Michael Howie

Raymond Fletcher, a longtime disability rights activist in Northwest Indiana who was born with a genetic disorder that caused its own complications, died Aug. 5. He was 48.

The Hammond native became the first student in Indiana University Northwest history to be elected as student body president with a disability and graduated from the school in 2007.

He was born with pseudothalidomide, sometimes called Roberts syndrome, an extremely rare birth defect that causes severe deformity of the limbs.

"I try, and I never quit fighting," Fletcher said in 1994. "I have to do things on my own. I don't really know how I do them. I've always been this way, so I just have my own way of doing things."

He later worked as a substitute teacher at the School City of Hammond, but faced the

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