# Joni Eareckson Tada

Joni Eareckson Tada (born October 15, 1949) is an American evangelical Christian author, radio host, artist, and founder of Joni and Friends, an organization "accelerating Christian ministry in the disability community".

## Early life

Joni Eareckson was born in 1949 in Baltimore, Maryland, the youngest of four daughters, to John and Lindy Eareckson. Joni was named after her father, John Eareckson, so she pronounces her name as "Johnny". Her father participated in the 1932 Summer Olympics as an alternate for the United States wrestling team and was honored as a Distinguished Member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum in 1996. Joni was a member of Bishop Cummins Reformed Episcopal Church, where she was confirmed as a young woman.
With the example of her parents, Joni lived a very active life all through her growing-up years, enjoying riding horses, hiking, tennis, and swimming. On July 30, 1967, when she was 17 years old, she dove into the Chesapeake Bay after misjudging the shallowness of the water. She had a fracture between the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae and became a quadriplegic (or tetraplegic), paralyzed from the shoulders down. During her two years of rehabilitation, according to her autobiography Joni, she experienced anger, depression, suicidal thoughts, and religious doubts. However, during occupational therapy, she learned to paint with a brush between her teeth and began selling her artwork. She also writes this way, although for most writing tasks she relies on voice recognition software. To date, she has written over forty books, recorded several musical albums, and starred in an autobiographical movie of her life, and is an advocate for people with disabilities.
Joni wrote of her experiences in her 1976 international best-selling autobiography, Joni: The unforgettable story of a young woman's struggle against quadriplegia & depression, which has been distributed in many languages. The book was made into a 1980 feature film of the same name, starring herself. Her second book, A Step Further, was released in 1978.

## Ministry and public life

She founded Joni and Friends in 1979, an organization to "accelerate Christian ministry in the disability community" throughout the world. In 2007 the Joni and Friends International Disability Center in Agoura Hills, California, was established. Led by Tada (founder and CEO) and John Nugent (president and COO), the Joni and Friends International Disability Center runs a multi-faceted non-profit covering a number of program outlets. The longest-running program is "Joni and Friends Radio", a five-minute radio program begun in 1982. It now runs four minutes in length and can be heard each weekday on over 1,000 broadcast outlets. Tada also records a one-minute radio feature, "Diamonds in the Dust", that airs daily. Both programs have received awards: "Joni and Friends Radio" received the "Radio Program of the Year" award from National Religious Broadcasters in 2002, and "Diamonds in the Dust" won the same award in 2011 in the short program.
Other Joni and Friends programs include Family Retreats (a camp/retreat experience for families affected by disability), Wounded Warrior Getaways (which offer a similar experience for families of Wounded Warriors), and Wheels for the World (which collects manual wheelchairs and other mobility devices to be refurbished by volunteers in prison restoration shops, then shipped overseas, where the wheelchairs are fitted by physical therapists to people in developing nations). Joni and Friends also has produced 51 episodes of Joni and Friends TV, and overseen the formation of the Christian Institute on Disability (a training and advocacy arm of Joni and Friends), among other ventures. While the main office of Joni and Friends remains in Agoura Hills, California, smaller offices can be found across the United States.
In 2005, Tada was appointed to the Disability Advisory Committee of the U.S. State Department. Tada served on the National Council on Disability under presidents Reagan and Bush in 1988. The first draft of the Americans with Disabilities Act was authored by this council.
Tada is a conference speaker. Her articles have been published in Christianity Today, Today's Christian Woman, The War Cry (Salvation Army), and newspapers around the world. Tada has appeared several times on Larry King Live. In 1989, Tada was a plenary speaker at the Second International Congress on World Evangelization in Manila. She served until 2013 in her appointment as the Lausanne Senior Associate for Disability Concerns. As of 2017, Tada is still a board member of the Lausanne Movement.
As of 2017, Tada is an adviser on many organizations, such as the Board of Reference for the Christian Medical and Dental Society, Young Life Capernaum Board, CBM International, National Institute for Learning Disabilities, and the American Leprosy Mission. She also served on Love and Action, the Institute on Learning Disabilities, the Disability Advisory Committee, New Europe Communications, and the Christian Writers Guild, and as honorary co-chair of the Presidential Prayer Team. She has been interviewed by the Chicago Tribune, Ligonier Ministries, and the Los Angeles Times.
In November 2009, Tada signed an ecumenical statement known as the Manhattan Declaration calling on evangelicals, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians to work towards changing laws which permit abortion, and other matters that go against their religious consciences.

