Seeing Home, page 3
Every saint has a special cause. Saint Lucy is the patron saint of the blind, so of course my parents sought her intercession on my behalf. In addition, they asked for the help of Saint Jude, Saint Rita, and Saint Anthony, all three of whom are especially known as the patron saints of impossible causes. Mine was as impossible as you could get.
My father’s most passionate requests were directed to our family’s patron, Saint Joseph.
As the man who protected, loved, and adopted Mary’s newborn son, Jesus, teaching him his faith and the values of hard work, Saint Joseph is uniquely honored as the patron saint of fathers, workers, and families. Dad turned to him more than any other, in the hope that Saint Joseph would whisper my family’s prayers for me into the ear of Jesus. They sought a miracle that would fit the Lord’s will, helping me to live a productive and fruitful life.
I was finally released from the hospital a few weeks after the accident.
When I got back to daily life in the projects, it was odd at first. Doctor Saraydarian gave orders that I was not allowed to go to school. He wanted me to rest, at least until the summer. There was also the possibility that I might be called back into the hospital for follow-up operations and procedures. My routine was disrupted. I was now homebound, and my mother was being even more careful than ever.
Staying confined to a hospital bed was bad enough, but being at home all day felt like being trapped in a cage. I was in my own bed, yes, and extremely grateful for that, but I missed doing the things that most people take for granted.
My mobility was limited. I knew the layout of our apartment by heart but was still scared of tripping over something or bumping into and breaking objects as I walked around. I usually needed an escort, and that was extremely frustrating.
Telling time was another normality that disappeared with the accident. Always good at math, I was one of the first kids in the neighborhood to figure out how to decipher the numbers on a clock, and the “big hand, little hand” stuff. It became very easy. I treasured the first watch I ever wore, happily telling anyone who asked, and even some who didn’t, what time it was. It made me sad to realize that from now on I would have to ask others for the time. I wouldn’t be able to look at a clock or watch again to do it for myself.
Reading was also a special pleasure taken from me by my accident. The school used to provide me with oversized books. I read all of them. From Tom Sawyer to Robin Hood, I would get lost in worlds that I could only dream of. Without sight, those stories would remain the stuff of dreams. I was entirely dependent on someone reading to me. It made me quite upset.
My father knew that I missed reading the sports pages. In the New York metro area where we lived, there were dozens of morning, afternoon, and evening papers, all with award-winning sports columnists. Each morning, Dad would come home from his night shift with a stack of newspapers in hand. I knew that he must have been dead tired from his work as a pressman, but he never failed to take at least a half hour to sit there with me and read each and every article about baseball, sometimes twice for good measure. We’d sit at the kitchen table and talk about sports for another thirty minutes or so, before he went off to bed to rest for work later that night.
In an effort to keep me occupied, and from being a shut-in, my mother bought a long extension cord. She plugged our radio into it. There were no small portable radios back then, or at least ones we could afford, so this was a makeshift option. On nice weather days, Mom would run that cord out of the front window and drag the radio outside. I would sit by the porch listening to it as the world passed by.
I was never a big fan of music before the accident. Sports was more my thing. Since baseball season was over, there weren’t many sporting events to listen to on the radio as I sat there, so—out of sheer necessity—I tuned in several of the local New York area music stations.
Rock and roll hadn’t really made a splash yet. The pop musicians of the day were people like Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Patti Page, Kay Starr, Nat King Cole, and, of course, Frank Sinatra. The “Chairman of the Board,” Sinatra, was a local boy. His hometown, Hoboken, was right next to Jersey City and there were many people in my neighborhood who knew him and his family. Years later, I would get to know them, too, but for now I was just a fan.
