Deafness Hasn’t Silenced Love of Music

Born blind, Georgia Griffith always loved music. But the loss of her hearing at age 38 bent that love in a new direction.

Although she gave away her piano a couple of years ago, she’s still actively involved in music in a different sort of way.

Griffith, the first blind person to graduate from Capital University in Columbus, is a proofreader of Braille music and teaches other handicapped people for a national computer service.

Lives With Mother

“Everyone has a handicap. Some show it, some don’t,” said Griffith, 55, who lives with her mother in this city 30 miles southeast of Columbus. “Whatever your lot in life, you build on it, you go forward, you don’t let little things like a handicap get in your way.”

Griffith works in a cramped and cluttered office in her home, surrounded by her computer, software and books. She uses a microcomputer keyboard and a VersaBraille machine, which translates typed letters into the matrix on paper that is Braille. To communicate with her, outsiders type on the keyboard and her machine transcribes it into Braille. Griffith responds orally.

At her desk, Griffith expertly moves her fingers across the VersaBraille reader. Currently she is proofreading all of Beethoven’s symphonies for the National Braille Assn., an organization of more than 2,500 volunteers worldwide who help the blind and visually impaired.

“I wish I had 25 hours, eight days a week to get all of my work done,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be enough time.”

The association has sent her the symphonies stored on a floppy computer disc and a hard copy of Braille sheet music. As the disc plays the music into her VersaBraille machine, she ferrets out mistakes with her fingertips. When she finds an error, she pulls the corresponding page of Braille music and retypes it to make the correction.

Task Will Take a Year

It’s painstaking work. The nine symphonies will cover 4,000 Braille pages and will take her a year to complete. The difficulty of the work is compounded by her deafness.

Griffith wants to buy a Braille printer, which could reduce the time she spends correcting copy. She now manually retypes an entire page each time she finds a mistake. A Braille printer, she said, would mean she could correct the mistake on the computer disc and print out the new page.

But a Braille printer costs $5,000, and she can’t afford it.

Music has always been an important part of Griffith’s life.

“Music was forced on me in the second grade,” she said with a smile. “I was a fast learner and skipped a few grades at the State School for the Blind. I played in the band at the school, all different instruments.

Got Support From Family

“Growing up wasn’t much different for me than anyone else. I got a lot of support from my family. At the state school, I liked to read and study. The teachers at the school used to make me go outside and play because they said I was studying too much.”

Griffith graduated from Capital University in 1954 as a Phi Beta Kappa with a BS in music. Since 1971, she has been the Library of Congress’ only proofreader of Braille music. Reduced federal spending has curtailed that work and she has not received an assignment from the library since last spring.

Griffith also directs a national computer forum through CompuServe, an independent service for users of personal computers. It allows her to communicate with people nationwide by typing messages into a data bank linked to subscribers.

“I have friends I talk to from all over the country,” she said. “I talk to them through the forums I run. People don’t know I’m handicapped unless somebody who knows me blows my cover.”

She Felt Depressed

Griffith was in her 30s when she began losing her hearing. By age 38, she was deaf.