A Chance at Normality

To any other mother calling her daughter into the house for supper, the girl's reply would have seemed to be that of a spoiled and defiant child. But to Mrs. Genevieve Maclsaac of Boston, it was cause for rejoicing. Not since little Mary was ten months old and damaged her brain in a fall had she been able to say anything more than an unintelligible "Ahhh." Now, out of the blue, she had spoken her first words: "No, I won't."

Mary's small victory came after a year and a half of special training at Boston's private Speech School for Crippled Children. Housed in a shabby, ill-lit building on Newbury Street, the school has for 38 years been giving children with grave speech defects their chance to lead a more normal life. Some of its pupils are stammerers or have cleft palates. Others are epileptics, spastics, mongoloids or deaf-mutes. In spite of dealing with a wide range of handicaps, the school has chalked up quite a record: in the last five years it has enabled 200 once seemingly hopeless children to enroll in the regular elementary school system.

Learn to Control. The school grew out of the personal struggles of its 78-year-old founder-director, Emma Tunnicliff, who was born with a bone ailment that made it impossible for her to walk. An operation eventually cured her, but in her first joy at being able to run around like other children, she tripped over a fence and suffered an emotional trauma that prevented her speaking. Only after years of instruction from her mother did she learn to talk again and finish her education. By that time, she was determined to devote her life to other unfortunates.

Today, Mrs. Tunnicliff has a volunteer teaching and medical staff of seven, branch clinics in Lynn, Springfield. Lowell, Jamaica Plain, Lawrence and Merrimac. Her approach does not involve elaborate psychiatric techniques. It relies mostly on developing in each pupil control and coordination.

Rhythm & Drill. When little Mary MacIsaac first arrived, she had so little coordination that she could scarcely control her hands and feet. She was given breathing exercises to build up her respiration, massages and tiny electric shocks to relax her limbs. She listened to nursery tunes for hours each day, gradually learned to keep time with her fingers and to twirl her hands to the rhythm of Hickory, Dickory, Dock. As her ability to coordinate her body movements increased, she began to pronounce her first words. After that came years of phonetic drill and tongue exercises, but by the time she was eleven, she was able to enroll in a special class in the regular public-school system.

Because its instruction, lunches and transportation are free, Mrs. Tunnicliff's school has never been out of financial trouble. Last week, in a poignant effort to raise money, its volunteer staff began a drive to collect old license plates that it hopes to sell for scrap. But somewhere, insists Mrs. Tunnicliff, the school will find the funds it needs--for the sake of the eleven-year-old with the body of a child of six, for the small boy who developed an emotional trauma from so many beatings at home that he can only say the word "pump," for the 30-year-old spastic who after 17 years of grueling work is at last able to carry on a conversation and to hold down a job as a bookkeeper.

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