Our mission is to empower children and adults with developmental disabilities to achieve their potential based on personal choices, abilities and interests...

Westchester Arc
The Gleeson-Israel Gateway Center
265 Saw Mill River Road
Hawthorne, NY 10532
914.949.9300
info@westchesterarc.org

24-hour
Crisis Intervention:
914.949.8200

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Finding His Voice

Bob Smith Realizes a Dream

He cannot speak, walk or care for himself, but words give voice to his emotions. Bob Smith is a 43-year-old man with cerebral palsy. He was raised in an institution where he was often neglected because he couldn’t make his most basic needs known. And from time to time, he was abused. But Bob is a poet who has learned the power of self-expression.

At age 22, Bob moved into a group home sponsored by Westchester Arc. There he found a supportive staff willing to get to know him. One of the agency’s speech therapists discovered that Bob had taught himself to read and designed a communications board that enabled him to better interact with those around him. He uses his right thumb to point to letters and words displayed on his wheelchair’s lap board. The process is laborious for Bob, whose motions are not fluid, and the “listener” needs time and patience.

Bob began to share his deepest feelings with others and to compose both poetry and prose. The Westchester Arc staff then collected his work into an anthology, Reflections of My Life, with themes spanning institutional life, the experience of having cerebral palsy and the desire to advocate on behalf of others with disabilities. Bob’s writing ranges across loneliness, despair, dreams and kindness.

With the aid of the agency’s Life Planning Center, Bob has now launched a business venture in order to publish his work. Westchester Arc also helped him to obtain a state-of-the-art Dynavox voice synthesizer. Using a wand attached to a headband, Bob points to menus displaying letters, numbers, words and phrases that are translated into digitized “speech.” No longer restricted to communicating with individuals who can lean over his lap board, Bob can address large audiences.

“My book is very important to me,” says Bob. “I want people to know about me and my work. I want them to understand me better, and I want them to understand cerebral palsy. I am writing for all people with cerebral palsy.”