Film to focus on activist and medical debt issue

When activist Richard Propes travels the back roads of Indiana by wheelchair, his interactions with strangers can resemble a movie.

Rick Garrett, an Indianapolis-based comedian and musician, has accompanied Propes during campaigns to raise money for causes ranging from child abuse prevention to job training for people with disabilities.

Garrett recalls a postal worker north of Kokomo who drove by in a truck before stopping and backing up to check on Propes, a paraplegic and three-time amputee who was born with spina bifida.

“He asked Richard, ‘Are you OK? Do you need a ride? Can I do anything for you?’” Garrett said.

After Propes explained the Tenderness Tour, an annual fundraising trek he launched in 1989, the postal worker reached into his wallet.

“He said, ‘I want to support this,’” Garrett said.

Propes doesn’t claim to be exceptionally talented at fundraising. “But I am really good at getting attention,” he said.

In 2025, the 59-year-old Pike High School alum will be the subject of an actual documentary film based on his efforts last year to eliminate medical debt for Indiana residents.

Viewers of the film, titled “The Tenderness Tour,” will see how Propes raised more than $100,000 in 2024 while traveling 150 miles of Indiana trails. After that money was donated to Massachusetts-based nonprofit Undue Medical Debt, $16.8 million in debt was eliminated for 7,600 Indiana residents.

Undue Medical Debt uses donated funds to purchase medical debt in large portfolios “for pennies on the dollar,” according to the organization. On average, a donation of $1 erases $100 of medical debt. Sometimes the ratio can be even higher.

Hospital costs have been a constant in Propes’ life. His list of surgeries exceeds 100, including three amputations to parts of his legs. In 2023, he was treated for bladder cancer and prostate cancer.

That experience has led him to want to help others who have also needed medical help and have the debt to prove it.

In 2022, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported that 18.2% of Indiana residents had medical debt on their credit reports. In 2019, the American Journal of Public Health reported that 66.5% of all U.S. bankruptcies were tied to medical problems.

Propes wants to raise $1 million, which could translate into more than $150 million in debt erased by Undue Medical Debt. Propes set a new Tenderness Tour record by raising $114,500 in 2024, and he intends to continue the effort in 2025.

“I think the cause resonated with people,” Propes said. “I think sometimes when you donate to a nonprofit you wonder, ‘Where does this go, and what does it do?’ This was just so tangible. We’re really going to eliminate medical debt.”

Catalyst for change

The director of “The Tenderness Tour” film is Muncie native Andie Redwine, who describes Propes as a catalyst for change.

“Richard has a call to action that I don’t think anybody’s able to ignore,” Redwine said.

Away from fundraising, Propes works as director of provider relations for Indiana’s Bureau of Disability Services, and he writes about movies as a member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association.

Redwine initially met Propes after he wrote a positive review for “Paradise Recovered,” a film she wrote and produced. The 2010 Heartland International Film Festival hosted the world premiere of “Paradise Recovered.” Propes wrote on his website, theindependentcritic.com, that “Paradise Recovered” tackled the topic of religion in a respectful way “in which characters to the right and to the left are treated without an ounce of judgment or condescension.”

On the topic of medical debt, Redwine said Propes is fully committed to the cause.

“Richard is dissatisfied with injustice, completely,” she said. “He’s not comfortable just being dissatisfied and then saying, ‘What are we doing for dinner?’ or, ‘Let’s go to the movies tonight.’ He is going to figure out a way to bring justice to that situation, regardless of what it costs him.”

Propes knows what he doesn’t want to see on-screen when “The Tenderness Tour” is released. He said he’s not interested in “inspiration porn,” or the objectification of people with disabilities for the benefit of people without disabilities. Australian activist Stella Young is credited with coining the inspiration porn label in 2012.

“That’s not my life,” Propes said. “Mine’s more hard-earned.”

Holly Garrett, a musician who’s married to Rick Garrett, said Propes doesn’t have a self-pitying approach to life.

“He’s quite the opposite of that,” Garrett said. “I think that’s what makes it so attractive to talk to him. You think, ‘I want to find out more. I want to find out why.’”

The Garretts, who perform as a duo known as Patchwork, contributed a song to 2009 benefit album “Give a Girl a Chance,” which raised money for the Tenderness Tour. Singer-songwriters Carrie Newcomer and Jennie DeVoe also contributed songs to the 19-track compilation. Rick Garrett recorded a stand-up special titled “Straight Outta Cowan”—a reference to the comedian’s small-town roots in Delaware County—in 2017 to raise funds for the Tenderness Tour.

‘A basic human right’

Propes isn’t the first Indiana resident to work with the Undue Medical Debt organization.

In June 2024, the United Neighborhood Centers of Indianapolis and United Way of Central Indiana collaborated with Undue Medical Debt to erase nearly $240 million owed by 112,000 Hoosiers.

Propes, meanwhile, is a distinctive fundraiser, according to Marisa Clemente, vice president of philanthropy for Undue Medical Debt.

