By FRANK ELTMAN
Associated Press Writer
PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. (AP) — His memories of Helen Keller are vivid, if not entirely favorable: she had big hands, a forceful personality, and not much of a sense of humor.
But none of that kept Bob Smithdas from working with Keller, icon of the deaf and blind, to persuade Congress to create and fund the Helen Keller National Center in the 1960s. At the Sands Point facility, people who are deaf and blind — as is Smithdas — are taught a range of life skills from communicating to cooking so they can live wherever they want to.
Smithdas, 83, was retiring Friday as the center's director of community education, a post that capped a 65-year-career as an inspiration and an instigator for improvements in the way deaf and blind people lead their lives.
"There have been two giant role models for the deaf-blind person over the last century: Helen Keller and Bob Smithdas," said Carl Augusto, president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind.
In honor of his retirement, Smithdas has been cited in a congressional resolution sponsored by Rep. Gary Ackerman. In addition, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has declared Friday "Robert Smithdas Day" in honor of the western Pennsylvania native.
Smithdas was the first deaf-blind man to receive a college degree, graduating from St. John's University 50 years after Keller got her bachelor's from Radcliffe. He was the first deaf-blind person to earn a master's degree (NYU, 1953). He has four honorary degrees from universities around the country.
In 1965, he was named "Handicapped American of the Year" by the President's Committee on Employment of People Who Are Disabled. A decade later, he married Michelle Craig, who also is deaf and blind; she works as an instructor at the Keller Center.
"I feel that what I was doing was creating a pathway for other deaf-blind people to follow," he said during an interview at a diner near his Port Washington home. An interpreter used hand-in-hand signals to communicate with him.
Smithdas lost his nearly all his hearing and sight when he was about 4 after contracting cerebrospinal meningitis. The language he had learned up to then deteriorated, and he was taught Tadoma, a method of communication in which the deaf-blind person places his thumb on the speaker's lips and his fingers along the jawline to understand what is being said.
It led to an unhappy encounter with Keller.
"I had heard that Helen could speak and I wanted to feel her speak, so I reached out to put my hands on her face, hoping that she would speak to me that way," Smithdas recalls. "But to my surprise she slapped my hand away. I wasn't amused. I thought it was a crude gesture."
Smithdas began writing poems as a youngster and has published two collections, "City of the Heart" (1966) and "Shared Beauty" (1983). The Poetry Society of America named him Poet of the Year for 1960-61.
He has also written an autobiography, "Life at My Fingertips."
"I was a model, a representative of the deaf-blind community," he says. "Even if I didn't know it."
Smithdas said he and others had been arguing for a decade for a place like the Keller Center, but it took a rubella outbreak in 1963 and 1964, which produced thousands of deaf-blind babies, to get the center opened.
Joseph McNulty, executive director of the Keller Center, remembers meeting a mother who was touring the facility.
"She came out of Bob's office crying. She told me that when her daughter was born, and she learned she was deaf-blind, reading Bob's life story kept her sane. She said, 'Finally meeting him brought me to tears.'"
Journalist Barbara Walters, who spoke at Smithdas' retirement luncheon Friday, said Smithdas was remarkable.
"Truly, the most memorable person I had ever met was Robert Smithdas," she said. "I remember going to Bob's house, and he cooked me a meal. I was amazed he was able to do this and didn't burn his hands."
Friday, January 30, 2009
Grammy nod brightens times for pair fighting cancer
By JOHN GEROME
AP Entertainment Writer
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — Win or lose, Charlie Kelley has a lot to be thankful for when the Grammys are handed out next month.
When Kelley's duo The Boxhounds were nominated for best polka album in December, the 40-year-old musician was in the hospital recovering from colon cancer surgery — a trying end to a trying six months in which both he and his wife, cable TV's Great American Country personality Nan Kelley, were diagnosed and treated for cancer.
Today, their cancer is in remission and they are working again. As they spoke in the living room of their Nashville home, they joked about their ordeal the way other couples might joke about a bad vacation.
"When we go to the oncologist, he says 'Which one are we seeing today — you or you," laughed Nan, who'd just appeared on air for the first time since her treatment without a wig covering her short dark hair.
