Mission to America

Because some U.S. fliers went visiting in Essex, England, a chubby 9-year-old with a prodigious gift for piano-playing arrived in Watertown, Mass, last week. The youngster is blind Jimmy Osborne, who never studied music beyond listening to the BBC and to phonograph records. Now he is going to study at the Perkins Institution for the Blind./-

It was last December when the fliers heard about Jimmy. They investigated, and Jimmy's mother said that he could go back with them to visit the 9th Air Force. There, sandy-haired Jimmy played the Grieg Concerto, and his own impressions of how the blitz sounded in 1940 (when he was five years old).

The shy, dimpled blind boy visited the base regularly during the winter, and made a great hit with his music, his chatter and his imitations of Jimmy Durante. In return the Americans taught him to play boogie and sing Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby? Then they decided to give him a real education. (A Boston businessman is helping pay the costs.)

Last week, accompanied by Captain John O'Connell, Jimmy arrived by clipper. Decorations won by his flier buddies covered his blue serge lapel. Jimmy's thoughts, for once, were far from music. He said: "They let me hold the rudder and steer the ship, and my, that was a thrill!"

Said Perkins Director Dr. Gabriel Farrell: "Our biggest problem will be to get him down to earth in music. . . . He doesn't know how to read braille and he will have to start from the beginning."

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