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FULL TIME RESPO ON ROAD TO FINANCIAL INDENENDENCE

by Bob Rubin

Three years after polio I started "attending" Long Beach State College in California by telephone. In August, 1959, we moved to Denver, Colorado. We made arrangements to attend Denver University by phone. The 'talk-bar' is adapted so that I can operate it with my head. I have a transcriber-dictaphone, also operated by my head, which enables me to take notes as I hear the lectures over the speaker. All written work is dictated. I have a good reading board; I use a mouthstick for turning pages.

I have found this setup very adequate and would recommend it as a device far above tutoring. The cost is surprisingly nominal. In my case, it is $13 a month. That is less than it would cost for gasoline to drive to school.

I am now in my senior year and will graduate June, 1962. My field of interest is in psychology, with emphasis on Counseling and Guidance. I plan to get a master's degree.

People sometimes get the idea this (going to college) is a therapeutic thing to keep your mind busy. I think it will lead to financial independence.

CAREER IN GERIATRICS COUNSELING

by Audrey Johnson

Using the telephone system, I graduated from high school in 1958, at the top spot in a class of over 600. I received a number of scholarship offers and enrolled at Kalamazoo College in Michigan.

My folks hire a girl to be a companion and help me dress, etc., so that I can live on campus. I have a classmate in each class who takes notes for me by my providing carbon paper and paper and thus get a carbon copy of their notes. I take my exams orally; I have a special lab assistant who is paid by the hour to dissect, etc. for me. I use a dictaphone and hire a typist for long papers. I can hardly manage more than a page of typing on my electric typewriter. I just lack energy. Even then, being spastic -- because of cerebral palsy -- I hit many wrong letters.

I hope to do graduate work and to do counseling in a hospital or home, perhaps a geriatrics home.

LEARNED ACCOUNTING THROUGH THE "MAGIC BOX"

by Edmund P. Barry

As the result of spinal bifida, I have been a paraplegic since birth. I was tutored at home until my senior year of high school. Then I was introduced to the "magic box" which took me through four years at St. Thomas College in Minnesota by telephone. I was awarded a degree with honors in June,1959 in Accounting and I am now engaged in the practice of accounting with my father.

THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION FINANCED the telephone studies of Robert I. Mitchell of Long Island, N.Y. Last June he received his degree magma curs laude from C. W. Post College. 44-year old Bob is married and has two children. He got polio in Newfoundland in 1953 while he was in the Air Corps. Now he has only the use of his hands. He operates an insurance business from his hone and plans to get a M.A.

THE SKEPTICISM OF HIS LOCAL COLLEGES did not deter Jerry Lee McClain. Stricken by muscular dystrophy when he was five, he was tutored at home, taken to a special school, and started the Executone method in high school. He graduated with honors and received several scholarships, which he could not accept because the two local colleges in Indianapolis felt the intercom system could not be set up for college work. Newspaper stories of his high school successes reached officials of Indiana Central College and changed their decision about accepting Jerry as a telephone student. He plans to complete his college work in three years, to enroll in the Indiana U. Law School, and eventually do research for a law firm.

GRADUATED FROM JOHN MARSHALL LAW SCHOOL in Chicago last June, Edward Fiori, Jr. plans to practice law with his father. Ed has been a paraplegic since he was 12, when a blood clot developed in his spinal cord. He has not attended school in 14 years, but in that time he graduated from high school, DePaul University, and law school -- using the telephone.

SOME "GO" TO COLLEGE IN IRON LUNGS. . . .

Ann Platte of Houston, Texas, "attends" daily classes at the University of St. Thomas by telephone from her iron lung. Her mother sits by her and turns the pages, operates the speaker button, and takes her dictation.

From his hospital, Charles Parry of Shreveport, Louisiana, used the telephone hookup to Centenary College. Each day a different student went to the hospital to "listen in."

Martha Mason topped them all when she took her lung to campus. She and her mother and the lung moved into a men's dormitory at Gardner-Webb College, North Carolina. A telephone hookup was made between her room and the classrooms. "That," Martha said, "was lots of fun." She also achieved a 97 average.

LL.B. BY CORRESPONDENCE, TELEPHONE AND ATTENDANCE

by Floyd "Mike" McBurney, Jr.

I utilized three methods of obtaining an education: correspondence, telephone and attendance. The telephone system worked out well as a transition from my correspondence to my residence work.

I was a Sociology graduate, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Wisconsin. I am again using the telephone hookup to "attend" the Law School there, since its construction is decidedly unfriendly to wheelchairs. After graduation I plan to practice law with my father.