I loved all of the singers, but was most captivated by the teen idol of the day, Johnnie Ray. He was the Donnie Osmond, New Kids on the Block, *NSYNC, Justin Bieber, and One Direction of 1951, all wrapped up into one. Ray’s two biggest songs that year were melancholy ballads called “Cry” and “The Little White Cloud That Cried.” He and his band, the Four Lads, were very theatrical and gained large audiences with their swerving and swaying. A young Elvis Presley copied Ray to a certain extent. Johnnie Ray was known as “The Prince of Wails.” I was a big admirer.
Luckily, despite the fears my parents had of shunning and isolation, the neighbors and their children responded to me and my situation with love, concern, and care. Our bell rang nightly as people came by to check on me, and to ask my parents if there was any way they could help.
The boys and girls I played and hung out with also made every effort to welcome me back and to act like nothing was different.
My sister Maureen, who despite being younger was extremely protective of me and was pretty tough on anyone who got in her way or mine, often walked me over to the “rink” when the other kids were playing their sandlot and pickup games. While I couldn’t actually play ball with them, I was made their manager or coach during games. They let me call plays, pick teams, make substitutions, and generally stay involved. It was very therapeutic.
One of my best neighborhood friends was a boy named Louis Schuman, who also happened to be blind. I actually got to know Louis before my accident, when he was a student at PS 22. His parents owned a clothing store not far from our home. We became close buddies. Despite his disability, Louis was an amazing piano player. I was fascinated by that. Something else that captivated me was his ability to easily read Braille.
Braille is a series of raised dots on heavy paper that was devised by a young boy in France and introduced in 1839, one hundred years before I was born. It quickly became the standard method for blind people to read and write. My friend Louis was proficient at it. Whenever I held the Braille cards and books he carried and felt the funny little bumps on them, I figured it was impossible to learn unless you’d been doing it since you were little, as he had.
Louis was also a big baseball fan. We used to spend hours talking about our favorite players and teams. It really kept my mind off of things. I did have moments of depression, though, especially when Louis and the other kids were in school.
In early December, Doctor Saraydarian had some bad news for me and my parents. I was to be admitted back into the hospital for more foreign protein injections and further testing. There was no determination of how long I’d be in there. I was crushed.
My dad, God bless him, took out our enormous reel-to-reel tape recorder and continued to read all of the newspaper articles on tape so that I wouldn’t miss a beat. Each day, he would deliver the messages to the hospital to keep me company while I recuperated. Mom would say a few words to me at the end of each tape. Listening to these recordings was incredibly comforting. My parents were there with me, even when they weren’t.
I had a radio in my room, so that occupied me, too, but there were no 24/7 sports talk stations back then like we have today. The closest thing we had to a Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, Tony Kornheiser, Mike Francesa, or Colin Cowherd was a guy named Stan Lomax, who did a fifteen-minute sports wrap-up show each night on WOR. I couldn’t wait to hear his show.
The big topic of conversation the week that I was readmitted was that the Yankees superstar center fielder, Joe DiMaggio, was retiring after a thirteen-year Hall of Fame career. It was huge news. I remember the doctors, orderlies, and nurses buzzing about it in the hallway. They were doubtful that his replacement, some fresh-faced kid from Oklahoma named Mickey Mantle, would ever be able to fill the shoes of, or live up to, the departing legend.
Years later I spoke to both DiMaggio and Mantle about their “changing of the Yankee guard.” Joe said that he was mournful about having to end his career and stop playing the game he loved, but the well wishes he’d gotten from fans all over the world since that day made him feel better. Mickey told me that he was terrified that his time as a Yankee was over before it even began. In the second game of the 1951 World Series, Mantle, the right fielder that day, was chasing down a fly ball when DiMaggio called him off. Mickey slowed up and caught his spikes in a drainpipe on the field. His knee blew out and he had to be carted off the field. The damage limited his mobility from that day on. Mantle spent the rest of his stellar career in and out of surgery. Like me, he never enjoyed being in a hospital bed.
The thing that hurt the most about this December admission was the timing. Christmas was just a few weeks away, and they couldn’t give me any guarantees that I’d be home before then. Going through this ordeal was bad enough, but having to spend the holidays in confinement was almost too much to bear.
