The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, August 28, 1975, Section B, Page Page 2B, Image 34
Faciliti
For Wt
BY VIVIAN DAVIS
of The Gamecock staff
Rita Addy was born in 1954 with a
congenital birth defect known as
amytonia. When she was nine
months old the doctors discovered
that she had the defect which
would never allow for the
development of muscle tone.
Now Rita is 21, a junior
education major at USC and, as
she has for the past 15 years,
spends most of her time in a
wheelchair.
"The hardest part of accepting
the wheelchair is the fact that
others sometimes do not accept it.
Some people look at the wheelchair
first, before looking at the person,"
Rita said.
Rita said she began making
plans to come to USC three years
ago as a senior in high school.
Vocational Rehabilitation got in
touch with her to offer financial
assistance and to help her begin
her new life as a student. Rita said
she contacted Mimi Parrott,
assistant dean of residence life,
who has helped her with problems
during the past three years.
On her first trip to the campus,
Rita and Nancy, the girl who was
to be her roommate, looked at their
future dormitory room. Capstone
had been suggested as the women's
dorm best suited for wheelchair
students, Rita said. Private baths,
a cafeteria and in-dorm mail
service were offered at Capstone.
The first thing the girls noticed
about the room, Rita said, was the
shower door which was replaced
with a curtain and the closet rods
which were lowered within Rita's
reach. A hand rail was installed
next to the toilet.
In fall 1972, Rita and Nancy
began their freshman year. "We
moved in on the eighth floor of
Capstone," Rita said. "The
problem with eighth floor was that
there was no way to get out in case
of a fire drill or a real fire.
Someone would have to carry me
Blind&
BY ELLEN BILES
Of The Gamecock staff
Bill Deas is a tall, thin senior
majoring in broadcast journalism
at USC. He is a part-time disc
jockey for WCOS-AM and a ham
radio operator. Bill thinks there's
nothing extraordinary about that,
but others tend to disagree because
Bill Deas has been blind since
infancy.
"I accept that blindness is not
the worst disability," Bill said
recently. "I've done everything I
wanted to do." Of course, there
are times, he admitted, when
things get frustrating. "But
overall, I haven't lacked," he said.
When he was a child, even
though he was blind, he was in Cub
Scouts, climbed trees and learned
to ride a bike. "I never used
training wheels. But the first time
alone I fell on my head," he said.
He first rode only in his yard.
Then he advanced to street bike
riding. "On the street I would
follow someone that I knew, and
they would tell me if a car was
coming," he said.
Bill thinks his family's attitude
helped him learn to accept his
world. He remembers how his
sister Ginger got a spanking zor
es Not Del
teelchair k
down. During a fire drill, someone
sent the elevator up for me, but
during a real fire those elevators
are cut off."
An additional change in the room
was moving the telephone. "We
decided to move the phone off the
wall onto the desk," Rita said. "If
it rang at night I couldn't get up to
answer it if I were alone."
Rita moved to the second floor of
Capstone after two years. By that
time Nancy had dropped out of
school and Rita was rooming with
Karen.
To travel around the campus
Rita has an electric cart similar
to a golf cart. "Vocational
Rehabilitation got me an electric
cart and an electric wheelchair for
a trial period. I decided to get the
cart because the campus has such
a rough terrain," Rita said.
"My first year Nancy took me to
all my classes because all our
classes that year were in the same
buildings and at the same times.
When I first started using the cart,
work was being done on thePickens
St. Bridge. A wheelchair wouldn't
have gone over that," Rita said.
Rita said that curbs are a
problem. "Sometimes I can get
down from one block but can't find
a way to get up onto the next one,"
she said.
"Construction work is always a
tremendous problem to me. It
seems the workers could leave one
path open. Work on Gibbes Green
caused a lot of inconvenience to
me," she said.
"It used to be that no curbs were
fixed and I'd have to drive the cart
down people's driveways. Once I
was stopped by the Campus Police
because I had to go around the
Horseshoe the wrong way," she
said.
"My arms are so weak I need
both of them to drive the cart, and
when it's raining I can't hold an
umbrella. I either cut class or find
somewith a car to take me to class
and come back for me."
)tudent
"I 've done everythij
misbehaving on a shopping trip. A
couple of days later Bill went
shopping with his mother and
insisted on opening and closing the
glass sliding windows on a display
case.
"Mother was scared to death I
was going to break them and she
would have to pay for them," Bill
said. "She told me if I didn't stop
I'd get a whipping when I got
home."
Like a typical boy, Bill didn't
stop, and like a typical mother, his
mother kept her promise. That
was the day Bill greeted his father
at the door with, "Daddy, daddy,
guess what? I got a whipping just
like Ginger."~
Bill said it wasn't until he was in
junior high that he was told he
couldn't do something because he
was blind. "That's when
everybody was beginning to learn
to drive and all the guys were going
out for football," he said. "The
world put it on me in Junior High."
