Butterfieldsnip1

Roxanne Butterfield When I was growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of my mother’s cousins was a man with cerebral palsy and Gene could not walk or talk so that other people could understand him, but he was a very bright man. However, he would probably be 85 or 90 years old today. So when he was growing up, he was not allowed to go to school. Gene had no control over his hands or his mouth for talking. His family gave him a manual typewriter and he taught himself how to use his toe and his foot and he drew pictures with the manual typewriter. And if you’re old enough to know how a manual typewriter works…to draw space, space, space, space, x, x, x, x, asterisk, asterisk, exclamation point, exclamation point, new line, space, space, space, space and so on and line things up and make something. He started out creating little animals, went on to bigger pictures. The last work that he did was a mural of the family farm. It consisted of about 16 or 24 pieces of paper that, when taped together, visually lined up and he drew his family farm. He was not allowed to go to school because he could not walk, could not talk, could not feed himself. When we were raised, he was held up as one of our role models in our family because if Gene could do this, why can’t you do that.