College Helping Disabled Learn Not to Give Up

For David Ross, the occasion brought tears of happiness.

The tall, slim man with flecks of gray in his black hair was among the speakers at a recent dedication of a new, $421,000 technological center for handicapped students at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana.

“Two and a half years ago, I was paralyzed,” Ross told the audience. “I couldn’t speak. Then I came to this community college, and it’s helped me a great deal.”

A burst blood vessel in his brain had caused partial paralysis and memory loss. He was 45 at the time, and he thought life was all over--that he would be a lonely cripple, barely able to communicate with his wife and three daughters.

But, Ross said, he found that Rancho Santiago College has special programs and equipment to help handicapped people like himself, that it has given him a chance for a new, productive life.

When Ross found his emotions too strong to continue speaking, Shirley Ralston, a friend and neighbor from Orange, came to the microphone. Ralston is a member of the college’s board of trustees.

“Here is a man who was an expert at math and many other subjects,” said Ralston. “It’s very difficult to be an expert and find you have learn all over again. As a neighbor and a friend, I’m very proud of his accomplishments.”

The new Tutorial Learning Center at Rancho Santiago College was formally launched with an array of such success stories as Ross’. Handicapped students studying inside the center told of skills they were learning and problems they were overcoming.

About 900 of the 21,178 students enrolled at Rancho Santiago are handicapped and use the community college’s special teaching and equipment for the disabled. Before the opening of the Tutorial Learning Center, facilities for the handicapped were in a hard-to-reach location, on the second floor of the college’s library.

After college President Robert Jensen and the board of trustees successfully pushed the state for a grant to pay 90% of the $421,000 cost, Rancho Santiago built a 30,000-square-foot addition to the ground floor of another campus building. That addition now is the expanded center for the handicapped students.

“This used to be a patio,” campus spokesman Henry Kertman said as he showed visitors around the new facility. Scores of big windows flood the learning center with sunshine. Aisles lined with computers anchor the south end of the structure.

After he spoke at the dedication, Ross sat at one of the special computers, explaining to visitors that the machine had programs to help him resharpen his memory.

“I used to work with electrical instruments for a biotech company, and I had a lot of skills,” Ross said. “But I had something 2 1/2 years ago that was like a stroke--the cause was different but the effects were the same. All my reading (memory) was wiped out, my speech, my math, my spelling. . . .”

The screen briefly showed 10 diverse items: a mushroom, a book, a tree, a pencil. When the picture faded, Ross typed a list of everything he could remember. He grouped living things together, such as the mushroom and the tree. He then grouped teaching things together, such as pencil and book. Ultimately he typed all 10 items. The computer then told him he had a perfect score.

Nearby, Rancho Santiago student Ray Bronk, 36, of Fullerton, typed on his computer while his guide dog, Liberty, slept under the desk.

“This is an adapted computer,” Bronk said. “It prints what I type into Braille. Everything a regular computer can print, this computer can print into Braille.”

The special computer also allowed Bronk to read what was on the screen through a touch bar that translated the writing into Braille.

Bronk was reading biology notes about reptiles. A sentence on the screen read, “Snakes belong to a class of animals called reptiles.” Bronk touched the Braille bar and quickly read what the screen was showing.

At another special computer, Cindy Gosper, 33, of Garden Grove, praised the college’s new special-assistance center.

“I became a quadriplegic in a car accident 4 1/2 years ago,” said Gosper. “Through the help of the college, I’m now learning to do with these computers many things I used to be able to do with my hands. For instance, I use the computer to write checks and to write messages. This is a wonderful help.”