This week we continue our multi-part series about my early childhood and my journey through the special education system.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 16 of Contemplating Life.

This week we continue our multi-part series about my early childhood and my journey through the special education system.

After successfully navigating kindergarten, I proceeded through the primary grades. First and second grade were uneventful experiences. I don’t recall my teachers’ names. I was assigned a better wheelchair than the one that I had in kindergarten. The only other memorable events from that part of my life were not school related. Both of them were painful experiences that left me bruised and sore

One Sunday afternoon in the middle of winter, my family went ice skating at Geist Reservoir on the northeast side of Indianapolis. We were accompanied by my paternal grandparents. Apparently, ice skating was a family tradition that my dad enjoyed with them since his childhood. We had a small snow sled with a seat built into it. Dad lifted me into the sled and would go skating across the ice pulling me on the sled at high speed. I really enjoyed it until we hit a patch of rough ice just as we were making a turn. The sled tipped over and dumped me onto the ice. The result was a lot of sprained body parts and a black eye. I had interesting stories to tell the next day at school to explain the bruise. We never went skating again.

The other incident was at a summer camp that I believe was between my first and second grades. It was only a day camp, not overnight. It was held at a facility on the east side called the Crossroads Rehabilitation Center. That organization still exists at a different location and is now known as Easter Seals Crossroads.

Although the camp was designed to serve disabled kids, I didn’t feel like they were very well-equipped. For example, they didn’t have a handheld urinal in the restroom like the ones I used at home or at school. The janitor tried to lift me up by grabbing me under the arms and standing me in front of the toilet to try to pee. It’s the only time I ever attempted to pee standing up. Of course, my legs could not support even a tenth of my weight. It is a wonder I wasn’t injured. That would come later. The next day, Mom sent me there with a Tupperware cup to pee into.

Behind the building in a large playground area where most of the camp activities took place, they had a regular above-ground swimming pool set up. Some of the kids would be lifted out of their wheelchairs and could get into the pool. I was too afraid to allow strangers to do that. There was a wooden platform alongside the pool and a wooden ramp. They would roll me up the ramp in my wheelchair so that I could see over the edge of the pool and watch the other kids splash around.

The camp counselors were everyday high school kids who had no particular experience dealing with disabled children. The young lady who was pushing my wheelchair took me down the ramp forwards. She slipped on the wet ramp and I went rolling forward until my front wheels hit the grass. The chair tilted forward and I fell out and landed on my face. Fortunately, nothing was broken but I had sprained ankles, knees, elbows, and shoulders.

It took me more than a week to recover. During that time I became an even bigger mama’s boy than usual and I insisted on sleeping in her bed relegating my dad to the sofa. When I finally recovered, they tried to encourage me to go back to a second session of the camp but I flatly refused.

Several of my disabled classmates attended an overnight weeklong summer camp called Camp Riley. Although they reassured me that it was staffed by experienced, knowledgeable people and was much better run than what I have experienced at Crossroads, I never had any interest in leaving the safety of my parents’ care. I never spent anywhere overnight away from my parents or grandparents until a hospital stay in my early 20s and then a vacation with my friend Barbara when I was 31. You will hear all about those situations in future episodes.

I always felt completely safe riding the school bus to Roberts and completely safe while at school. There was however a serious safety issue at the school that no one realized until one fateful day when someone dared my classmate Charles Lynn to pull the fire alarm as a prank. That stunt uncovered a serious hazard. Here is the back story.

I mentioned in the last episode that in kindergarten we spent most of the afternoon in nap time laying on cots in the classroom. I also mentioned that the entire school had one hour of post-lunch nap time. Rather than set up the cots in the classroom, the grade school kids would go to the basement for nap time. After each of the three lunch periods, we would all ride the elevator down to the basement, and travel down a very long hallway to a large room where cots and beds were set up. You could pack four wheelchairs and perhaps two or three walkers on the elevator at once. It would take several trips to get the entire contingent down to the basement.

The route from the elevator to the nap room took us past the boiler room which was where the bus drivers would hang out when they were not driving. It was the only designated smoking area in the building. When my mother or other parents were there working on volunteer activities such as the cookie sale, they would hang out with the bus drivers in that room and smoke and drink coffee.

