellen Perry Day." The framed proclamation sits in her home office.

Much of Perry's advocacy work is based on her personal decision to go where she wants and do what she wants to do.

But sometimes her resolve gets tested.

Perry says medical professionals do not know exactly how people with cerebral palsy age.

"It's gotten worse since I was about 45," she said. "I want to be able to do what I could do 10 years ago, but I can't do it."

When Perry was in her mid-forties, she moved from Bim Street to Fidelity Street. She was farther from downtown and it took an hour to walk to Weaver Street. She was using a crutch then.

"The crutch hurt my shoulder," she said. The walk was exhausting, and she often stayed home.

"I was stranded," she said.

When she got an electric wheelchair six years ago, it allowed her more freedom to travel. She travels in her electric wheelchair, which she calls her car, and loads groceries in a Rubbermaid container on the back.

Perry still walks for exercise, although she relies on an assistant for balance.

"I fall backwards, and I fall frontwards," she said.

But she can ride her wheelchair to bus stops, and rides the buses to shop as far as Durham.

The buses present another set of problems, though. Older buses are not always accessible, and even if they are, she says drivers can't always operate the wheelchair lift.

Perry's friend Tim Ward accompanies her on some of the trips to the mall, as he did several weeks ago.

"The lift got stuck," Ward said. "We had to wait on another bus."

Perry is not shy about advocating.

In January, she rolled through town with Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton and Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt. The mayors used walkers with wheels so they could feel of the bumps, cracks and uneven pavement.

"When you hit the wrong kind of bump it really just wants to pitch you right over," Chilton said. "It was tougher than I thought it would be."

Chilton first met Perry years ago because they were both involved in local government.

"I know Ellen is an inspiration to a lot of people," he said. "I think the kind of town Carrboro is trying to be is one that's welcoming and open and trying not to prejudge people and make assumptions about people. Ellen stumbled into this town years ago and discovered a place where she gets taken at face value as a person."

Holly Riddle, the executive director of the N.C. Council on Developmental Disabilities, worked with Perry when she was a council member.

"Increasingly, people with disabilities are growing up with a family, going to school with everybody else, working side by side with everybody else," she said.

People like Perry are helping to make that happen, she said.

"Ellen is somebody who specializes in barrier removal," Riddle said. "Ellen is a marvelous example of civic responsibility."

But Perry is not afraid to ask for help when she needs it. Carrboro fire fighters changed the tire on her wheelchair, and she may call on them again to help replace her kitchen light bulb. It's three feet long, which would be hard to carry home, and out of reach.

But the issue is a minor problem for Perry, who recently persuaded a friend, who uses a wheelchair, to ride the bus. "He is free now," she said.

And, these days, Perry does not let even bad weather stop her from leaving her apartment.

"Life doesn't stop just because it's raining," she said.