Title:Life at My Fingertips
Author:Smithdas, Robert J.
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Resource Description
At five, Bobby Smithdas became one of the ""children of the silent night""- when cerebral meningitis destroyed his sight and most of his hearing (which he lost completely a little later). Remembering, however, very clearly all that followed, his acute fears, his compelling curiosity to taste- to feel, his estrangement in the first schools to which he was sent, he sets down here all the experiences which followed. He was sent away, 1000 miles from home, to Perkins Institute where they could educate the deaf-blind, where he found companionship as well as learning; and later went on to New York- to the Industrial Home for the Blind- with the hope of sometime acquiring a college degree. Awarded a scholarship, through the IHB, he was able- just as Helen Keller did- to go through college (St. John's in Brooklyn) and was graduated with honors. Now, at 33, a lecturer and public relations representative for the IHB, he has achieved his other ambition- to write, and has also been able to lead an independent life in a home of his own.... Without as much assistance as Helen Keller had, Smithdas has faced parallel and equal handicaps and overridden them, and his story is a matter-of-fact record of this accomplishment. Saleswise, however, disability is often a liability, regrettable as this may be.
260 pp
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