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My friend PC shared this amazing video with me. It’s a relatively current-time summary of the life of Kim Peek. We know him better as “Rain Man.”
Excerpts from the UK’s Times Online:
Kim Peek, the autistic savant who inspired the Oscar-winning film Rain Man, has died, aged 58.
Mr Peek’s father Fran said that his son had suffered a major heart attack on Saturday and was pronounced dead at a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, the town where he had spent his life.
(snip)
Born in 1951 in Salt Lake city, Mr Peek was diagnosed as severely mentally retarded and his parents were advised to place him in an institution and forget about him. Thirty years later, he was classified as a "mega-savant," a genius in about 15 different subjects, from history and literature and geography to numbers, sports, music and dates.
(snip)
He would read eight books a day, taking just ten seconds to read a page. He could read two pages simultaneously, his left eye reading the left page and his right eye reading the right page.
But throughout his life he still needed 24-hour care. Despite his great mental agility, his motor skills remained limited; he could not perform simple tasks such as dressing himself or combing his hair.
His father Fran became his sole carer after Mr Peek’s parent divorced in 1975. Fran Peek said that care of his son was a 30-hour-day, 10-day-a-week job.(snip)
(“Rain Man writer Barry) Morrow said of him: "I love the way he’s flowered, it belies the myth that people don’t change, especially people with developmental disabilities."
Four years before his death, Mr Peek said: "I wasn’t supposed to make it past about 14, and yet here I am at 54, a celebrity!"
Kim Peek and my brother are vastly different from each other, though they share a mental retardation diagnosis. Even so, revisiting Kim’s story has made me acutely aware of the possibilities (from modest to stunning) for people with developmental disabilities to “flower,” each in their own way.
Please watch the video and read the accompanying text from Times Online.
My brother is hardly a candidate for newspaper coverage nor for a Hollywood bio-pic. But just four years older than Kim Peek, my brother was born in a era where my parents were encouraged to pop him into an institution and forget about him. Thanks to a benevolent arrangement of the universe, they didn’t do that. He lived at home, went to school, has worked in the community since he was 18 years old. He has worked hard all his life to maximize his somewhat limited abilities. And he has come so very far!
Kim Peek’s story is not one that directly affects many – even most – of you, I suspect. But I hope it serves to help all of us look at disabilities with fresh eyes. And you may be sure I am going to pop off a link to this post to my state and federal legislators. And also to our uber-conservative and rarely present governor, Tim Pawlenty, from whom I will receive a self-promoting, generic response that says essentially nothing. “Thank you for writing. Your input is valuable (they make me say that, but guess what — I don’t really give a rip!)"
You know what? It is incumbent upon us as a compassionate, caring nation and as people of any faith (or lack of same) who give a damn about justice to go to bat for our most vulnerable citizens, even as the country and state decimate the services that help them survive and thrive. I so totally mean this.
Please and thank you.
(cross-posted at the Clotheslineblog.)
9 Comments
Kim Peek is quite amazing.
You might also try Daniel Tammett.
Personally what I find most interesting about such people is that they show that they are sectors of intelligence, important sectors, that normal humans don’t have and yet can be reached with the same amount of brain matter. In other words, the difference is somewhere in the architecture, not the amount of raw material. That means that even if for some reason we can’t exceed human intelligence in the future, we could still potentially develop fantastic new abilities.
Interesting. Of course, for the Kim Peeks of the world, this is a fantastic new ability. I think the thing that amazed me the most was the part about reading left page with left eye, right page with right eye, simultaneously, and retaining something like 98% of it. Stunning, don’t you think?
Great Diary helping people who are different and a little slow get the best use of their lives like Kim did is a worthy goal.
What can we do to help more people like Peek and your brother?
Great post, barbara. Whether the disability is physical or mental or emotional, makes no less a person. We are at our best as a nation, as a society, when we raise people up to the best of their potential rather than building barriers.
I know, that’s such a socialist concept. Tell it to the Guy on the Mount… he’s my philosopher of choice.
Wow, thanks.
Urge your legislators not to make budget cuts on the backs of the most vulnerable of our citizens. And if they ignore that message, please, please call, write, personally visit to disabuse them of that choice.
If you can afford a donation, please consider your area’s Arc or The Arc of the United States http://www.thearc.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=183. It’s a good site for gathering more information about women, men, children who are really working hard to push beyond surviving to thriving.
And thank you so much for asking. Happy New Year, TCU!
You know, there was a time (in my lifetime, actually) when this country was about the business of being that oft-mentioned village, and even Republicans cared about our vulnerable citizens.
It’d be interesting to ID the pivotal moment (if there is one) when we began our shift to “it’s all about me, don’t bother me with your problems.” Actually, my brother is not a problem. He’s a human being who, through neither choice nor fault of his own, emerged into the world with special needs.
Not to politicize this (snarky little smile), but this is one of those areas where pro-lifers need to get on board and stay there. Just sayin’.
And yes to the prophet, who was totally in to tending the sheep. All of ‘em.
The preceding soapbox speechlet was brought to you by barbara, who says: Happy New Year, Prairie! Wishing you a year of healing and peace!
Happy New Year Actually I was wondering what kind of environment seems to help people like this the most and is the government providing that environment? What does the latest research say?
The game that’s afoot is “aging in place.” Rather than the current-time institutional option (group homes, which, in fairness, are a good option for some), there is focus on homes like my brother’s.
He lives in our family home with two other men. It is a Semi-Independent Living Services (SILS) facility. They don’t require 24/7 oversight. But with their state-via-the-county funding, they receive hours of services from their guardians’ service-provider of choice.
In my brother’s case, those service providers help them with meal planning, shopping, cooking, activities that require transportation and some assistance (e.g., picking up prescriptions, voting, medical appointments, etc.).
I think the plan is to expand what they can offer to some in-home nursing expertise. And just learned that another strategy (when such becomes appropriate) is to move my brother and others who are Boomers to assisted living facilities and bring their services to them there.
All of this is preferable and more cost-effective than group homes.
And all of it cycles back to the funding, which our uber-conservative gov unallots at his own pleasure.
It’s complicated, but there are some innovations on the horizon that may help. But unless folks have someone who is part of this demographic (what a heartless collective!), they don’t much care.
Barbara, Thanks for a lovely post and a time to think about tender kindness. I was just touched by the memory that I had spent the Y2K New Years with my very aging mother as we watched that round-the- world celebration. She is gone; the memory is very tender. We must be accountable to the challenged and the aged and our children. There have been periods that encouraged this kind of care and responsibility.
Thank you for the story and the reminder. Here’s to your New Year. At least you gave us Franken! Thanks for that, too. Rev B