Since we are celebrating our 70th year during 2019, we thought it would be fun to share this article that appeared in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution Magazine on April 11, 1954. It chronicles the life of seven-year-old Betty Thompson and her time at the Cerebral Palsy School which later became the Frazer Center.

From its inception, Frazer has been committed to serving people with disabilities. Thanks to our community of participants and supporters, we are hopeful that stories of inclusion, perseverance, and transformation, carry on for another 70 years and beyond.

***It should be noted that some of the language in this article is now considered out-of-date and does not follow People First Language standards. We kept it unchanged so the reader can better experience the article within the context of its time frame.

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At Last She Stands Alone: Life Begins at 7 for Betty

By Olive Ann Burns

Betty Thompson stood alone for the first time last week. She is nearly 7 years old. Suddenly to be standing free, not holding to anything or anybody, was a thrilling experience. It was only a half-minute that the child’s body stayed poised in the exact middle of right, left, front and back. But that moment changed her life.

With the cerebral palsied, everything is slow. Progress is measured in months, not days. Betty has waited years for her first half-minute of physical independence. It may be years more before she can stand alone indefinitely. But standing alone has made her hope to walk someday—perhaps even to WALK ALONE.

Betty is bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, minus a front tooth like other first graders. Her parents are Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Thompson of 512 Drexel Ave., Decatur.

There are more people crippled by cerebral palsy than by polio. Most cases are the result of brain injury at birth or malformation of the brain. But it can happen to anybody at any time—perhaps from a bad fall, a stroke or as the aftermath of certain diseases.

Several of the 80 children at Atlanta’s Cerebral Palsy School were normal at birth. One boy fell from a third-story window when he was 4. Another was hit by a car on his way to school. Betty Thompson had encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) when she was 8 months old. The disease caused severe damage to the motor nerve center. The brain tissue controlling muscular movement on the left half of her body was completely destroyed.

The baby’s body was rigid for months after her illness. She choked on all food except milk from a medicine dropper. With muscles contracted in spastic tension, she screamed almost constantly and never slept longer than an hour at a time.

Often Mr. Thompson left for work after getting only an hour’s sleep.

The Thompsons were then living in Bremen, GA. Hysterical with grief, anxiety and fatigue, they spent all their savings taking Betty from doctor to doctor on the chance of finding help for her.

“The doctors always reminded us that no one has yet been able to repair damaged brain tissue—the way bone and skin can be repaired,” says Mrs. Thompson. “Most of the doctors said Betty would never walk or talk or feed herself. A physician who has an afflicted son himself urged us to make Betty as comfortable as possible in a back room and waste no more effort or money on her. But we couldn’t give up like that.”

As time passed, the baby became calmer and more relaxed, and was taking solid food when she was 2. In 1950 her parents heard about Atlanta’s new Cerebral Palsy School and Clinic, at 1815 Ponce de Leon Ave., and they brought the child here for a screening. Medical specialists, teachers and physical therapists who saw her agreed that, though severely handicapped, Betty had a bright mind and could be taught.

Many alert cerebral palsy patients are educationally handicapped by poor vision and hearing and by lack of normal social contacts. Betty sees and hears well, and because her sister and brother bring other children into the home, she is not socially isolated.

Her greatest handicaps are lack of balance, the uselessness of her left arm and leg, and muscular tension that causes excessive involuntary movement. Besides being a source of embarrassment, limbs that won’t stay still make added difficulty in sitting or standing alone. An arm suddenly jerking upward can throw Betty off balance.

In cerebral palsy, the motor damage may be so extensive that a child is completely helpless, or it may be so slight that the only symptom is a bad case of pigeon toes. Whatever the degree, this is the problem: the job of directing and controlling the muscles, which should be done by the damaged nerve tissue, must be taken over by the good part of the brain.

Whatever the degree of handicap, correction is slow. The training is a sort of brain-washing process. Each separate movement involved in every muscular action must be learned. The effort required to reach for an object or just to say “Yes” seems almost superhuman in a child with handicaps as extensive as Betty’s. Yet she keeps trying, and learning finally comes after months of laborious repetition.

