Achievements of the disabled

FAMOUS PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Many handicapped people accomplish far more than those without a disability. Sometimes this is because a handicap is balanced by special talents or brilliance. And sometimes it is because the disabled try much harder. According to an old saying, "A wounded oyster mends its shell with pearl."

Huntington's disease, a genetic disorder, strikes in middle age and results in physical deterioration and often in insanity.

But some of its victims accomplish a great deal before they become ill. One was Woody Guthrie, the depression-era singer and songwriter. His childhood was handicapped by poverty and by his mother's insanity (she also had Huntington's). But Guthrie wrote hundreds of songs, including the favourite "The Land is Your Land." He is also remembered for "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You" and many others.

Robert Lowell, one of the finest American poets of this century, had severe mental breakdowns during his adult life. A manic-depressive, he had to be hospitalised repeatedly. But Lowell's disability did not prevent either his poetry or his involvement with issues of war and peace.

When Russian Novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky was 15, his mother died; when he was 17 his father was murdered. Dostoevsky had epileptic attacks through most of his adult life. He was once sentenced to death for radical political activity; at the last moment the Czar communted his sentence to four years in a brual Syberian prison. Dostoevsky's novels include such classics as Crime and Punishment and the Brothers Karamazov.

Karin Murakzko wears a leg brace as a result of spina bifida. She is a doctor who practices a top speciality of medice: neurosurgery. She has called her own medical condition "a challenge not a barrier." One of her former patients was quoted by the New York Times: "I never noticed she was handicapped. All I know is that she was the best doctor and the kindest person I ever met."

Karin Murakzko

Ray Charles, the great musician, lost his vision when he was a child. Both his parents died when he was a teenager. In a state school for the blind, Charles learned to read in Braille and to memorise music. Later he taught himself music arrangement and composition. He once said that he didn't have to see in order "to play or sing the way I do. That comes from within."

THE LIST GOES ON

There are reams of people with disabilities who have contributed enormously to society such as Stephen Hawking, the internationally renowned Physicist; Chris Nolan, the Irish author; Jean Driscoll, the world-renowned athlete; Albert Einstein, the Mathematician/Physicist; to name but a few. And then there those ordinary people with disabilities who have enriched the lives of their families and those around them with their enthusiasm and love for live. Who is to say that these people should never have exised in the first place?

THE REAL HANDICAP

We hear so much about birth defects, harmful childhood experience, and tragic accidents that we may exaggerate their effects. Most disabled people can do much to help themselves and contribute to society.

Sometimes they are handicapped more by others' attitudes toward them than by their actual disabilities. "Normal" people should learn to deal with the disabled in a matter-of-fact way, offering assistance when needed but not making a great fuss - and certainly not retreating in fear.

Contact with the disabled can give us courage and hope as we realise that our own difficulties in life are not insurmountable.

As Woody Guthrie once wrote, "everything looks like it's all bogged down. But we'll pull through. Always do."