Crippled Man Gives Town a Hand

--”The good part of my job is it’s extremely gratifying to be as handicapped as I am and yet have normal people call me for help. It’s kind of an ironic twist,” Dick Schultz said. When there’s a fire, an accident or a cat stuck on a roof, folks in the farming village of Pawnee, Ill., (pop. 2,600) call Schultz for help--even though he’s been bedridden with a crippling disease for nearly four decades. Schultz, 56, a victim of rheumatoid arthritis that crippled him when he was a teen-ager, dispatches policemen, ambulances and volunteer firefighters. The disease fused nearly all his joints, leaving him able to move only his arms. Unable to sit up or move his head, hips or legs, Schultz lies in bed amid shelves stacked precariously high with the tools of his trade: telephones, police radio scanners and other equipment. His telephone, which rings as many as 200 times on a busy day, is strapped to a movable shelf near the bottom of his bed. When it rings, Schultz uses a pulley to bring the shelf within reach. Police Chief Billy Miller calls Schultz a godsend. Schultz’s reply is that responsible jobs provide something special for handicapped persons: “an opportunity to have a handful of dignity.”

--Dee Snider, lead singer for the rock band Twisted Sister, says he’s “out to prove to the world that heavy-metal music isn’t played by idiots for idiots.” “You don’t have to be stupid to like heavy metal,” Snider, 30, known for his frizzy blond hair style and bizarre costumes, said during a stop in Phoenix. Hard rock is the 1980s’ music of the masses, he said, because “no self-respecting kid wants to listen to a band that his father approves of.”

--”We are proud to have Gargantua II back where he belongs,” said Kenneth Feld, president and owner of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. “He will be displayed in this office (executive headquarters in Washington) for now and forever.” It was a day of superlatives as the gorilla Gargantua--who died in 1971, was stuffed and wound up in a Florida theme park--was toasted with 60-ounce glasses of champagne after being repurchased for $20,350. Feld and C.P. Fox, billed as the official circus historian, say the glass case where he now reposes is kept at a constant temperature of 70 degrees. Just the way he likes it. Historian Fox said the six-foot tall, 850-pound ape was devoted to watching soap operas on television and even recounted the dubious story of Gargantua’s girlfriend. She was a Cuban lady of wealth who would visit Gargantua every evening, holding his hand through the bars while she read poems in Spanish and slipped him a nightcap of cognac, Fox said.