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The 1979-80 school year was a bittersweet period in my life. I was about to turn 17 that spring, so I was perhaps one of the oldest ninth graders at Riviera Junior High School.  The fact that I was one or two years older than most of my peers was a source of extreme embarrassment […]

When a 6-year-old Woodlands, Texas boy with cerebral palsy told his mother he wanted to try running, she did her best to get him into the sport. Apparently, the decision has paid off. Runner’s World reports that Reed Kotalik understands that his leg don’t work properly, but that didn’t stop him from getting into a sport that would […]

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” ― Anaïs Nin Late Fall – 1979 When I was 16-years-old and a ninth-grader at Riviera Junior High, John Perry, a friend from Ms. Allen’s English class, sidled up to me one December day as we lined up to go to the cafeteria […]

“Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.”― Alice Miller, “The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self.” My three-year stay at Riviera Junior […]

Fall 1977. Jimmy Carter was in the White House. Elvis Presley was dead. The first Apple II, Tandy, and Commodore personal computers were on the market, albeit they were expensive. George Lucas’s space-fantasy film Star Wars was well on its way to becoming the highest grossing box office hit of its time. The guillotine was […]

A team of eight high school seniors who attend a class at Kent Career Technical Center’s Engineering and Architectural Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, recently completed a redesigned middle school lock, which helps Brin DeVries, a sixth-grade student with cerebral palsy, open her locker more easily and get to class in time. Michigan Live reports […]