Medford mail tribune., November 18, 1962, Image 42

Family Weekly j No
vcmber IS, 1962
A'oir a roZfffP professor, Russell met his wife Elizabeth
Here is a heart-warming story for
Thanksgiving: a blind boy, searching
for the escalators at Macy's, finds
something more important a wise
stranger whose advice changes his life
( Family Weekly. Norrmbrr II, ISC2
s
I lis
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at Oxford. They have four lovely children.
AVoice
THE event was the 1941 Freshman
Sophomore Day at Hamilton College
in Clinton, N.Y., and the contest about
to begin was crucial for me. In the
heavyweight wrestling match between
a freshman and a sophomore, I was that
freshman.
My palms were moist and my throat tight, even
though I had no right to be so afraid. I had sev
eral years of wrestling experience behind me,
and my opponent was probably a novice. The fact
that raised my fear was this : I had to win if I was
to prove to that throng of professors and students
that I, who could not see, would compete with
them on equal terms and win.
I had gotten myself into this spot by coming
to college in the first place, and then by volun
teering to represent my class as their heavy
weight against the sophomores. There could be
no backing out ...
Eleven years earlier as a child of five, I sat on
the back steps of our home at 13 Edward St. in
Binghamton, N.Y. The afternoon was all green
and gold as I, croquet mallet in hand, halfheart
edly played my solitary game.
Digging around among the pansies beside the
steps, I picked up small stones which I set care
fully in position on the gray concrete walk. Then
I sat down on the bottom step and raised my
mallet. The stones were nails; I was a carpenter,
and the mallet was my hammer. I would drive
those nails just like that!
And then it happened. The rotten handle split,
and a flying splinter pierced the pupil of my left
eye. I squeezed my eyes shut in pain, sprang to
my feet, and stumbled up the steps, rubbing the
blood away with my fists and screaming.
In 1930, doctors could not tell whether an in
fection in one eye was being communicated to the
other. Secretly the poison spread, and a curtain
slowly closed behind my eyelids. For me, the sun
had flickered and gone out.
When I was six years old, I boarded the train
for the 200-mile trip to New York City and the
New York Institute for the Education of the
Blind. Except for vacation, I spent the next 10
years there, going from first grade through high
school. And so, during these critical years, my
life was divided between two worlds that of the
Institute and that of 13 Edward St.; the world
of the blind and the world of the sighted.
At the Institute, I studied, played, and dreamed
with some 250 other blind children. We learned
to read and write Braille, in which we did our
homework. In the play periods, we developed our
in the Crowd
own versions of baseball and football. Our field
ing was never up to much because we had to
chase the ball by sound and by the time you
hear a ball bounce it isn't there any more but
somewhere else. Then, too, our gym instructors
modified such track events as the running broad
jump and running high jump into standing
events. Races were run on a cinder track divided
into four lanes by waist-high steel cables on
which the runner rested his left hand. Indeed,
everything was designed for our safety.
The most important safeguard to our security
was a tall steel fence surrounding the Institute.
The worst transgression we younger children
could commit was to step outside that fence with
out permission. Because it was forbidden and be
cause I deeply resented being shut in, the outside
world was all that I dreamed about.
Though snug and comfortable behind the fence
in an environment especially created for those
who could not see, I leaned for hours against the
cold steel, listening, listening, listening to the
whirring traffic, the hissing of the air brakes of
buses, and the distant, ominous thunder of
trains. I longed to be in one of those cars, on
a bus or train, going . . . going . . . going any
where, because the going would mean I was a
part of what was outside.
At 10, I won a place on the Institute's wres
tling team, and our occasional trips to meet near
by high schools and even the junior varsity of
Columbia University took me through the fence.
I was regularly defeated for two or three years,
but the pleasure of breathing free air was well
worth the humiliation.
The Challenge Beyond the Gate
When I was 13, 1 was given permission to leave
the campus on weekends for several hours at a
time, and it was high glory to walk out on a
Saturday morning, slamming the gate behind me.