Early on the morning of December 24, Doctor Saraydarian came into my room. There might have been cheerful Christmas carols playing in the background, but I tuned them out. The merriest sound I heard was my doctor saying, “Ed, you are cleared to go home.” I nearly leaped out of the bed to hug him.
Since it was Christmas Eve and the hospital was understaffed, it took a while for them to get in touch with my parents to let them know they could pick me up, and to get the paperwork processed for my discharge. Late in the afternoon, I left the Jersey City Medical Center, after what was to be my last extended stay. I was happy, but couldn’t go without leaving a little Christmas present behind for Dr. Saraydarian.
While I didn’t have any frankincense or myrrh to give, I’m sure the good doctor appreciated my gift of gold—well, a pack of Beech-Nut Gum with its shiny golden wrappers, anyway.
I settled back in at home and opened presents with my sister. The first thing that our family did on Christmas Day was go to church to thank God for all of the blessings He had given to us and continued to give, no matter what trials we faced.
As usual, the Christmas Day service was completely packed. It was standing room only at the Church of the Assumption. Back then, before the rules were changed, there was only one way to receive communion. There was no walking up the aisle and putting your palms out for a minister to place the Host in your hands to be immediately consumed. It was a truly communal experience, with the entire congregation kneeling along a railing at the front of the church. The priest would then walk along the railing distributing communion. When he approached you, the requirement was to stick out your tongue so that the Eucharist could be placed there and you could head back to your pew to pray.
When it came time for communion, I asked my sister Maureen to walk me up and to kneel next to me. Since it was crowded and the music was loud, I wasn’t able to hear the priest, or the accompanying altar boy who held a small plate under your chin to catch any crumbs that might accidentally drop, as they made their way down along the railing. To remedy this, I told my sister to give me a little nudge or tap when the pastor was close, so that I could stick my tongue out. Maureen, ever the practical joker, decided to trick me. She bumped me with her elbow while the priest was still about eighty feet away.
There I kneeled, for what seemed like an eternity, with my tongue sticking out, for God and everyone else in the church to see, until they reached me minutes later. My mouth was as dry as the Sahara by the time the sacred bread was placed in it. I was pretty steamed at Maureen, but eventually we had a good laugh about it.
A little over a week after I was released from the hospital, on January 3, 1952, I officially became a teenager.
Turning thirteen was exciting, but I was still filled with dread. I wouldn’t be going back to the hospital, but I also wouldn’t be regaining my sight.
That night, my Uncle Eugene stopped by to wish me a happy birthday. He brought a present with him, one that definitely topped his baseball jersey from a year before.
“Unc,” as I called him, handed me a small box. As soon as I opened it, I could feel the familiar contours and shape of a watch and band. This confused me. Why would my uncle give me a watch? He knew that I loved telling time, but he surely also had to know that I wouldn’t be able to see the dial. Any watches that I wore would be purely for decoration.
Sensing my puzzlement, Uncle Eugene took the watch from me. I heard him do something to it before handing it back. When I held it again, I noticed that the glass face on the watch, which was normally used to protect the hands and mechanism, was open. This was new. I’d never felt a timepiece like this before.
Uncle Eugene had given me a Braille watch.
Specially made for blind people to tell time, Braille watches are ingenious. They look identical to other watches, except that the protective crystal part can be flipped up by pressing a button on the side, allowing its wearer to feel the hands, as well as raised bumps next to the numbers. It was, and still is, a terrific innovation. I’ve worn a Braille watch ever since my thirteenth birthday.
Once again, time was on my side.
A BRAILLE WATCH was a nice diversion. I thanked Uncle Eugene for it, but I was still a little gloomy. My dad sensed this, and came into my room to chat with me before heading off to work. “What’s wrong, pal?” he said with concern. I opened up to him, shouting “I’m thirteen and my life is over!” He assured me that wasn’t the case, that I had a lot going for me. I knew that he was trying his best to help, but I lashed out with the only thing I could think of to say, “I’m handicapped! I can’t do anything without someone else! What am I going to do now with my life?”
