By Mark Burgan
Sacramento Bee Neighbors Writer
(Published May 25, 2000)
"Hey, I didn't know they allowed retards here," said a student to a person with cerebral palsy.
"Don't ask him, he's stupid," said another student to a first-grader with a learning disability.
Those statements were overheard at a school by Leslie DeDora, founder and executive director of A Touch Of Understanding, a non-profit group devoted to disability awareness.
It's those types of statements that DeDora has devoted her life to preventing. Last week, she showed some Elk Grove Unified School District students what it might be like to be a person on the receiving end of those statements.
Formally organized five years ago, Touch Of Understanding aims for more than merely provide sensitivity training. DeDora wants to show people that they can often overcome their own challenges, that people with disabilities can excel in other ways and that differences among people offer them a chance to learn from each other. She wants to remind people that each person is special.
Her method of relaying that message is hands-on, upclose and in-person.
Mike Penketh, who's been with TOU for more than two years, spoke to students last week during the presentation at Valley High School. In the last 25 years, he has flown as a test pilot, an aerobatic pilot, for the Marine Corps and for commercial airlines.
Penketh doesn't have any hands. They had to be amputated after a car crash in 1993.
"My first thought was, 'Now I'll have to fly with hooks,' " he told the students. "I never once thought I wouldn't fly again."
After the accident, he fought the Federal Aviation Administration for two years before they let him fly again.
Since the crash, Penketh, 53, has built his own plane. He is believed to be the only pilot in the world with two myoelectric arms, and the only one who does aerobatic flying.
"It's just about learning to use different tools," he told students, referring to his artificial hands, which are controlled by computer chips that respond to his arms' muscle impulses.
DeDora's presentations combine using speakers with disabilities, like Penketh, with a hands-on approach to understanding how to overcome them.
For example, the students at Valley High were asked to write their names, but instead of looking at the paper, they wrote it while looking at its reflection in a mirror placed in front of them at a 90-degree angle.
Try it. It's not easy.
The exercise simulates the disconnection that occurs in the brain of someone who has a learning disability, how the messages to the brain become confused.
"Are they any less intelligent than when they sat down?" said DeDora. "No. And they're just as smart as their peers who may have learning disabilities. Learning disabilities have no connection to intelligence."
Her son, after taking honors English in high school and graduating, failed the reading entrance exam at American River College.
He could barely read.
He had scotopic sensitivity syndrome, which makes the reading material disjointed and seem like it's moving.
The disability is corrected when his reading material is seen through tinted glasses - in his case, gold colored.
The results were amazing, DeDora said.
"He had never read a book in his life," recalls DeDora. "But at age 19, he was the youngest person to ever pass the stockbrokers exam."
Students at Valley also handled various prosthetics, attempted to manipulate wheelchairs through a door and were taught to write and read their names in Braille.
"The students close their eyes and read those bumps with their fingers," said DeDora. "They begin to have real serious respect for the people who can do that with their fingers. It's not, 'Oh those poor people,' it's, 'My gosh, how can they do that? That's so neat.' "
"Before this, you wouldn't have any idea what they go through," said Nitika Nitashni, a senior at Valley.
Senior Hardeep Sangha said trying to use the wheelchair surprised her.
"That was really educational," said Sangha. "I couldn't move it right. I have legs, and I couldn't."
"I'm not telling them how to feel," said Dedora. "I'm not telling them how someone who uses prosthetics feels. I'm exposing them to these things, and they draw the conclusion that people with disabilities can do an awful lot.
"They get over being repulsed. They are not afraid to touch it. It goes from, 'Oh, that's gross', to being curious ...
"They learn that it is not at all easy. But the message is not pity. It's respect."
She tells students about her challenges - like it's tough for her to speak in front of groups. Then she asks the students to share their strengths and their weaknesses.
"All of a sudden it's a source of pride, it's a source of 'I know more than my peers because I've gone through something that's darn tough.'
"I had a little boy come up to me and he said, 'You know, I have an uncle who has retardation, and he's one of my best friends.' I don't think there's a whole lot of chance to say that ..."
And the presentations apparently aren't just for students. Teachers have privately told DeDora about their own disabilities they've kept secret.
"They were afraid of how they'd be treated if their peers knew that they had that disability. But they were telling me about it."
DeDora got the idea for a hands-on disability awareness program from her son, who was 3 years old at the time.
She had taken him to a children's museum, where a display had a wheelchair, crutches and a coffin.
"He spoke about it for four months afterward, just trying to understand. He got to sit in a wheelchair, he got to try the crutches and he was trying to really understand what that was all about, and I was amazed at how long that stayed with him. So, that made me think, that's the way to get the message across, the impact it made on a 3-year-old."
Penketh initially began volunteering for TOU for his own therapy, but it's moved beyond that.
"I see the benefit the kids are getting," Penketh said. 'I try to bridge the gap that parents fail at. Not to degrade them, but they just don't know about our world; about the disabled world."
People often simply stare at disabled people, he said.
Penketh gave the students an exercise, telling them to go to the mall and when they see someone with a noticeable disability, to step up to them and say hello to them, but not to feel inclined to have a conversation.
"Think to yourself, 'That person is just like I am,' " Penketh said. "People want to look at me, but no one wants to acknowledge me," Penketh said. "No one likes to be ignored."
DeDora hopes other Elk Grove district schools will use her services, she said.
"I would do anything to have my hands again, but I never will, and I accept
that," Penketh told the students. "Obstacles are something you brush
away, then march on ... "Life's too short to sit and watch the paint dry."