Nan, 43, was the first to learn she had the disease after finding a knot in her neck last spring, which turned out to be Hodkins lymphoma and treatable if caught early.
She stayed on the air as long as she could during her treatment and told GAC viewers what was happening to her: "I shared it with the audience because I thought it could help other people going through it, but I ended up getting the most out of it. I can't count the e-mails and cards that came for me."
She returned to work full-time in September, but while her journey was ending her husband's was beginning.
Doctors found three polyps in Charlie's colon during a precautionary colonoscopy in November. One was malignant with highly active cancer cells and had to come out.
Nan was at work when she got word: "I'm standing there in a wig, still a mess from my ordeal ... It just didn't seem real."
The surgery was Dec. 1 — two days before the Grammy nominations were announced.
The Boxhounds are nominated for "Speechless," an album that bumps the boundaries of polka music. For one, it's all instrumental. It also incorporates nontraditional instruments like electric guitar and features a woman, Charlie's duo partner LynnMarie Rink, in a male-dominated genre.
Rink, who plays accordion to Charlie's guitar, was with him when he got word of the nomination.
"I shook him — 'Charlie, we got it, we got it.' Nothing. He was out. I said 'What do I do now?' I waited 30 seconds and tried again and he woke up. I said 'We got it,' and he said 'Got what?'
"He was very happy and had a huge smile on his face. I had brought in a hat with a Grammy on it. We took a photo and celebrated a little bit, then he went back to bed."
The news couldn't come at a better time.
"To be in the hospital and coming out of that and to know you're one of the top five in your genre, what a shot in the arm," Rink said. "Sometimes you go through a lull after a life-changing thing. This kind of forced him to push and keep that positive outlook."
But after he left the hospital, everything hit Charlie at once. He was emotional about the cancer and the nomination. He felt like he'd been given a second chance.
He needed to do something, he thought, and began organizing a project to raise money for the Colon Cancer Alliance and the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences' fund for needy musicians. He's working now to get other recording artists involved and hopes to have the first fundraiser this spring in Nashville.
"People probably think of colon cancer as an older person's cancer, but it can happen to anybody. I thought maybe if they see somebody young speaking out, maybe they'll listen. I can't tell you how important it is to me to do this and make it as big as I can make it," he said.
As for the Feb. 8 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, Charlie plans to be in the audience — this time wide awake.
Obama designer Pinto is grounded in Chicago
By SAMANTHA CRITCHELL
AP Fashion Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Maria Pinto isn't particularly interested in coattails, considering the Chicago-based designer hasn't campaigned to become a household name despite being a fashion favorite of soon-to-be first lady Michelle Obama.
Obama chose a purple Pinto sheath on the night her husband secured the Democratic nomination and an ocean-blue one the night she spoke at the Democratic National Convention. She wore a Pinto coat the chilly day in Springfield, Ill., when Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president, and a periwinkle dress by Pinto on the cover of Newsweek.
But the designer herself has spent the last few months as she did the ones that came before Obama-mania, building a business of loyal customers while approaching fashion with an artful, not trendy, eye.
"I don't want to be a disposable part of fashion," Pinto said in a recent telephone interview. She doesn't like to comment on her celebrity clients — who include Oprah Winfrey — but did describe Michelle Obama's style as "timeless" in a statement last summer.
"Choosing items that are always modern and chic, Mrs. Obama possesses a natural and unpretentious sophistication, which is reflected in her clothing," she said in the statement. "But what I love most is that at the foundation of this fabulous woman is an unbelievable brilliance and eloquence coupled by the grace and beauty of a dancer."
Pinto has had an almost lifelong interest in fashion, saying her career path has been clear for as long as she can remember.
"I've always been interested in art, and fashion and design are an extension of that. I'm not blurring the line with 'art-to-wear,' but it's about respecting the creative process."
Pinto grew up in a household of seven kids with she and her twin brother the youngest. She got her first sewing machine in the eighth grade after admiring an older, style-savvy sibling.
Yet they had very different styles, Pinto now recalls with a laugh. "I remember an outfit that I put orange and pink together. My sister — who always hit the trend just right — gave me hell for that, but as the 7th child, I have some rebel in me."
