Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 2, 1994 TAG: 9406020193
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: FC-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SARAH COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Smith won't be valedictorian; that's Jennifer Lewis. He doesn't get the salutatorian honor; that goes to Kimberly Terry.
Smith has a grade-point average of 3.3 and plans to go to Virginia Tech's business school.
He drives to school in his own van outfitted with hand controls. In school, though, he gets around in a motorized wheelchair that he calls a scooter.
He has lots of friends, and even a laptop computer.
He also has fredrix ataxia, a degenerative neuromuscular disease, "that has a lot to do with your brain, nerves and balance," he said.
It has gotten worse as he's gotten older, "but I just deal with it."
Franklin County High School, he said, works with him, but he doesn't allow much to get in his way.
The only class he hasn't taken is physical education, but it's not a requirement in his senior year, anyway.
Smith said that it takes him a lot longer to write, but now he uses his laptop computer at home to speed things along. In class, he still takes notes longhand, but they are brief. "I can usually hang in there. I think [the disease] has helped sharpen my listening skills."
Although youngsters like Smith sometimes are left out of the social scene, he said that socially, Franklin County has been pretty good for him. When he first moved to Franklin County from Danville at the beginning of the ninth grade, he wasn't using a wheelchair, but he was having difficulty getting around.
"I was really scared in the ninth grade. I had never moved before. But I have a whole bunch of friends, and if I want to do something, I make special arrangements," he said.
Yes, he gets down sometimes, he said. "But I can't live like that. Life would be no fun if I thought about my disease all the time and wallowed in it. This is what God gave me, and I have to work with it."
by CNB