Mr. Stephens has long been a leader in the field of rehabilitation. His desire to make a difference in this area stems from a personal tragedy in 1970 when he was in a driving accident in which he suffered a spinal-cord injury. During his rehabilitation he realized the need to eliminate the fragmentation of services that often hampered the recovery of people with physical disabilities. In the mid 1970s he created a disabled sports program at Lakeshore Rehabilitation Hospital which ultimately developed into the Lakeshore Foundation, a charitable organization that supports the development of programs for people with physical disabilities. Today the Lakeshore Foundation has the largest community-based disabled sports program in the United States, and because of its success it was designated as the official U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Site, the only such designation in America .