Cara Dunne Yates, Class of 1988

By age 5, Cara had lost her eyesight to cancer, but with the encouragement of her stepfather, she began skiing on family outings. She and her stepfather, who served as her skiing guide through her teens, went on to represent the United States on the U.S. Disabled Ski Team from 1982 to 1989, specializing in down hill, slalom and giant slalom.

In 1982, Cara, aged 11, was one of the youngest athletes to represent the United States in adult sports competition and won three silver medals at her first world competition in Lucerne, Switzerland. She won a silver (giant slalom) and two bronzes (downhill and overall) in 1984 at the Winter Paralympic Games and two silver medals in the 1988 Paralympics (giant slalom and super giant slalom), of two dozen medals overall, 10 were at world or Olympic level.

Her skiing accomplishments were more remarkable because she and her stepfather reversed the traditional guide-skier order. Instead of having the guide behind the skier, or even attached by ropes, her stepfather went ahead, calling out the specifics of the course before Cara reached them. Their technique has increasingly become the standard. She was the first disabled skier to forerun a major World Cup Federation of International Skiing event at the American Ski Classic in 1987 in Vail, Colorado.

While at Taft Cara was a top student, serving on the Academic Decathlon team and in other activities as time allowed. She even managed to take Japanese lessons on the side. When she went to Harvard University, she combined her talents in a major in Economics and East Asian studies.  After several visits to Japan, she wrote her thesis on how the Japanese dealt with access issues for the disabled. At Harvard she founded an advocacy organization for disabled students and even competed on the Harvard intramural crew team 1990-91. Graduating Magna Cum Laude in 1992, she was one of two class presidents for the Harvard-Radcliffe class. 

Cara had been preparing to compete in the 1994 Winter Disabled Olympics in Lillehammer when her cancer recurred and postponed her plans for the athletic competition.  In 1994 she had recovered enough to start the 3 year law school in UCLA, where she is the only blind law student. Since snow is a rare commodity in Southern California she switched to tandem bike competition and won a silver and bronze for the U. S. team at the 1996 summer Paralympic Games in Atlanta, GA.

After the 2000 Sydney Paralympics, her cancer returned.  While undergoing chemotherapy, she received the 2002 True Hero of Sports Award from Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society.

Cara died on October 20, 2004, survived by her husband Spencer Yates and two children.