[fcb-l] FW: [leadership] Article About Blind Haitian Violinist in Today'sWashington Post

[Edwards, Paul]

-----Original Message-----
From: leadership-bounces at acb.org [mailto:leadership-bounces at acb.org] On
Behalf Of John McCann
Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2010 2:35 PM
To: nova-acb at yahoogroups.com; odcbvi at yahoogroups.com; leadership at acb.org
Subject: [leadership] Article About Blind Haitian Violinist in
Today'sWashington Post

Hello Fellow NOVA Members, ODCBVI Members, ACB Leaders and friends:
:

I came across this article while reading today's (March 7th) edition of
the 
Washington Post, and in view of the article in the March Braille Forum 
concerning how blind haitians are faring in the wake of the January 12th

earthquake, I thought I'd post this article below.

John

__________

For now, a musical gift lost in the ruins;
Blind violinist injured in Haitian quake fights the odds again.
by Darryl Fears.
miami.

As darkness fell on what was left of his music school in Haiti, Romel
Joseph 
found a distraction for his pain and fear. He imagined himself
performing 
Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. His right hand gracefully slid the bow
and 
his left hand caressed the violin's neck as his fingers glided along the

strings. But the soaring notes he heard were an illusion. The blind, 
Julliard-trained musician was buried beneath the rubble of the New
Victorian 
School in Port-au-Prince. Joseph's left hand was broken and his right
hand 
was impaled by nails from a wall that had fallen on him. A second wall
had 
crushed his right leg and pinned his heel. Trapped for 18 hours, he
wondered 
if he would survive -- or if he would want to. I said, 'Oh my God, am I 
going to die? Will I ever play violin again? Joseph recalled. My hands,
they 
were made for the violin. I had the feeling that I had lost everything.
The 
violin was life. The first question was answered by doctors at Jackson 
Memorial Hospital in Miami, who saved his life after the January
earthquake 
that devastated his birth country. But the second question -- "Will I
ever 
play . . . again? -- could remain unsettled for a long time for Haiti's 
most-recognized violinist. Across the United States, friends and
strangers 
have rallied to aid Joseph, 50, who lost his pregnant wife, Myslie, 26,
in 
the rubble. Last month, Andover Chamber Music in Massachusetts held a 
benefit concert for him. Another concert at San Jose State University
was 
aimed at helping the New Victorian School's 300 students, who had
already 
gone home before the quake struck. Stevie Wonder gave Joseph a keyboard
to 
aid his recovery. South Miami middle schoolers brought their instruments
to 
Joseph's bedside and played Mozart for him. Romel is a treasure in
Haiti," 
said Gwendolyn Mok, a pianist whose concert at San Jose State raised
$4,000. 
She said Joseph's survival is "a story of hope. Romel lived for a
reason. 
His mission is not finished. He has work to do. Overcoming a crushed
hand is 
no small accomplishment for any musician. The hand is "God's perfect 
machine," a marvel of tissue, tendons and 27 bones, said Thomas
Wiedrich, an 
associate professor of clinical surgery at Northwestern University
Medical 
School. When a hand is crushed, tissue and tendons often fuse,
tightening 
fingers and limiting their range. For musicians, it can affect the
psyche a 
great deal," Wiedrich said. Certainly, we've had experiences with
musicians 
where an individual with this kind of injury . . . does not play again.
It 
took virtuoso pianist Leon Fleisher 30 years to resume playing with two 
hands after focal dystonia, a neurological condition, incapacitated his 
right hand. Acclaimed German violinist Augustin Hadelich, who suffered 
severe burns to his face and upper body in a 1999 house fire, had 20 
surgeries and extensive rehabilitation to regain the use of his bow arm
and 
hand. Joseph has dealt with adversity before: He overcame blindness as a
boy 
to master the violin. He said he'll work to do it again, gesturing with
his 
swollen left hand. He sat upright in his hospital bed, typing into a 
computer, gingerly flexing his ailing fingers, forcing them to bend,
flex 
and work as they once did. While Joseph is grateful for the care he's 
getting, he also betrays flashes of frustration, fussing at the nurses, 
turning up his nose at the soup, and pecking at the keys longer than his

physical therapist would like. He doesn't like being a patient," said
his 
doctor, Patrick W. Owens. He has all these things he really wants to do 
outside the hospital and sees this as a big setback to his plans. Owens,
a 
hand specialist, didn't know who Joseph was when they met. His number
just 
came up and I was there," he said. But after learning that he was a 
violinist, "there was some pressure" to perform a perfect operation "on 
someone whose hand is their entire being and purpose. Joseph, a U.S. 
citizen, has long divided his time between Miami, where he founded the 
nonprofit Walenstein Musical Organization, and Port-au-Prince. He was
born 
in the heart of Haiti, in Gros-Morne, and went blind because his parents

couldn't afford to treat infections in his eyes. At the St. Vincent's
School 
for handicapped children, a nun put a violin in his hands. I used to 
practice eight and nine hours a day," Joseph said. You get a lot of 
attention. You learn a lot of pop songs that the girls like. Plus, I
loved 
classical and I played piano and violin and the viola. I was the best of

everyone because I spent so much time practicing. In 1978, Joseph, then
19, 
earned a scholarship to the University of Cincinnati's
College-Conservatory 
of Music. After graduating, he went to Boston to study piano tuning at 
Tanglewood, the home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Mok, who studied
with 
him, said Joseph tapped through the streets with a white cane, and had 
memorized dozens of symphonies. In 1985, he was awarded a Fulbright 
scholarship to attend the Julliard School, where he earned a master's
degree 
in music. A year later, he went back to Haiti, where he founded the New 
Victorian School in 1991 to teach music to children who needed a way to 
escape poverty. On the day of the earthquake, Joseph was exiting the
third 
floor of the school when it shook. I remember two steps: holding the
door 
open and the door being gone," he said. When he regained consciousness,
the 
pain from his injuries was agonizing. He called for help through the 
mountain of rubble, and voices answered through the holes. We hear you. 
Friends and co-workers pulled Joseph out just before noon on Jan. 14,
and he 
was flown to Jackson Memorial the next day. He wouldn't learn until
later 
that his wife, who was two floors below him when the school collapsed,
was 
dead. Her body still hasn't been recovered. She was seven months
pregnant. 
Joseph is mourning her and their unborn child even as he tries to heal
and 
rehabilitate his hands. His doctor is optimistic about his recovery. I
think 
his chances of playing are very good," Owens said. X-rays showed his
bones 
are healing straight. But Joseph isn't sure he'll ever be the same
musician. 
These guys have no idea what it takes to play the violin," he said. He
plays 
the donated keyboard for exercise and spends five hours a day breathing
pure 
oxygen in a hyperbaric chamber to help his hands mend more quickly.
Violins 
require dexterity," Joseph said. My hand will heal -- that won't be a 
problem. Will I play with it? That's a whole different story.
fearsd at washpost.com.

__________



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