In high school Bill joined the
broadcast club. "I got my first
break in radio in '71," he sad
gned
tudent
Rita said the worst experience
with the cart happened last
semester. She was crossing
Sumter and College streets when
the cart stopped in the middle of
traffic. Rita said she waved at a
city policeman, but he only waved
in return.
Finally a girl who was crossing
the street saw Rita and came to
help. The girl found a city
policeman who called for help.
Rita said the same policeman who
waved to her came to help. He told
her he thought she was just being
friendly.
"The cart. tore up again a week
later. The same cops helped me
again. That meant another three
days of going to classes in the
wheelchair," she said.
"Once the cart was in the shop
for six weeks," Rita said.
"Sometimes I'd have to ask
strangers to push me, and I don't
like to do that."
Rita says that getting into a
building is sometimes as difficult
as getting to the building. "Three
of my required courses are in
either McMaster or Sloan," Rita
said, "and I can't get in. We're
trying to get one section of those
courses moved or else have some
strong reliable male to help me
into the building."
Because she is an education
major, most of Rita courses are in
Wardlaw. It took two years to get a
ramp built so that she could get
into that building.
"Last year with the help of Dr.
Charletta Davis, a ramp was built
so I could get into Wardlaw. The
elevator in Wardlaw is too small
for the cart so I have an extra
wheelchair to use just in that
building," Rita said.
Now the brakes on the extra
wheelchair are worn out, and Rita
has to get someone to pick her up
and put her in the wheelchair.
"I always look for some guy I
know, but one day I didn't see
anyone but the Coca-Cola man
Overcoi
ig I wanted to do."
-Bill Deas
That year he won a statewide
award for the best individual
performance in radio broad
casting. The award was for a short
feature series called "Rock 'n Roll,
Then and Now" which he broad
cast over WDXY in Sumter.
"That gave me the confidence to
be able to go on," Bill said. Now
he's the disc jockey for the 12-6
Sunday and Monday morning show
on WCOS. Bill is alone in the
station during that time.
He goes to work 45 minutes
ahead of time, types his log in
braille and gets his commercials
lined up. The staff has devised a
tagging method for records so Bill
can distinguish which category the
record fits.
Bill said the job has worked out
because of "a little ingenuity on
my part and a little cooperation
from the staff." His newscasts
require a little cooperation from
the outside world also. "The guy
ahead of me tapes the newscast,"
Bill said. "I run them throughout
the night and hope there's no
emergency."
Soon, though, he will have a
tA Addy Gets A
filling up the drink machine," Rita
said. "The only thing for me to do
was go up to him and ask him to
help me. He was really a big man,
and picked me up under the arm
pits. I haven't been picked up like
that since I was five years old.
"I had to take one correspon
dence course because I couldn't get
down the curb to the PE center
where the course was held. When I
took that course it cost $60 extra,"
she said.
This summer Rita is attending
the first summer session and living
in South Building. She said the
bathrooms are a problem because
they are down the hall.
"The showers are on the verge of
being impossible. I can't get the
wheelchair into the dressing room
part of the shower. I have to get
someone to put a straightback
chair in the shower, set me in it and
take me out when I'm finished,"
nes Diso
braille teletype machine which
hooks up to the regular teletype
machine and prints the news out in
braille. It's being furnished by the
South Carolina Commission for the
Blind .
The commission has also fur
nished him with an optacon, a
device which enables him to read
print by touch. The optacon is
made up of a camera about the size
of a mike, Bill said. When the
camera is placed on the printed
page, it causes a little bar to
vibrate in the shapes of the letters.
His training on the optacon
began in September 1974. "1
haven't been reading print but that
long," he said. "It's like somebody
else learning in the first grade."
The training has side benefits for
Bill. "Before, I would read in a
story that someone skated in a
figure eight and I didn't un
derstand what it meant," he said.
Now he can feel the shape of an
eight.
Some textbooks are available on
recordings and some are available
in braille, but occasionally they're
the wrong edition, and Bill must
find alternate ways to study. Hie
can use the optacon some, but his
reading speed is only about 33
words a minute so friendsrada to
Helping Hand "'"a ls
Rita said.
She said the elevators in South
Building do not close as fast as the
ones as Capstone and that the
elevator buttons are sometimes too
high to reach.
"I know everything can't be
fixed, but some things can," Rita
said.
"I've found very few people
who've refused to help me. I don't
like to ask strangers unless it's
absolutely necessary," she said.
"All I've ever known is the
wheelchair. I've accepted it, but
that doesn't mean I don't get
depressed.
"My father says he has a typical
daughter except she travels in a
wheelchair. I've done a lot of
things people would think a girl in a
wheelchair couldn't do. I've ridden
horses, a motorcycle and the
Myrtle Beach roller coaster," Rita
said.
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