Friday, September 6, 2019

The 1950s record hop for crippled kids




Billboard called it "one of the most moving and unusual record hops in the field today—an annual 'dance' for a crippled children's hospital." 

Did you notice the ironic quotation marks around the word "dance"?

The contemporaneous coverage of this annual dance shows how far we've come in talking sensitively about people with disabilities, because some of the reporting about this event seems pretty cringeworthy today, even though the event itself was laudable.


Norman Wain
The disk jockey behind the dance was Norman Wain of WDOK in Cleveland. He was mentioned last week on Music Weird in this post about the time in 1958 that he joined with fellow Cleveland jock Phil McLean of WERE to create a novel stereo program by using the two stations' AM and FM transmitters simultaneously.

Wain's record hop for kids with disabilities must have started in 1953, because Billboard reported in 1956 that it had been an annual event for three years.

The record hop was staged at Camp Cheerful, a summer camp of the Society for Crippled Children in Strongsville, Ohio. The society was founded in 1907 and kept the antiquated name Society for Crippled Children until 1988, when it became known as the Achievement Center for Children.

Wain said in 1956, "I was aghast at the thought of a dance for crippled kids at first, but after my first dance I realized that the deepest desire of these poor kids is to be as close as possible to other normal youngsters in everything they do."

Wain described the dance thusly:
I conduct the dance just like any other hop. I put on a good rock and roller [record], and they wheel each other out on the floor and make believe they're dancing by pushing their wheel chairs around, while those who can walk at all make an attempt at dancing with one another or with a buddy in a chair.
Wain hosted a number of uncommon musical events during his time with WDOK, including a studio party for the editors of local high school newspapers, but he might have found this annual record hop the most rewarding of them all. He said, "These kids have so much enthusiasm and heart that it makes you ashamed that you ever complain about anything."

Wain might even have encouraged some of these kids to pursue music careers themselves. A number of musical figures throughout the years came from the ranks of "crippled children." Richard Berry, the composer of "Louie Louie," attended a summer camp for crippled children after a hip injury forced him to walk with crutches. Singer and songwriter Melvin Endsley spent two years in the Memphis Crippled Children's Hospital after contracting polio. Country and bluegrass artist Mac Wiseman also had polio as a child and was able to study music theory, piano, and radio broadcasting thanks to a scholarship from the National Foundation for Polio. And those are just a few that immediately sprang to my mind.

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