Along that long corridor were huge 55-gallon drums of drinking water which were marked with the civil defense logo. This was the height of the Cold War and our building was a designated fallout shelter. I seriously doubt how much protection the building would have given us. The nap room had a series of short windows high up in the back wall. Then again, we weren’t exactly capable of doing the classic 50s “duck and cover” useless maneuver in the event of a nuclear attack.

In addition to fire drills, in which the entire student population would evacuate the building and lineup on the sidewalk far from the building, we also had so-called “security drills” in which we would all ride down the elevator to the basement nap room which had the beds and cots conveniently folded up and put away. I would’ve liked to have seen them frantically doing this in the event of an actual emergency.

What was supposed to be the safest room in the building was actually a death trap. This was uncovered thanks to my classmate Charles Lynn, a walker with cerebral palsy. One day as we were returning from our nap, someone noticed there was a fire alarm button next to the elevator. None of the kids in wheelchairs could reach a high enough but because Charlie could walk, he could reach it. Someone double-dog dared him to pull the fire alarm in the basement as we were waiting on the elevator.

While we knew it would create a stir, we had no idea it would create a mild panic among the teachers. Naturally, in a fire, the elevator is off-limits. No one ever asked, “How are we going to get 20-30 handicapped kids out of the basement in the event of a fire?” Furthermore, if there ever was a fire, one of the most likely places would be an explosion in the boiler room. As I mentioned, we passed that room en route from the elevator to the nap room. Even if the elevator was operational during a fire, the way would be blocked by a fire in the boiler room.

By the way, there was a long winding ramp connecting the first and second floors and there were smaller ramps connecting various levels of the first floor but there was no ramp access to the basement. You will hear more about the big ramp between floors in a future episode.

After some frantic staff meetings at the end of the day, nap time was moved to the auditorium which was on the ground floor. Although we never had a fire while I was there and I don’t think there was ever one in 50 years the building was used as a school, that stunt by Charles Lynn could have potentially saved a lot of lives by calling to attention a very dangerous situation.

By the way, if you are a race fan who visited the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, you might have seen Charles. He frequently stations himself behind the grandstands of the main stretch near the entrance to the Gasoline Alley garage area where he sells newspapers. He also sells inside Gasoline Alley and is a popular figure with the drivers and mechanics. Legendary driver A.J. Foyt nicknamed him “Wolfman” because somehow they found out he could do a really cool Wolfman howl. Of course, by now he would be in his late 60s like me and I don’t know if he is still around or not.

After the fire alarm incident, we then had our security drills the way most schools held them which was to grab our coats, go out into the hallway facing the wall, and put a coat over our head. As the Cold War began to relax, security drills were renamed tornado drills. Realistically, tornadoes were a much more probable threat, and getting into the hallway away from windows was a more practical defense against tornadoes than it would have been against a nuclear conflagration.

Sadly, these days students not only face fire drills and tornado drills, but they also have to endure active shooter drills. God only knows how Roberts School would have handled those. Probably just lock the door and pray as most kids do. Let’s face it, hiding under your desk is probably no more effective against an active shooter than it would be against a nuclear bomb.

Before disabled children were integrated into regular education settings, one of the arguments against having us in a regular school was that it presented a safety hazard. They feared it would be difficult to evacuate disabled kids and/or evacuating them would slow down the evacuation of able children.

Famed disability advocate Judy Heumann who recently passed away at age 75 was a teacher who taught from a wheelchair because she had contracted polio as a child. She was denied employment because they said she could not help evacuate children in case of an emergency and/or would hinder their evacuation. She eventually won a court case that allowed her to teach. She later worked as an advocate who was instrumental in getting the Americans with Disabilities Act passed. See the articles linked in the description for more about her.

My third grade teacher, Miss Clara Rose Holmes had no such difficulty being employed. She walked with a limp and have limited use of one arm as a result of polio. As a child, she attended Roberts School and upon graduating college, she came back to teach. She was much beloved and fondly remembered by everyone who attended the school.

I was sort of the teacher’s pet in her classroom. She noted how bright I was and was happy to accelerate me through many lessons. I was doing multiplication and division while some kids were still struggling with subtraction.

She concluded that some of the work in her classroom was somewhat “busy work”. While most kids had to go through pages and pages of math problems every day, once she realized I was gifted, she exempt me from some of those math drills. For grammar lessons, most students had to begin the day by writing out all of their spelling words before doing any of the other assignments. I was similarly exempt from these drills.