“When you have someone who’s willing to go the extra mile to do something extraordinary to help people, I feel like it creates a bigger buzz,” Clemente said. “We have had a couple of campaigns in the past go viral. Within my time at Undue, what Richard has been able to do—especially the physicality of it—is quite extraordinary.”

Undue Medical Debt was founded in 2014 by former debt collections executives Jerry Ashton and Craig Antico with health care industry expert Robert Goff.

“People don’t necessarily understand the financial hardship that people go through with medical debt unless they’ve been through it themselves,” Clemente said. “I think Richard is the perfect example of that. He was homeless twice because of medical debt, and this is just a basic human right that people should have. They shouldn’t have to worry about getting the care they need because they’re fearful of the expenses that will come after that.”

Film director Redwine said it’s important to grasp the difference between medical debt and consumer debt.

“This isn’t someone going to the Gap and running up a $3,000 credit card bill,” she said. “And it often happens because we don’t really know the costs going in.”

A moving picture

The idea to make a documentary film about Propes originated at the Heartland Film Festival.

Propes delivers a speech each year to accompany the presentation of the Richard D. Propes Social Impact Award to one narrative film and one documentary.

In 2023, Propes’ words caught the attention of Ed Paul Fry, the star of a set-in-Indiana movie titled “This Train” that was part of the festival.

Jeff Sparks, who founded the Heartland festival in 1992, was in attendance and remembers Propes’ speech being “a little different.”

“Ed asked the staff about what was going on, and they said, ‘This is Richard’s first public appearance since he came through chemotherapy,’” Sparks said. “That informed what he was saying.”

Fry is one of the producers of “The Tenderness Tour” film, and he recruited Sparks to be an executive producer.

Sparks usually declines such opportunities.

“I’ve been asked to raise money I don’t know how many times, and I’ve always said ‘no,’” Sparks said.

For “The Tenderness Tour” film, the executive producers are tasked with securing $300,000 to cover the costs of making the movie, Sparks said.

It was gratifying to see Lilly Endowment Inc. contribute funds toward “The Tenderness Tour” film, he said. Known for backing documentaries that explore religion, history and culture, Lilly Endowment previously supported the 2016 made-in-Indiana project “Attucks: The School that Opened a City.”

It’s likely, Sparks said, that two edits of “The Tenderness Tour” will be prepared: a feature-length version and a one-hour version for airing on public television.

Looking ahead to the possibility of a Tenderness Tour road trip in 2025, Propes said he’s intrigued by the idea of visiting all 92 counties of Indiana.

The ‘hopester’

Propes describes himself as a “hopester” in online biographies, and he said the optimistic colloquialism isn’t mismatched with someone who’s faced an onslaught of health challenges.

Yet there’s been more than the spina bifida, amputations and cancer. At age 10, Propes was sexually abused by an older adolescent.

“I’m happy for the most part,” Propes said. “Yes, I have a lot of challenges. But it seems like, at every turn of my life, there’s always been that one person who would show up, who would be there. It’s like when I’m out on the road in rural Indiana, in seemingly impossible circumstances, and somebody shows up. That has pretty much defined my life. I’m constantly amazed at it. I don’t know, I see a lot more good than I do bad.”

Propes said doctors believed that spina bifida, an incomplete closure of part of the spinal column, would lead to his death as an infant.

Instead, he made it through Pike High School in 1983 and struggled with a transition to the University of Indianapolis and the job force.

“Nobody expected me to live, so they didn’t prepare me to live,” he said.

Propes said he dropped out of college after one semester. “I tried to go work for a year at the construction company where my father worked,” he said. “I was lousy.”

A second attempt at college unraveled when Propes was injured during IUPUI rehearsals for a production of “Working,” a musical based on a 1974 book by Chicago author Studs Terkel.

Using crutches at the time, Propes misjudged the edge of the stage and fell into an orchestra pit. A broken bone in his foot became infected.

“With spina bifida, once you have something bad happen, it doesn’t heal well,” Propes said, explaining his first amputation.

Eventually, he graduated from Martin University, where he enrolled one year after the first Tenderness Tour. Propes said he’s grateful for the influence of Boniface Hardin, Martin’s founder.

“Father Hardin probably was my salvation,” he said. “He took me under his wing and just really gave me a healthy male role model, too.”

Propes added a degree from Bethany Theological Seminary in Richmond in 2013.

Rewinding to his lowest point, Propes describes a scene more cinematic than meeting a postal worker on a rural route.

“I had this really serious suicide attempt where I literally doused myself and my car in gasoline, climbed into the back seat and lit it,” Propes said. “It didn’t work, didn’t spark, didn’t do anything. Clearly, I did something wrong … or something right. Even in the midst of all that, I had an old friend of mine from IUPUI come up and knock on the car door. They saw me in the parking lot, offered me a place to stay and offered me chances to write.

“I thought, ‘OK, that’s weird.’ That’s kind of where the tour was born. ‘I’ve lost everything. I have nothing. I can’t even kill myself right. There has to be a reason I’m still here.’”•