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Making lemonade out of lemons

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When I pledged Sigma Chi at OU back in 1972 there was a visually impaired/blind member but I couldn’t see it.

He was two years my senior, set to graduate in 1974.

There were 36 new pledges that year and he knew all of us by name.

His voice recognition was  amazing and his memory even better than that.

Sharp as a tack, he was an engineering major.

Hank Schreiner didn’t use a cane and didn’t need a dog to go to class.

He counted steps from the front door of the Sigma Chi house at 558 S. University Blvd. to every building on campus and walked like he could see where he was going.

My recollection is a bit fuzzy from 50 years ago but it was at least a couple of weeks into the semester that I learned Hank was totally without sight and there I was living in the fraternity house with him.

A Midland, TX boy, I never saw him out of sorts, just happy to be a Sooner going to college just like the rest of us.

jdm

Hank wasn’t the only amazing physically challenged person we knew at the university.

Gracie knew a Tri Delt from Roswell, N.M. who could read lips so well you could not tell she couldn’t hear.

So skilled at reading lips was Betty Read that if she was in the  back seat of a vehicle she could still converse with the people in the front seat by reading their lips in the rear view mirror.

There are a lot of folks out there who make the best of trying situations.

It’s like making lemonade out of lemons.

jdm

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