## Music

Tada received media attention in 2014 for her performance of the title song from the Christian film Alone yet Not Alone. With limited lung capacity due to her disability, Tada, had her husband, Ken, pushing on her diaphragm while she recorded the song to give her enough breath to hit the high notes. Tada has no professional training in music. While the song's writers initially received a nomination for an Oscar in the Original Song category, the nomination was later revoked for what the academy deemed improper campaigning by the composer, Bruce Broughton. Some controversy followed this decision, and subsequent media attention helped the song's official YouTube video, featuring Tada, surpass one million views.

## Books

Tada is the author of over 48 books on the subjects of disability and Christianity. Several of them have been children's books, including Tell Me The Promises, which received the Evangelical Christian Publishers' Association's (ECPA) Gold Medallion and the silver medal in the 1997 C. S. Lewis Awards, and Tell Me The Truth, which received the ECPA Gold Medallion in 1998. The life story of Tada was used by Czech composer Ivan Kurz in his opera Večerní shromáždění ketho (Evening Divine service).

## Personal life

Joni married Ken Tada in 1982. For many years, Ken was a high school history teacher and coach, though he is now retired. Ken is sansei, meaning that he is the third generation to be born in the United States after his family relocated from Japan. Ken and Joni live in Calabasas, California.
In 2010, Tada announced that she had been diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy. Her treatment proved successful, and she was declared cancer-free in 2015. In November 2018, Tada was diagnosed with a malignant nodule on her chest wall near the site of her original cancer. Radiation treatments for the nodule proved successful, and, in July 2019, she announced that she had once again been declared cancer-free.

## Awards

* 1979 American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award for Inspiring Victory Over Quadriplegia
* Courage Award from the Courage Rehabilitation Center
* Award of Excellence from the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center
* Golden Word Award from the International Bible Society
* 1985 First woman to be honored by the National Association of Evangelicals as their "Layperson of the Year"
* 1989 Victory Award from the National Rehabilitation Hospital
* 1993 "Churchwoman of the Year" by the Religious Heritage Foundation
* 1997 Silver Medal, C. S. Lewis Award from the Christian Educators Association
* 2001 Inducted into the Christian Booksellers Association's Hall of Honor
* 2002 William Ward Ayer Award for excellence from the National Religious Broadcasters
* 2003 ECPA Gold Medallion Award in Christian Education for her book When God Weeps
* 2003 ECPA Gold Medallion Lifetime Achievement Award by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association
* 2004 ECPA Gold Medallion Award in Elementary Children for co-authoring Hymns for a Kid's Heart, Volume 1
* 2009 Inducted into the Indiana Wesleyan University Society of World Changers in 2009
* 2009 Inducted into the Indiana Wesleyan University Society of World Changers and presented with an honorary doctorate while speaking at the university on April 1, 2009
* 2009 Honored by Women in Christian Media with the Excellence in Communication award of merit for National Achievement in Christian Media
* 2011 Named the 2011 Honorary Chairman of the National Day of Prayer
* 2015 Robert Neff Award from the Moody Bible Institute
* 2012 William Wilberforce Award from the Colson Center for Christian Worldview
* 2012 Inducted by the National Religious Broadcasters into the NRB Hall of Fame* 2017 Named Daniel of the Year by WORLD News Group
* 2017 Charles W. Colson Courage & Conviction Award from Biola University

### Degrees

She also holds the following honorary degrees:
* Bachelor of Letters from Western Maryland College
* Humanities from Gordon College
* Doctor of Humane Letters from Columbia International University, the first honorary doctorate bestowed in its 75-year history
* Doctor of Divinity from Westminster Theological Seminary
* Doctor of Divinity from Lancaster Bible College
* Doctor of Humane Letters from Indiana Wesleyan University
* Doctor of Laws from Biola University
* Doctor of Humanitarian Services from California Baptist University
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