Try to thread a needle while riding over a rough dirt road. Put a pencil between your toes and try to write. Merely switch from right-handing writing to left-handed, or vice versa. You can make the pencil move, but it moves slowly and awkwardly, and you can’t be sure when it will jerk off in some unexpected direction. Think what it would mean if everything you did—chewing, speaking a word or picking up a spoon—required as much patience and concentrated effort as writing a three-page letter left-handed.

Therapists at the Cerebral Palsy School think early training is very important. Betty started coming to the clinic as an out-patient when she was 3. Mrs. Thompson brought her from Bremen three times a week for physical therapy. When the child was old enough for the school’s day nursery, the family moved to Decatur.

At that time Betty couldn’t hold up her head or pick up anything. Now, after two and a half years of special training and exercises, she is learning to sit and stand alone, can feed herself, and can pick up as small a thing as a pin. She has learned to unlace and untie, and is now practicing tying and lacing. Though her speaking vocabulary is limited, she is well into first-grade reading and is learning to type on a special electric machine. In the years to come, typing will give Betty a means of really expressing herself. Holding and controlling a pencil will always be difficult.

When I first saw this child, she was seated at a small table in front of a mirror practicing “tongue-tipped words”—a word beginning with d, l, n, and t. Peanut butter behind her one front tooth was an added incentive for learning the forward movement of the tongue.

Her speech therapist is Chris Flake, a pretty blonde who will be a July bride. Chris had to overcome minor difficulties in muscular co-ordination herself, so the children feel that she UNDERSTANDS their problems.

“One of Betty’s speech handicaps is not being able to breathe out fast,” said Chris, who majored in corrective speech therapy at Wesleyan College. “As part of her training, she practices blowing out candles. At home, she’s started blowing out the match whenever her father lights his pipe.”

Betty was strapped into her chair at waist and ankles. In the physical training room, I found out why. “It’s necessary until her back and stomach muscles are strengthened, and until she learns to stay relaxed in spite of sudden noises and movements,” said Mrs. Freeda Daugherty, physical therapist. “The reflex apparatus of the spastic C.P. is so sensitive that he reacts to a slight noise the way you or I do to the unexpected bang of a loud firecracker. We actually give the children noise training. Starting with the snap of fingers, we condition them to the point where two wooden blocks can be popped together behind a child’s back and he won’t flinch at all. Even a slightly handicapped C.P. usually needs some special training in relaxation and noises. Otherwis,e if a book drops in school, he might jump right out of his chair.”

Betty has a workout every day in the stabilizer, which braces her knees and holds her feet like skates. In this she can’t fall, so she isn’t afraid to lean over to pick up things, play ball or just practice standing.

Lunchtime is also part of therapy. Eating gives practice in picking up things with the best motivation in the world—hunger. Betty eats from a plastic plate taped down to the table. Because it is difficult for her to hold small objects, her spoon handle is built up with plastic felt. She has to grip the spoon in her fist, so it is bent to the left, toward her mouth. Her cup is fastened to the table. She drinks milk through a straw, which is good lip training as well as an experience in independence.

No matter how alert a cerebral palsied child is, he must be allowed to progress at this own speed. Betty has accepted her limitations and is competing only against herself, not against the abilities of normal children. Therefore she is seldom discouraged by the slowness to which her life is geared. If an ordinary 6 or 7-year-old had Betty’s patience, perseverance, and ability to concentrate, he could climb to the moon.

Handicap heightens the joy of accomplishment. Betty was moon-high with excitement last week when she stood alone, which happened because she had gotten new braces.

“Braces are a C.P.’s best friend,” said Lois Wilson, one of the therapists discussing Betty’s big event. “The children are thrilled over new braces the way an ordinary child is over a wristwatch or bicycle. Seeing Betty today reminds me of the big rag doll somebody sent to the school once. It worried the kids because the doll couldn’t stand up. They named her Flop. One day a little boy decided Flop needed braces. The brace man agreed when he saw the limp legs, and he actually made the doll some miniature braces. When the hip and knee joints were locked, Flop did stand alone! The children laughed and cheered when they saw her.”

Cerebral palsy can distort a child’s sense of depth and direction, but it doesn’t alter his sense of humor.

And it places no limit on courage.

Article originally appeared on April 11, 1954, in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution Magazine