Mirror tile in living room at our house in Gahanna
Dan helped with the fix-up of the house. Dad fixed up Dan's room. When we first moved in, his room had the most horrible curtains with a vile Early American-style floral design that could give you nightmares, left over from the people who lived there before us. Dad made Dan's room a place Dan could call his own. Dan loved it.
Dan's room after dad fixed it up.
Dan had to give up his swing set. We felt he was now too big, too old and too tall to swing on a child's swing set and it would have been too difficult to move the swing set anyway, it was older and probably would have fallen apart. Mom and dad decided to get Dan a rocking chair to replace the swinging. Dan was agreeable to this. They went to a furniture store with Dan and picked out a nice rocking chair and had it delivered to our house in Gahanna and had it placed in Dan's room. Now Dan could listen to his records while rocking in his chair, so the rocking chair added an advantage that Dan didn't have with swinging. He could also read books, bad stuff stories and 'Tippys' while rocking in his chair and listening to music. Dan loved it. He still has that rocking chair in our house in Texas and still plays records and reads while rocking in his chair.
When it came time for school to start, mom got Dan signed up and the school had a good Special Ed program. Since Dan was interested in electronic stuff, the people at school got Dan involved in the audio-visual program where Dan could help with the various projectors used at the school for various purposes. Dan loved it. He liked school at Gahanna Lincoln. The transition went very well.
It was sometime in the 1970's that dad brought home a whole bunch of calendars from the office that were going to be thrown away and gave them to Dan. It was a whole bunch of small calendars where you could see the whole month at one time and these calendars went back a number of years. Dan studied these calendars closely every day with a level of concentration that was amazing. Soon, Dan was able to tell what day of the week certain events occurred. His savant talent had been awakened. It wasn't long until you could give him your date of birth and year and he could tell you the day of the week you were born on. He could tell you very quickly and he would be right!
Around this same time, Dan started getting really good at remembering telephone numbers. Part of his brain became sort-of a telephone book. It helped if the numbers had some meaning. He remembered the numbers for repair services when mom and dad needed something repaired. He began to remember phone numbers of several of mom's friends. The list of phone numbers in his head grew as time went by. This was handy in the days before cell phones where you would have lots of numbers stored. Often, instead of going for the phone book, one of us would just say, "Dan, what's the number to...?" He would know and he would get the number right.
Graduation Ceremony at Gahanna Lincoln High School in 1976 where Dan graduated from high school
Dan after his graduation from Gahanna Lincoln High School
Dan graduated from Gahanna Lincoln High School in 1976. Years later, I learned that my future brother-in-law also graduated from the same high school on the same day. Mom had been looking into options for Dan after high school. She worked for the State of Ohio, for the Bureau of Disability Determination, so she had a few connections. She first arranged to have a number of tests done through the state of Ohio on Dan to determine what he could and couldn't do and what would be a good fit for him in the workplace. The tests showed mostly what we already knew about Dan, that he was mentally retarded (although my mother had difficulty using the word, "retarded" when describing him). He's high-functioning and educable, but limited. We had hoped that Dan could do something simple with electronics like on a production line doing repetitive work, since he was so interested in electronics. The tests revealed that he is quite color blind and so could not sort out different colored wires, so that line of work was out for him.
Dan had loved running the dishwasher in the school kitchen cafeteria in middle school and doing that in a restaurant was considered to be a good possibility for him. Through research, mom found a place called 'Six Pence School' that could train him to function in the working world. It was near our old neighborhood in Columbus, so was easy to get to. Dan attended 'Six Pence School' and really liked it. They were good to him. I don't remember what all he did there, or what he learned, but I think it was basic simple stuff like writing a check, paying bills, how to ride the bus and how to handle working at a job. Part of their training was on-the-job training. There was a restaurant in Westerville, Ohio that trained people from Six Pence School to do restaurant work. Dan started his training there. Dan loved it. He made friends with the people who worked there, he got to run a big restaurant-style dishwasher and the people who ran Cockrell's were lovely people and treated Dan like one of their family.
Dan trained at Cockrell's Restaurant for several months. The next step was to get Dan into a real job. This would have to be a place on a bus route and the people who worked there had to be understanding of Dan's disabilities.
-To Be Continued-
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