The long and remarkable road traveled by Cliff Crase has taken him from the modest hamlet of Rockland, Michigan, to an audience with the Pope as a member of the United States Wheelchair Team – and now, to the Athletes with Disabilities Hall of Fame.

A prep all-state basketball player, Crase graduated as class Valedictorian from Clark High School in Rockland in 1956. He served in the United States Air Force for the next three years, but just days before his 21st birthday, an auto accident left him with a spinal cord injury, resulting in quadriplegia.

Crase would go on to enroll at the University of Illinois and began a lifetime of competition as a wheelchair athlete.

Competing primarily in swimming and track and field, he earned a spot on the U.S. Wheelchair Team where he won 33 national medals and 32 international medals. In all, he claimed eight national titles and won 10 gold medals in international meets. He was named the Outstanding Athlete at the 1967 Pan-Am Games, captained the U.S. Wheelchair Team in 1969, and was once honored as the National Athlete of the Year. He has been inducted into the Upper Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, the National Wheelchair Athletic Association

Hall of Fame, and the National Wheelchair Basketball Association Hall of Fame.

A lifetime member of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, he spent more than a decade as the National Sports Coordinator for the PVA. Crase saw a need for wheelchair athletes to share information about their activities, so in 1975, he launched Sports 'n Spokes Magazine, a bi-monthly international publication for which Crase still serves as editor. For the last 30 years, he has also served as editor of Paraplegia News, a monthly general news and information magazine.