The only drawback was that I had no place to
go but a destination wasn't necessary to a boy
longing to be free. That whole roaring tumult of
New York lay there waiting to be explored.
Over dinner on Saturday evenings, we ex
changed stories of our day's adventures while
pretending to deal with the week's leftovers on
our plates. At one of these banquets, a classmate,
told me about the escalators-at" Macy's. The
wonders of the moving steps intrigued me, and I
resolved to try them. On the following Saturday
morning, I set out. When I got oft the subway,
a girl's voice said: "Can I help you?"
"Yes, thank you. I'm going to Macy's."
"That's lucky; so am I. Come along with me."
She took my arm and led me through the shuffling
IlLUSTtATION IT EUGENE KARLIN
By ROBERT
subway throng, through the turnstile and down
a long echoing corridor. Finally, as we went
through a door, she said: "Well, here we are.
What part of the store did you want?"
"No particular part exactly," I stammered.
"That is, I want to go to to the escalators."
"Oh, right over here. Which floor?"
"Oh, no particular one. Just the escalator."
"If you could tell me what you wanted to buy,
I could help you better."
"I don't want to buy anything," I hastened,
checking the solitary nickel in my pocket that
would take me back to the Institute. "I just want
the escalator."
"You do know where you're going?" she in
quired kindly.
"Up!" I answered.
"Well, all right," she said. "Here's the escala
tor, buC .and she patted my arm, "remember
one thing: you must never be ashamed. Never.
Remember that."
"Ashamed?" I said. "Ashamed of what?" But
she was gone. She had gently and deftly laid one
kind finger on my heart and vanished.
What I had to be ashamed of was so terribly
obvious that I had to pretend not to understand.
The thing was myself. I was awkward, blunder
ing, maimed, publicly different from all these
RUSSELL Author of "To Catch an Angel"
cool, swift people in the outside world. Their
cheeks need never burn with the shame of trip
ping over an unexpected curb, walking into a
lamppost, or waiting for help to cross a roaring
street. They were free, easy, beautiful in their
independence.
Was I not better off, after all, behind that steel
fence among others like me? Safety was there;
security and peace. Most of all, there was the
freedom from the pain of comparing one's self
with the sighted. Shouldn't I forget the escala
tors and all they stood for?
But her voice, still warm in my ear, said: "You
must never be ashamed. Never. Remember that."
Gingerly, I put out my foot, then stepped for
ward, and the stair beneath me rose.
I rode the wonderful escalators up and down
all morning, gaining confidence and practicing
not being ashamed.
The Words Have Stayed with Me
Who the girl was, where she went, I never
knew. She was a voice in the crowd that spoke
to my most secret fears, a hand touching me with
gentleness. The sound of her words carried me
through the fence to Hamilton College and into
the ring on that other Saturday morning far
from Macy's. The referee's voice was saying:
"Ready? Wrestle!"
I advanced toward the sound of my opponent's
footsteps. The referee called to the crowd to be
quiet so that I could hear. We closed sharply. He
was big, powerful, but, by the way he moved, a
novice. Counting on surprise, I threw up his
arms, dropped to my knees, and tackled his un
protected legs. As he fell, I released my grip,
slid up his body, clamped a half nelson under an
arm and over the back of his head, and rolled him
onto his back. Recovering from the shock, he
thrashed violently. With all my strength, I
crushed his shoulders into the grass.
The referee's whistle jangled on its chain as
he crouched to inspect my opponent's predica
ment. Though my adversary struggled to shake
me off, he could find no leverage. The referee
pounded the earth in token of my victory. The
crowd cheered as I rose.
As the referee raised my arm, I knew that
another escalator, though it was still the same
voice, had brought me up to another floor. Other
escalators carried me from Hamilton to Yale to
Oxford to college teaching and to the publication
of my autobiography, To Catch an Angel. Each
new floor has had its own challenges but the
perils have nil been different forms of the one
which the girl pointed out at the foot of that first
escalator in Macv's.
Family Weekly, November II, 19C2 7