I'm the oldest of six children. The next sibling was J.R., over there on the right. (Sheryl says we look alike. ahem. I do not have a beard.) He had cerebral palsy. He walked with crutches, played trumpet in the band in junior high and in the orchestra in senior high, loved outer space and baseball, had a BA in English and a Masters degree in psychology. He died in 1988, leaving a wife and three children. His son will be twenty-one in July and we're putting together a book of his dad's life from 0-21. In talking with friends about J.R.'s life, the subject of his crutches recurs.
To his family, his crutches were part of him. When someone is born with a condition, that is how you always know them. You think of a crutch not as a handicap, but as "what jebbie uses to get around with". It's something that not only helps him walk, but extends his reach (beware, he can smack you from farther away). It's a built-in baseball bat, miniature golf club, and croquet mallet. The curious broken cadence clank of canadian crutches becomes a signal that brother is near. And when he chased girls, he was not above using it to knock them off their feet.
Giraffes and J.R? When I saw Disney's stage production of The Lion King, it was the giraffes, stately creatures walking across the stage on stilts with crutches (aka hand stilts), that immediately caught my heart. They reminded me in step and in power of J.R., he of the tall spirit.
