WARNING: This is long. It is to honor four of my very best friends who are no longer with us on earth. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was born on January 1, 1943 in Providence Hospital on Second Street and D Street, S.E. in Washington, D.C. before it was moved to its present location in 1958 to Varnum Street. Second Street and D Street, S.E. is now Folger Park. The hospital was moved so it could expand. According to my Mom, I was not expected live and I had surgery behind the bottom of my head when I was five days old to sew muscles and nerves back together. I was put in an incubator right after that until I was release from the hospital on January 26, 1943. The doctor at Providence Hospital told Mom that Johns Hopkins University Medical School were beginning a study on children with different handicaps and if she took me that day they would provide free medical care. Mom did not realize that the U.S. Marine Corps provided free medical care to the families of Marines. I was one of five subjects. I would later know the other four. There was T.J. He was a diabetic. T.J. is for his first and middle name - Thomas Jefferson - not the third President of the United States. He had a wooden right leg. Roosevelt had a vision impairment. Rosie was African- American. He had a physique of a body builder. Bobby contacted polio when he was three years old. He wore a steel leg brace on his left leg. Bobby was the national poster child for polio in 1952. Richard had epilepsy. Richies seizures were really bad. And then, there was me . . . Danny. I was the only one that had a dual disability: cerebral palsy and mental retardation. I was in a wheelchair and wore double leg braces until I was six years old. I was in a good many cerebral palsy telethons in the late 1940s and early 1950s . T.J. and Rosie were the leaders of our group. The two of them would be bored and invent games for the rest of us. Also, to play pranks on the doctors. . . especially, psychiatrists, and psychologists. For some reason, they loved to pull things on them. We would draw straws to see who would be the smartest or the dumbest on the different written tests they gave us. Different ones would draw the straw to be the smartest . . . but me. I always picked the straw to be the dumbest one. Being dumb was very easy for me. Except for the time that I picked the straw to be the smartest one. It was a multiple choice test. I was scared that I would mess up. T.J. gave me a pep talk. I couldnt talk at the time. T.J. knew I could hear. He said, Danny, you can do this . . . when in doubt . . put C. I put a lot of Cs. After we took the test, the psychiatrist that gave the test announced to the other psychiatrists in front of the five of us, There is no way a person (talking about me) can have a consistent I.Q. score of 58 and it jump to 187. To this day, on paper, my full scale I.Q. is 58. I would be a subject for Johns Hopkins University Medical School for the next fourteen years . We would go back and see them from wherever my Dad was stationed. I was dismissed the start of the fifteenth year when Dad was transferred to San Diego, California on a special assignment for three years for the Inspector General of the U.S. Marine Corps in Washington, D.C. When we moved to San Diego I was given a test before I could enter the eighth grade. I got mad. I failed the test on purpose and was put in a special education class for a short period of time in La Mesa, California. I went to nine different schools in twelve years. In every school that I attended, I had to take a test before being admitted . . . except one. I did not have take a test before my senior year when I entered South Tippah High School in Ripley, Mississippi.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 03:46:02 +0000
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