Don't even THINK of whining. Meet Daryl Smith.

His Mind Pulled Him Through

"Fantasy was what got me through it," Daryl Smith said in his soft-spoken way."I had a rich fantasy life. I sailed ships,flew fighter planes,played football for Auburn University."

What Daryl had to get through began when he developed a strange rash the summer before he was to start second grade in 1953. "Soon every joint in his body was aflame," his mother, Merle, recalled. His parents took him to the Mayo Clinic, where doctors diagnosed his illness as a very rare disease called dermatomyositis.

"There wasn't a drug known to science that would arrest this disease," his father, Willard, said. "They told us that it would take his sight, his hearing, his mind. They figured six months would be a long life for this boy."

So his parents took him home to Moulton, Ala., and set him up in the back bedroom. They bought a TV to keep him occupied. And by the sheer force of their love they kept him alive.

The disease gnawed away his ears, took his eyelids, then his eyes, and inched over his body, skinning him alive. It took the give from his muscles, locked his hands up under his chin and drew his knees tight against his belly.

It was an ordeal of such unrelenting savagery that even today Daryl hates to be asked about it. But he will talk about something that helped him survive—his passion for the Auburn Tigers football team. "I have lived and died with them since 1958," Daryl said. He would carry the games in his mind—replaying them on the ceiling of his bedroom. He could "see" the layout of a football field in the rough plasterwork.

"Even after I lost my sight, I could visualize the yard markers in my mind's eye," he said. "I'd put players up there. Real players. Except I'd be the quarterback. Or sometimes a tackle. And you know what? The plays always came out a lot better. You should have heard the cheering and yelling!"

By 1973, the disease had run its course, and Daryl's life began to change for the better. He got together enough money for skin grafts—for eyelids. "So I wouldn't look so unusual" he said, "and as a boost to my self-image." He was able to obtain an environmental-control unit, a device that lets people with disabilities operate a speaker phone, tape recorder, TV—anything on and off—by moving one finger a fraction of an inch.

"It wasn't exactly arms and legs again, but it was something," Daryl said. "It was freedom! All the little things Mother and Daddy had to do for me—like switching channels—I could now do for myself."

And that is how he discovered a course being offered by Calhoun Community College that used the newspaper as its textbook. "I called the school just for the fun of it," Daryl recalled. "I was put in touch with a guy called Jim Burr. I told him about me. He said, 'If you want to do it, we'll figure out a way.' What he did was put the newspaper on cassette tape, I'd play that, and then we'd talk. It was a wonderful course. I got a B. Then Mr. Burr suggested I go on."

He did. Daryl became the first person in the U.S.—if not the world—to get a university degree by telephone, a B.A. in psychology from the University of Alabama in 1982. He went on to get his master's degree and, in the meantime, also landed a job.

"I do patient follow-up for the Huntsville Hospital," he explained. "I make 150 or so calls each week. I ask how they liked the care, if they were pleased with the service. It keeps me busy. What's mom, I'm earning a little bit of money. That's a good feeling."

If that were the end of Daryl's story, it would be pretty wonderful—but it doesn't end there. A few years ago, he met an engineer named Ric Rice. Together they have developed an innovative environmental-control device (the DS-2000) that uses a technology called "sip and puff" By drawing in (sipping) or blowing out (puffing), a person able to do little more than breathe can activate just about anything that plugs in.

"There are people out there like Daryl who want to be useful," Rice said. "This unit promises that." At Daryl's insistence, the units are assembled, tested and distributed by workers with disabilities.

"I've got so many goals," Daryl, now 45, said not long ago. "I want to show folks what the most severely disabled can do—all 41 pounds of me."

BY JOHN FROOK
June 23. 1991 • PARADE MAGAZINE

Update: Daryl Larnell Smith passed away in May of 1997 at the age of 50.