Hi Hopes Are Soaring With Success : Talented Handicapped Grab Public Attention

After living two decades in board-and-care homes for the mentally retarded, Gary Ahearn, 33, seemed to be at the edge of oblivion. He was without family, without friends--trapped forever, it appeared, by speech and muscular disabilities and an IQ in the 50-70 range.

He would shuffle wordlessly through the hallways of the Los Angeles job training center for the disabled he attended, his eyes always downcast.

Then one day he saw an organ keyboard in a crafts classroom.

He began wandering in daily, motioning to the teacher to let him play. She finally agreed, and Ahearn sat down and promptly played a lilting melody resembling Liszt’s “Liebestraume.”

“It was absolutely astounding,” said the teacher, Scotty Argelander. “Hearing Gary play was like a bolt of lightning.”

Now seven years later, Ahearn, 40, of Santa Ana also plays the guitar, banjo, drums, harmonica, trumpet and trombone. He is a member of the Anaheim-based Hi Hopes, a nationally known touring troupe of 10 musicians and singers--all mentally handicapped.

‘Much More Alive’

“He still hardly talks. He never says anything about his family or where he picked up his music,” said Argelander, now retired. “But he is much more alive, so eager, especially when you turn him loose on the keyboard.”

Hi Hopes organizers believe Ahearn and others in the group are examples of a startling phenomenon: severely handicapped people who have exceptional creative talents.

They may represent the “savant syndrome,” the new term for mentally disabled who display astounding intellectual or creative gifts, Hi Hopes founder and teacher Doris Walker said.

Although social scientists have yet to determine the causes of the savant phenomenon and many question the number of mentally handicapped who may be so gifted, the idea has caught the public eye.

Hi Hopes as an example of the savant phenomenon recently has been featured in the national media, including Time magazine and cable television. A documentary is in the works for national public television. There is talk of possible Hollywood movie ventures.

And a private nonprofit adult school in Anaheim founded four years ago just for the Hi Hopes performers soon may move to new quarters so that enrollment can be expanded from 35 to 100 students.

Classes Based on Music

“There’s no other program quite like it, either with the same arts emphasis or with the same full-time, year-round aspirations,” said James Maas, chairman of the Cornell University psychology department, who is preparing the TV documentary on Hi Hopes and the Anaheim school.

With the rather lofty title of Hope University/UNICO National College, the school operates from a tiny $450-a-month storefront in the rear of a shopping center at Ball Road and Brookhurst St.

UNICO (Unity, Neighborliness, Integrity, Charity, Opportunity), a national Italian-American service organization that supports mental health causes, is its chief supporter. UNICO is in process of buying a three-acre Anaheim site for $1 million from the Euclid Street Baptist Church. The property would be for a permanent Hope/UNICO campus.

Classes at the school are based on music--including those involving drama, movement and visual arts. Sessions on spelling, handling money, managing a household and other tasks are done through song sketches and dramatic improvisations.

The Hi Hopes troupe is the core of the program, however. Its 10 members, most of whom live with their families in Orange County, are the only full-time students. (Full-time tuition is $600 a semester; some students receive assistance from Kiwanis and other organizations.)

Local, National Tours

While the troupe continues as a regular on a Southern California circuit that includes hospitals, conferences, Disneyland and homes for senior citizens, twice-yearly national tours for UNICO take them to national conventions, fairs, theme parks and universities from Las Vegas, Denver and Chicago to New Orleans, Philadelphia and the Capitol Mall. The troupe is not paid, but expenses are paid by UNICO and other sponsors.

Although the group’s appearances still have an aura of novelty, supporters say the main response is one of sympathetic acceptance. “The sideshow image, I think, has long faded,” said Allan Simmons, a California Department of Education consultant for the developmentally disabled. “We’re dealing with a society today that is far more sophisticated about such matters.”

Walker says that four of the performers reveal the astonishing attributes of the savant--singers Paul Kuehn and Gloria Lenhoff, pianist Tim Baley and Ahearn.

“For reasons we still do not understand, these students have an incredible instinctive capacity for music,” said Walker, 62. “Their knowledge is encyclopedic. Overall, they cannot read well, yet they remember everything--lyrics, melodies, titles, dates.”

Some researchers, however, suggest that even the most impressive Hi Hopes troupers may be talented but not to an exceptional degree.