Pinto attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and launched her own label in 1991 after a stint working with the late draping master Geoffrey Beene; she has since made such easy, flattering cuts her own signature.
After selling her garments and accessories to upscale stores such as Bergdorf Goodman, Barneys New York and Takashimaya, Pinto opened her own atelier and boutique on Chicago's West Loop last summer and she has no plans to uproot to the nation's capital or to New York, the capital of style.
"Chicago seems to be working for me at the moment," she said.
There's also a hint of Midwestern practicality when Pinto talks about her mantra to mix luxury with low maintenance. Her new spring collection emphasizes the fluid curves of Rococo art, which Pinto says give the appearance of movement and enhances a woman's shape.
Pinto, as a 51-year-old professional, knows her customer inside and out, almost always wearing her own designs.
"I think I need to be able to put things on my body. When you put something on yourself and feel, you get a sense of being inside the garment — you get a sense of the shoulder, sleeve or volume of the skirt. It informs where you go next."
Four-year old plays violin by ear
By DEB PETERSON
The Baxter Bulletin
COTTER, Ark. (AP) — Ethan Sexauer is four years old.
He stood up straight in front of Larisa Kasatkina at her keyboard, violin at his chin and bow in his hand. His teacher, Oksana Pavilionis, stood close enough to reach over and correct the position of his bow with her own.
Kasatkina aegan to play "Ode to Joy" from the fourth movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Ethan played with her, start to finish.
"What should we play now, Ethan?" she asked.
He thought for a few seconds, looked at Kasatkina and said with enthusiasm, "Mozart's Lullaby!"
Violin in place, he listened carefully to Kasatkina’s introduction, watching her intently and waiting patiently for his entrance, and he came in right on the mark.
Ethan's parents, Matt and Sandy Sexauer of Cotter, Ark., played classical music for Ethan before his was born. Since then they have sung lullabies to him in the evenings, children's songs in the mornings and always listen to classical music in the car.
When Ethan was only two, his father said one day, "Who is the music by?" Ethan answered, "George Fredrick Handel."
It wasn't long before he could distinguish a Telemann concerto from a Bach, Vivaldi or Veracini concerto, according to his father.
Today, his mother plays his Suzuki violin CD's while he's busy being a boy. She said he has broken two or three bows now, using them as swords.
"It appears that he's not paying any attention to the music," Sandy said, "and the next day he'll pick up his violin and play it straight through."
Matt’s sister, a violin teacher herself in another state, gave Ethan a 1/10th-size violin for his third birthday. Shortly after, his parents heard Pavilionis playing at church one day and learned she gives violin lessons. They thought it was a bit early, but decided to give it a try.
"Truthfully," Matt said, "our goals were pretty simple. Learn how to hold the violin, play some open strings, know the string names, don't kill the teacher and don't break the violin or the bow."
Ethan wanted nothing to do with it at first, so Sandy played his violin at his lessons. She was about to give up when Ethan picked up the violin himself and in no time at all was playing 'Mississippi Stop Stop' and 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star'. Within months he could play 70 songs, and his repertoire now exceeds 200.
"He would go home and try to play his violin songs on his xylophone," Matt said.
Pavilionis and Kasatkina, both from Russia, have been friends and "sisters in music" since 1996. Pavilionis holds a master's degree and Kasatkina a doctorate in music. Both are accomplished musicians and performers, and the two operate a school offering music lessons, Ovation Music Academy.
Their goal, they said, is to provide an affordable, integrated music program in which students learn theory, notes, harmony, rhythm, improvisation and composing, even classical dance. They teach music of all kinds, including country, bluegrass and jazz, in all forms, including voice.
"We want to provide comprehensive music education," Pavilionis said. "This is a school, not a studio."
"The neatest thing is that Ethan's got this opportunity with an amazing teacher," Matt said, "and all because we stumbled upon it at church. In a small town like Cotter, to have an opportunity like this ... a person ought to use it."
He's looking forward to discovering if Ethan's little sister, Paige, who dances when Ethan plays, will want to play an instrument herself. To this family, it's clearly a worthy effort.
The Baxter Bulletin
COTTER, Ark. (AP) — Ethan Sexauer is four years old.
