In another thread, I posted about some gramophone records that a neighbor gave me when I was a kid in the '60s. This started me thinking about him, which I haven’t done in a long time.
Harry Cuff was a brilliant man. He was old even when I was young. He had his right arm blown off in WWII, and had to learn to do everything with his left hand. Some of the things he did were just incredible! He cooked. He sewed (don’t ask me how!). He fixed things. He built things.
The one thing I remember most fondly that he did, was to build animals and birds out of nuts and matchsticks and balsa wood. He made owls and ducks and geese and deer and bears and pigs and cats out of walnut shells and chestnuts and other nuts. I never watched him doing this, but he had hundreds of them on display in his workshop. He would drill holes where the parts were to be attached to the nut, or half of a nut, insert matchsticks for legs, and use them as dowels for attaching the head. Then he’d glue the feet bottoms to a balsa plank so they’d stand up without rolling over. He’d paint them and varnish them, and give them away. They were just incredible. I regret that I don’t have one today.
He progressed to building barnyard scenes. Barns, houses, log cabins, on a square or rectangle of plywood, with trees, and fences, plastic grass and and painted water. And all the animals milling about the farmyard, all built to scale. Amazing. And all with one hand - the “wrong” one. The man was truly gifted. He took a tragedy and turned it into something really wonderful.
Here’s to ya, Harry. I miss you.
Have you ever known someone similar? Please share your stories.
I have a student who has MS, she is in a wheel chair yet is completely unassisted in her daily activities. As a matter of fact one can usually not tell she has MS, unless she volunteers the info to you.
Why is she so gifted?
She is a worldclass free climber, on a circuit. She is amazingly strong in her hands, which makes her pretty much an anomoly. She is the most spirited, forthcoming, kindred person I know. And at 25, I only see her accomplishing all of her goals, no matter how large or small. She’ll stick in my collective memory for sure.
Many years ago, when I was a university student, I had a summer job. There were a number of us students working there that summer, one of whom I’ll call M. M was a student at the same university I attended, and she was planning to become a doctor.
One day, while riding her bike on the way to work, M somehow became involved in an accident. She was taken to hospital, and was told that she was paralyzed from the waist down. She’d be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
M didn’t let that stop her. As soon as she was able, she returned to school, and kept pursuing her medical degree. I’d meet her at school from time to time for a coffee, and catch up with how things were going with her (I well remember her campaign for better wheelchair access to the medical school), but after I graduated, we lost touch. But I a quick search on the 'Net tells me that not only did she eventually get her medical degree, but is a nowadays a respected researcher besides.
Well, maybe it’s not building toys or rock climbing, but I was certainly impressed with M’s drive and determination–and eventual success.
I used to have a job helping out a guy who’d had polio as a kid. By the time he was 13, he was in an iron lung. He was in his 60s or 70s and had post-polio syndrome when I knew him.
He was a seriously smart cookie. Despite having almost no use of his muscles at all, he ended up going through a doctorate in physics at Stanford. He had a CV about 5 pages long, all of it descriptions of faculty positions and patents he held. He developed the magnets used in MRIs, the basic mechanism for metal sorting machines in recycling plants, and did a bunch of work that’s classified. He loved any kind of challenge in figuring out how something worked or in designing something to work better. Because he couldn’t really pick up or manipulate anything himself, he’d have me (or someone else helping him) use whatever device he wanted to learn about while he watched. He was very good at getting my hands to work as extensions of his own mind–a talent that was both gratifying to both of us and felt kind of freaky on occasion. He was incredibly articulate. He gave very precise directions on how I was to hold or manipulate something that he wanted to investigate.
I knew a guy who was born with only one arm. Well, he had a stub of a right arm that ended just above where the elbow should be. He was raised on a farm by parents who did not let him use his “handicap” as an excuse. He was expected to do the same chores as his able bodied brother. In high school he played linebacker on the varsity football team. He was good enough to be named all-city a few times. He also competed in track and field - pole vault, to be exact. I have seen a newspaper clipping of him in mid-air. He lettered in both sports. His chosen vocation was automobile mechanic. I’ve worked on cars with him and he can still, at 65 years old, do more with one arm than I can with two. As an adult he coached little league baseball and softball for 10+ years. The only time I ever saw him ask someone to help him do anything was the period of time when he was recovering from rotator cuff surgery on his “good” arm. That lasted about a week. A simply amazing man.
My former doctor was profoundly deaf. He had a bear of a time getting a med school to accept him. He recently ran for the state house (unsuccessfully). He’s written a book (about becoming a deaf doctor), and is fairly high up in the medical school here.