‘Remarkable Group’

“In their case, we’re probably talking about relatively normal talents, but these seem so stunning, so dramatic because they occur in people who are severely afflicted in other areas of mental capacity,” Francis Crinella, director of the state Department of Developmental Services research institutes, said from his Fairview center office in Costa Mesa.

“Yet the group is a case where the disabled have obviously received strong, nurturing support in seeking the maximum potential,” said Crinella, a psychologist and longtime researcher on the mentally retarded. “In that sense, this is a remarkable group.”

Said psychologist Bernard Rimland of San Diego, who has done savant studies on the autistic: “It’s a subject about which we can only theorize--such as the possible link with the brain’s creative or right side or the unusually intense concentration that these disabled seem to have. But why and exactly how this happens, we still have no real clues. It’s still a great mystery.”

The idea for Hi Hopes began in 1969 when Walker met Kuehn at a Buena Park public school for the “trainable” mentally retarded.

Kuehn, who is also blind, was terribly withdrawn, Walker said. “But he had this incredible ear for music. He could pick up a note, a word, almost instantly.”

Performed National Anthem

Kuehn was the nucleus of the first Hi Hopes troupe, formed in 1972 for local school and club visits. He has since sung the national anthem at Dodger Stadium and at Anaheim Stadium. And, Walker said, “he always brings down the house at (Hi Hopes) concerts with ‘The Impossible Dream.’ ”

Kuehn, who also plays drums, said he is delighted by the troupe’s growing celebrity status. “It’s exciting. I like doing all the television (news shows) and having our pictures taken. I want to tell everyone we love music.”

Like Kuehn, Lenhoff, 32, has a show-stopping voice, clear and soaring, displayed to particular advantage in her “Ave Maria” and “God Bless America” solos.

“I can sing in different languages--Hebrew, Greek, Japanese,” said Lenhoff, who joined the troupe in 1982 and works as a part-time aide in a Yorba Linda preschool. “I don’t know why we have this (talent). I just know we do--and people like us.”

Baley, 34, was already a widely traveled concert soloist based in El Paso, Tex., when he joined the Hi Hopes last year. A born showman, he is known for his versions of gospel songs and his rippling renditions of “Chariots of Fire” and “The Entertainer.”

‘I Forget Everything Else’

“There’s nothing I want to do more,” said Baley, who suffers from cerebral palsy. “I like the (audience) faces. I like doing something for people. I forget everything else.”

The families of Hi Hopes members say its rewards go beyond debate about savant prowess.

Said Joyce Malugeon, mother of singer Mikki Davis, 28: “I don’t know about all the academic boundaries involved, but I do know that Mikki has grown so much, both in creative expression and in her social behavior. She has a lot more confidence.”

Performers share a warm camaraderie. “We’re like family,” said guitarist Jim Fitzjarrald, 26. “We go to movies and picnics. We have fun and we argue too.”

But because they still are subjected to stares and taunts, their kinship is also protective.

“We watch out for each other because we know what the other students are feeling,” singer Lori Reyes, 26, said. “We’re special people. Others may look at us and they may not realize this.”

‘We’re Human Too’

Reyes paused, then added: “We have disabilities. We have difficulties, but we’re human, too.”

Singer Bill Ouderkerken, 31, said he used to be shy and was fearful on stage, but “not anymore.” Now his specialty is to go into the audience and exchange greetings, handshakes and bear hugs. “If we show love, others will show love. Love is what we bring to our shows.”

And also unfettered joyousness.

At a recent performance at a Good Shepherd Lutheran Homes’ conference at the Irvine Marriott, the Hi Hopes offered a typically rousing show.

They were dressed as if for a high school prom: the men in dapper gray tuxedoes with velvet collars, the women in flowing pink dresses with red sashes. They worked the room like a Las Vegas lounge act, complete with microphone flourishes and rhythm-swaying vocals.

Their songs were sure-fire crowd pleasers, from “Red River Valley” and “This Land Is Your Land” to “America the Beautiful” and, of course, “The Impossible Dream.”

When Paul Kuehn scaled the peaking final note of “Dream,” audience members stood clapping and cheering. Some cried. Others reached out and embraced Ouderkerken.

Sitting quietly at the rear of the stage, Gary Ahearn savored every moment of the ovation, his eyes lifted toward the audience, his face lit by an enormous grin.