Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 11, 1993 TAG: 9302110378
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: W-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KAREN L. DAVIS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
HEADS UP GIVES A HAND UP, NOT A HAND OUT
If the gift shop's name, Heads Up, is not enough to make you take notice, what's inside surely will: One-of-a-kind gifts made by people who never thought they would work again.Heads Up is an offshoot of the Hollins Head Injury Program. Bill James and several others started the program as a research project for Hollins College, but the program is now separate from the school.
James opened the gift shop a little more than a year ago at 7919 Williamson Road, a cabin across from Hollins College. At first, it was going to be just an ordinary gift shop that sold handmade crafts on consignment. But it became the answer to a nagging problem James has had since he first got involved with Hollins Head Injury Program four years ago.
"I needed to find something that the head-injury clients could do to make money," said James, a licensed professional counselor. "They have limited fine-motor control, so it had to be something fairly easy for them to do."
The answer came one day, as James tells the story, when a "mystery woman" came in and observed some of pottery instructor Jude Prashaw's work.
"The woman said to me, `Have you ever made one of these?' And she took a piece of clay and whipped up a fish," said.
The fish, mostly mouth, had big rolled lips and was fairly easy to make.
That was the birth of the Huppy. "We've made over 400 of these crazy fish and sold a lot of them," said Prashaw.
Some are three-dimensional, and others are flat, but all are brightly colored.
Since then, Heads Up has become a virtual Huppy factory. Now there are Star City Huppies, Hatted Huppies and special-order Huppies done in school colors, all handmade exclusively by the head-injury clients.
Huppies sell for about $10, and the maker gets a percentage. Every Huppy is numbered, too.
Any weekday between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., visitors can stroll in and watch clients make Huppies.
The shop has only a few head-injury clients, two of whom live in apartments out back. Generally, a client has a sponsor who pays a weekly fee for his participation in the program.
One of the resident clients, Chum, a former truck driver, has suffered memory impairment since a truck accident several years ago.
Wayne worked in door and window-frame construction before a fall paralyzed his left side.
Lynn was run over by a car when he was 18 months old. Now in his mid-20s, making Huppies and other pottery at Heads Up is the first job opportunity he's ever had.
All agree they've been helped by activities in the gift shop and at the head-injury program building next door. Chum said he's learned to do things he never did before, like help cook a full Thanksgiving Day dinner.
Wayne no longer needs a cane to walk. Lynn said he used to get into fights and preferred being alone, but the program has taught him how to make friends and get along with people better.
"Head-injured people have lost themselves. They can't do what they used to do. But many of them can remember being able to do it, which is intensely frustrating," said James.
"They become accustomed to failure," he said. "We find out what they can do by trial and error and keep pushing them to do it. By being in a vocational setting, they are more motivated.
"We teach them daily living skills like keeping a checkbook, cooking and shopping," James said.
Some clients also wait on customers in the gift shop. They work out in a gym, undergo "cognitive retraining" with computers to improve their thinking processes and sometimes go bowling to practice score keeping.
James hopes to someday acquire land and have a "Huppy farm" where clients can learn to live again with pride, "a place where they can live and work and be happy."
Memo: Also ran April 1, 1993 Neighbors and in Current April 25, 1993.