She had concluded that such grunt work would tire me out. My disability left me no more fatigued than any of the other kids in the class. But when the teacher says, “You’re so smart that I’m not going to waste your time on all these mindless drills.” I certainly wasn’t trying to dissuade her from the idea that it was too hard for me physically.

The end result is that I can solve a logic problem with no difficulty. High school algebra, geometry, trigonometry as well as calculus posed no problems for me yet simple arithmetic is a challenge. In high school, when I took bookkeeping, I could take a column of numbers and add them up three times and get three different answers.

Grammar, sentence structure, and writing all come naturally to me yet I can’t spell worth a damn. One of my junior high teachers tried to trick me into becoming a better speller because he knew I was competitive and egotistical about my intellect. He tried to persuade me to enter a spelling bee. I laughed in his face. “You really expect me who can’t spell my way out of a paper bag to go up against people who have a natural talent for such things? You’re trying to trick me by making it a competition. No way.” Fortunately, I got into computers. Spreadsheets and spellcheckers compensate for my lack of skills.

Two other memorable events occurred when I was in third grade. As part of routine screening, they discovered I couldn’t see. I had no idea I was nearsighted. I just thought that was as well as human beings could see. I was amazed by photography, especially Polaroid instant photography. I could look at a photograph up close with my nearsighted vision and see more detail than I could see of the real objects. I thought it was magical that a photograph could see in more detail than I could.

I got glasses when I was eight years old and discovered a world I didn’t know existed. I didn’t know that grass consisted of individual blades. I never got out of my wheelchair and played on the ground where I could see the grass up close. To me, it just looked like a spread of fuzzy green carpet.

The fact that I was a gifted student, learned to play chess at age 8, and wore glasses completed my image as the ultimate nerd probably before the word nerd was ever coined.

The other memorable event from my third year of school was November 22, 1963. That fateful day my mom was at school in my classroom that day hosting a party as the PTA room mother. It was a thank-you party for our successful annual cookie sale. A teacher from a different classroom ran into our room and told the adults, “Turn on the radio. There is terrible news about the president.”

They all listened intently but I couldn’t tell what was going on. My mom explained to me that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. I misunderstood what she meant by “shot”. I thought he had received an inoculation. I asked, “Why did he go to Dallas? Don’t they have doctors in Washington DC that could give him his shots?” She explained he was shot with a gun.

Before the afternoon was over, we learned he had died. Rather than ride the school bus home, Mom took me home herself and tried not to cry in front of me. My family was lifelong Democrats and Roman Catholics. My grandmother had a photograph of Kennedy on the fireplace mantle next to a photograph of the Pope.

My only comment on the way home was, “I guess we throw away that comedy album ‘The First Family’ when we get home. It won’t be cool anymore to make fun of a dead president.” I was referring to a comedy album we owned called “The First Family” by comedian Vaughn Meader. He did wonderful impersonations of Kennedy and the Kennedy. I don’t think we threw it away but we never listened to it again. I brought a copy on CD from Amazon decades later I listened to it one more time just for old times’ sake.

We spent the next few days after the assassination glued to the TV. The following Sunday just as we came in the door from church, I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald live on NBC TV. I said, “Hey Mom… They just shot that guy.”

“What guy?”

“That guy that shot the president. Somebody just shot him.”

If the president of the United States and the man in police custody who had shot him were not safe, were any of us ever safe? That question persisted throughout all of my memories of the 1960s.

I remember prior to that watching the Today Show with my mom during the Cuban missile crisis and asking, “Mommy, What’s a blockade?” I didn’t know how serious the threat was.

Throughout the 60s, we had the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.

I was in Chicago two weeks before the riots at the DNC having an ordinary vacation with my parents. What if I had been there during the riots? What might I have seen at a young age?

Things haven’t changed much these days. People still live in fear. The threats are different but the fear is the same.

Even as an old white guy, the fear is still the same. Sometimes I find myself waking up in the morning thinking, “I really should turn on the news. Turn on the Today Show or MSNBC. Maybe Vladimir Putin dropped a tactical nuke on Ukraine. I wouldn’t even know about it if I didn’t turn on the TV and find out.”

Those are the things that occupy us today. Not a whole lot has changed.

In our next episode, we move on to fourth and fifth grade where I got my first motorized wheelchair, and about the diversity of the kids who attended Roberts school.

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I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.