Faith & Hope

In New Orleans, doctors had told the couple that their twin babies had been born blind. Andrew Hoffmann, telephone repairman, and his wife, Beverly, did not give up hope. They chartered a plane to New York to see if specialists could cure their sons (TIME, May 2). The U.S. followed the case with sympathy and admiration for the courageous parents. Last week, in the New Orleans States, Mrs. Hoffmann told how she and her husband had met their trial. Said she:

"It was a little after Christmas when the doctor first told me. Kenny and Denny were only four months old then. The doctor said he didn't want to be cruel, but he didn't know whether an operation would help ... I went home . . . As I sat in the nursery holding my two babies and crying, the only thing I could think of was that I had to tell 'Brown,' my husband. He came running into the house whistling and shouting, 'Where are my two babies?' He always says something like that.

"I couldn't talk when he asked me what was wrong. I was numb and sick all over. He finally made me put the babies in their beds. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and shook me lightly until I could talk again. The rest of that scene wasn't very pleasant and I don't suppose either of us will ever forget it. But the important thing is that before the evening was over, we were planning to take the babies to New York to see what could be done for them."

Waiting at Manhattan's Presbyterian Hospital, Mrs. Hoffmann talked to another mother whose 18-month-old boy had the same eye disease. "I listened as she told me that there just wasn't any hope for her boy. 'The doctors are going to operate on him but I know it won't do any good,' she told me. There's nothing anyone can do for him.' Then she said the words that shocked me terribly and at the same time made me feel sorry for her. 'Sometimes,' she told me, 'I wish I could do away with my baby.'

"I can't understand people who take the view that everything is lost when something like this touches their lives. I can't help feeling sorry for them . . . We have felt all along that our babies will see some day. Even if they don't, we plan to give them as normal a life as possible . . .

"It will be a little harder, of course, if it turns out that they can't see, or can see only partially. But all that means is that we'll have to work a little harder ourselves."

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