Beginning ~ with a woman in a wheelchair

First Steps

The date is November 11, 1982.  On a Midwest college campus, news photographers crowd into a cluttered electronics laboratory.  They jostle each other for camera angles.  Those who come in last stand on tables or chairs in the back of the lab.  A TV camera feeds a view of the scene to the next room.  Here reporters from all over the United States and several other countries watch.

All eyes and cameras are on a young blond woman sitting in a wheelchair on a low platform.  Her legs are almost hidden in tangles of wires and straps.

Jerrold Petrofsky: Biomedical Pioneer (People of Distinction Series) ~ by Timothy Gaffney, 1984, juvenile biography, 109 pages

Discusses the achievements of a scientist at Wright State University who learned to use electronic stimulation to help people paralyzed after spinal cord injuries recover enough to move and even walk again.  Jerry Petrofsky died earlier this year; I know that because his daughter is one of my Facebook friends.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.