I didn’t mean to hurt my father. I realized that by raising my voice to him, I might have gone over the line a bit. It certainly wasn’t his fault; I was just confused and scared. Despite this, Dad left in good spirits, after assuring me that with God’s help, everything would be okay.
When Dad got to work, with our conversation fresh in his mind, he happened to mention to some of his coworkers that it was my birthday and how low I was feeling. These were crusty, tough Hudson County union guys, straight out of central casting. They all worked the night shift for a company called ALCO Gravure, on the Hoboken waterfront, in a drafty 130,000-square-foot warehouse. Their job, as pressmen, was to do the tedious heavy lifting and labor required to put out daily and weekend editions of papers like the New York Times, as well as catalogs and inserts for stores like Macy’s, Sears & Roebuck, and Montgomery Ward.
As flinty as they seemed on the outside, they were all family men and big teddy bears at heart. They took up a collection for me and gave my father money to buy a special birthday gift.
The next morning, I went food shopping with my mother and sister before my dad got home. When we returned, I entered our apartment to the sounds of Kay Starr’s “Wheel of Fortune” filling the tiny front room. As I listened to Ms. Starr’s angelic voice singing about fate smiling on her, I noticed something. This wasn’t the radio. The sound was full of scratches and hisses, not the clear music I was accustomed to coming in over the airwaves.
My father called me from a corner of the room. “Come over here, Ed, I want you to feel something.” I followed the sounds of the music to him. When I got to the source, Dad took my hand and put it on an unfamiliar object. Within seconds, I recognized it as an RCA Victrola–style record player. These were very expensive machines, designed to look like pieces of furniture, where the turntable itself is seamlessly blended inside so as not to be noticed. I was stunned. I’d been hoping to get one of those for years, but there was no way we could ever afford one.
My father’s coworkers had chipped in to buy me a Victrola, so that I could listen to my favorite songs and artists whenever I wanted!
Not only that, they gave him extra money to buy a stack of records. Dad told me to be very careful as he handed me the latest vinyl albums from all of my favorite singers. There were 78 rpm ones, 331/3 ones, and even some of the fancy new 45 rpm singles, which had just been introduced two years before. Those felt very tiny in my hands.
I was ecstatic. I listened to the albums over and over again that whole day. I resolved that any extra money I earned or got as a gift from then on would go toward buying new albums, not baseball cards, which was where I’d usually spent my discretionary bucks.
My father came into my room to have a chat with me that night, just as he’d done the night before. He almost began it the same way, too: “How you doing, buddy? I hope you like the selection of records we picked out.” I wanted to make up for our previous conversation, so I cheerfully told him that I loved every one of them. This was, in fact, true. He’d managed to buy almost every album I would have picked out for myself. Dad’s next question caught me completely off guard. “Is the big hit guy in there, the one the girls scream about, you know, the guy that cries?” I said, “You mean Johnnie Ray? Sure, he’s in here. I think he’s terrific.” Dad replied, “You know, one of the guys at the plant told me something interesting about Johnnie Ray last night.”
Hmmm, union guys were talking about a teen pop idol? Okay, now Dad had my attention.
“Did you know that this Johnnie Ray is deaf?” Dad said, nonchalantly.
I responded with disbelief. My father went on to tell me the story of how Johnnie Ray had been in an accident at age thirteen that cost him his hearing. Noting the parallels in our stories, Dad explained that the singer had not let the inevitable depression get to him. Instead, he fought to carve out a successful career in music, despite an injury that could have ended it all.
“Yesterday you told me that your life was over because you were handicapped, that you had no idea what you would do,” Dad said. “You are my son, and I know that God gave you special talents, a passion for sports, and a gift for using words and phrases that make people take notice.”
