New Book Details Life Growing Up with Disabilities, and Enough Love and Learning to Share

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_{By Pauline Masson –} Johnny Havinear has written a book.

It took him a year, sitting at the computer at the Scenic Regional Library, using one finger to peck out one word at a time. 

He gained proficiency on the keyboard, remembering by heart where each letter was located. He was not so sure about spelling. Every few minutes, for the full year, he looked up from his task and asked any library staffer who happened to be walking by how to spell a certain word. Day by day, the library staff gained an idea of where this story was going.

He wanted to write his life story, he explained in the first sentence, because he wanted the world to know that handicapped people, like him, could live full independent lives.

And what a life is revealed in this little book.

He was abandoned by his birth mother as a toddler, left in a longterm care hospital never to be retrieved, hidden so completely that his older sisters were told that the baby had died. The secret would be kept for fifty years.

But there are no villains in this book.

Johnny tells the story of  life with the family of the young woman hospital employee who took him home with her when he was two years old and taught him . . .  and taught him  . . .and taught him . . . how to live.

She dressed him in beautiful clothes and sat him in the front row of family photographs, which he shares in his book. And, in his words, allowed him to survive as, “a little rascal.” He loved to make people laugh. His foster mother told everyone – siblings, teachers, neighbors –  who objected to his high jinx to let him be himself.

“He has to learn to be himself,” she said.

Now, Johnny sees himself as a “happy old gentleman.” Although his birth mother did not want him, the woman who took him into her life was never allowed to adopt him. But she was his mother, his teacher, and always his champion.

His memory is amazing. His foster mother took him to see Santa Claus when he was about four years old, judging by the photo of him sitting on Santa’s lap. He told Santa Claus, “I’m a little afraid of you, but I would like to have a toy to play with.”

And so it went.

By the time he was twelve years old, he could clean his own room, do his own laundry in the washer and dryer, and cook on the kitchen stove or the barbecue outside. He could cut the grass and even chop firewood. He attended public school through the eighth grade and has a bold critique of the things he wished he could had learned.

When he was about five, his foster mother adopted another little boy who was brought into her life and he became Johnny’s childhood companion and fellow lifestyle student. When his adopted brother married, Johnny admits he was “a little jealous.” But he found a magical way to use brother’s marriage to fill his own life with happiness. I won’t give away how he accomplished that. You have to read the book to learn what he did. 

He lives independently in his own apartment, doing his own laundry and cooking his own meals, except for lunch, which he eats weekdays at the Tri County Senior Center. There he teases friends with a humor so infectious it is laughingly said to give those being teased a head ache.

There, also, he serves as a volunteer. He leads the diners in the Lord’s Prayer and Pledge of Allengence before meals, wraps silverware in napkins, chops vegetables, washes off table tops, and on occasion mops the large dining room floor. He has been seen polishing the front door glass or sweeping the front sidewalk. He is happiest, he said, when he is working at the senior center.

“I am a worker,” he said. “You have to work to keep your life in order and take care of things.”

I don’t want to give too much away because the ladies at the library were so captivated by Johnny’s book that have planned a special event to introduce it to the community.

On Saturday, July 31, between 12 noon and 2 p.m. at the Scenic Regional Library on Lamar Parkway, Ali Heisler, has planned a special book signing where Johnny will talk about his book and sign copies for anyone who would want to buy one.

It is a 124-page, soft cover, spiral bound book, that chronicles the escapades of “a little rascal,” growing into an adult who takes care of himself. He shares his family, his dreams, his heroes, and the guideposts that helped him become an active and happy senior citizen. My husband Bob Masson and I, with our publishing company Sand Mountain Books, produced the little book as a community service. 

Johnny sells his book for $10 and give half to the Tri County Community Senior Center, the place where he is happiest.

I’ll give away one more tidbit. On her deathbed, six years ago, his birth mother confessed to one of her granddaughters what she had done. “You have an uncle,” she said. “His name is John Havinear and he lives in Pacific.” His big sisters made the pilgrimage to Pacific to meet the little brother they thought had died fifty ago as an infant. They have returned many times.

With no hint of recrimination about the life he did not have, Johnny looks forward to visits with his sisters once or twice a year. He also looks forward, he said, to getting up every day because he has so many friends in Pacific.

”Johnny,” is an inspiring read.