He stood up straight in front of Larisa Kasatkina at her keyboard, violin at his chin and bow in his hand. His teacher, Oksana Pavilionis, stood close enough to reach over and correct the position of his bow with her own.
Kasatkina aegan to play "Ode to Joy" from the fourth movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Ethan played with her, start to finish.
"What should we play now, Ethan?" she asked.
He thought for a few seconds, looked at Kasatkina and said with enthusiasm, "Mozart's Lullaby!"
Violin in place, he listened carefully to Kasatkina’s introduction, watching her intently and waiting patiently for his entrance, and he came in right on the mark.
Ethan's parents, Matt and Sandy Sexauer of Cotter, Ark., played classical music for Ethan before his was born. Since then they have sung lullabies to him in the evenings, children's songs in the mornings and always listen to classical music in the car.
When Ethan was only two, his father said one day, "Who is the music by?" Ethan answered, "George Fredrick Handel."
It wasn't long before he could distinguish a Telemann concerto from a Bach, Vivaldi or Veracini concerto, according to his father.
Today, his mother plays his Suzuki violin CD's while he's busy being a boy. She said he has broken two or three bows now, using them as swords.
"It appears that he's not paying any attention to the music," Sandy said, "and the next day he'll pick up his violin and play it straight through."
Matt’s sister, a violin teacher herself in another state, gave Ethan a 1/10th-size violin for his third birthday. Shortly after, his parents heard Pavilionis playing at church one day and learned she gives violin lessons. They thought it was a bit early, but decided to give it a try.
"Truthfully," Matt said, "our goals were pretty simple. Learn how to hold the violin, play some open strings, know the string names, don't kill the teacher and don't break the violin or the bow."
Ethan wanted nothing to do with it at first, so Sandy played his violin at his lessons. She was about to give up when Ethan picked up the violin himself and in no time at all was playing 'Mississippi Stop Stop' and 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star'. Within months he could play 70 songs, and his repertoire now exceeds 200.
"He would go home and try to play his violin songs on his xylophone," Matt said.
Pavilionis and Kasatkina, both from Russia, have been friends and "sisters in music" since 1996. Pavilionis holds a master's degree and Kasatkina a doctorate in music. Both are accomplished musicians and performers, and the two operate a school offering music lessons, Ovation Music Academy.
Their goal, they said, is to provide an affordable, integrated music program in which students learn theory, notes, harmony, rhythm, improvisation and composing, even classical dance. They teach music of all kinds, including country, bluegrass and jazz, in all forms, including voice.
"We want to provide comprehensive music education," Pavilionis said. "This is a school, not a studio."
"The neatest thing is that Ethan's got this opportunity with an amazing teacher," Matt said, "and all because we stumbled upon it at church. In a small town like Cotter, to have an opportunity like this ... a person ought to use it."
He's looking forward to discovering if Ethan's little sister, Paige, who dances when Ethan plays, will want to play an instrument herself. To this family, it's clearly a worthy effort.
Pulitzer-winning journalist Whitt of Ky. dies
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Retired Kentucky and Georgia journalist Richard Whitt, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of a nightclub fire that killed 165 people in 1977, has died. He was 64.
Whitt died Monday at his home in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta. The Courier-Journal reported the Cobb County medical examiner's office attributed the death to an apparent heart attack.
Whitt had been at The Courier-Journal for four months when the Beverly Hills Supper Club caught fire in Southgate, Ky., on May 28, 1977. His coverage revealed overcrowding and fire-code violations that led to fire-safety law reform and criminal investigations.
He was a native of Greenup County and a graduate of the University of Kentucky School of Journalism. He joined the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1989 and retired in 2006. He was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 1995.
Whitt died Monday at his home in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta. The Courier-Journal reported the Cobb County medical examiner's office attributed the death to an apparent heart attack.
Whitt had been at The Courier-Journal for four months when the Beverly Hills Supper Club caught fire in Southgate, Ky., on May 28, 1977. His coverage revealed overcrowding and fire-code violations that led to fire-safety law reform and criminal investigations.
He was a native of Greenup County and a graduate of the University of Kentucky School of Journalism. He joined the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1989 and retired in 2006. He was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 1995.
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