Disabled Boy Determined to Chart His Own Course

Desmond Blair is like any other 12-year-old: He can’t wait to become a teenager.

But he’s also different from his eighth-grade peers in a number of ways.

He likes math. He already knows what he wants to be when he grows up--a cartoon animator. And he was born without hands--a disability immediately assumed to be a definite end to his dreams of becoming an artist.

“With his birth defect, I thought writing would be one of his biggest challenges,” said Joyce Blair, his mother.

The bright-eyed boy proved his mother wrong. He started practicing his ABCs and drawing stick men before the age of 3.

“As he got older, he started to trace and eventually he started drawing from the way things looked,” Blair, 37, said.

Then Desmond jumps in: “Then I started making stuff up.”

Desmond’s artwork--everything from a detailed self-portrait to a superhero called “Ace”--offers no clues that he uses only two nubs at the end of his arms to hold a pencil. He pays meticulous attention to every detail and, if it’s not right, he effortlessly flips the pencil around and erases it.

“Everything has to be right,” he said while concentrating on his latest comic book. “It has to be in proportion.”

After putting Desmond through dozens of tests, doctors were never able to determine what caused his birth defect. Said his mother: “It was just one of those things.”

Nevertheless, Desmond’s artwork has earned him a best-artist-of-the-year award at South Dallas’ W.E. Greiner Middle School, victory in several art competitions and recognition from classmates and teachers.

He plans to attend Skyline High School, a Dallas magnet school that specializes in specific career tracks, and eventually enroll at UCLA.

“It was awesome to see this child--who according to society’s standards is disabled, crippled, handicapped--go at doing art like he had none of the above,” said Derrick Sledge, one of Desmond’s art teachers. “His demeanor, his spirit to do art in spite of the fact he does not have hands, is phenomenal. It’s like he’s just a normal, average, cool middle schooler.”

Most of Desmond’s classmates see him as part of the gang. But he acknowledged that he’s sometimes teased for not having hands, which means he needs help tying his shoelaces or fixing his shirt collar.

“Sometimes it can get to you,” he said. “I try to ignore them or say something back.”

Desmond’s primary concern, however, is drawing.

“I like to use different kinds of pens. Coloring is kind of fun, and just looking at it when it’s finished is the best part,” he said.