Couple Bring Text to Life for Disabled

Harrumph. Harrumph.

Bob Wimmer clears his throat. That’s how the 69-year-old usually starts his volunteer work each Thursday morning. “I have my tea,” he says. “Let’s get started.”

While he adjusts his headset, his wife, Elinor, also 69, checks his sound level, cues up the reel-to-reel and pushes play.

As volunteers for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, the couple’s work recording textbooks is valued by blind and reading disabled students across the country.

“These volunteers,” said Diane Kelber, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit organization, “are keeping kids in school.”

Today, the West Hills couple will work for three hours reading, reading and reading some more.

Bob starts on page 357 from a freshman-level science book. Elinor settles into her chair on the other side of the microphone. She will operate the recording equipment, continue monitoring sound levels and, if needed, check for pronunciation accuracy from a nearby unabridged dictionary.

Bob begins. He and seven other volunteer readers have been chipping away at recording the heavy textbook, chapter by chapter, since the end of March. They’re about halfway through with a looming deadline fast approaching. Three students from colleges in Michigan, Missouri and Hawaii need the book recorded to cassettes for classes next fall.

Bob’s background as a nuclear and electronics engineer at Rockwell International, Litton Industries and the Aerospace Corp. has given him the vocabulary to breeze through any technical book. He retired in 1995. Today’s reading--chapter 11--deals with catalysts, chemical reactions, electrolysis and oxidation reduction.

Occasionally, a tricky word, such as “acetanilide,” will trip him up.

“Oops!” Bob said, acknowledging his blunder.

Harrumph. Harrumph.

While he takes another sip of tea, Elinor stops the tape, re-cues it with a three-quarter turn, presses play and motions for Bob to try again.

No problem the second time. But pronouncing multisyllabic scientific words isn’t nearly as hard, both say, as describing a textbook’s many photographs, illustrations, complicated tables and diagrams. And today there seems to be nearly one per page.

“The battery hydrometer,” Bob says after sizing up a drawing of a tool used to measure liquid density, “kind of looks like a turkey baster.”

Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic--founded in 1948 to help blinded World War II veterans--has about 87,000 “borrowers” nationwide made up of individual members and schools.

With 33 studios throughout the country, volunteers record more than 3,600 kindergarten through postgraduate level textbooks each year.

Members pay a minimal annual fee to borrow from the organization’s Princeton, N.J., library stocked with 80,000 recorded titles. If a recording they need isn’t available, they can request it.

The Wimmers began reading for the organization in 1994. No one in their family is blind or dyslexic, but after hearing about the need on a local radio station--especially the need for technical readers--they got involved.

“We’re just trying to make it easier on these kids,” said Elinor, who worked as a nuclear chemist before staying home to raise four children. “Learning is not easy for them.”

Books now stacked and waiting to be recorded at the West Hills studio include “Dialect and Dialogue: Plato’s Practice of Philosophical Inquiry,” “Psychology for Teaching,” “Basic Automotive Service and Systems” and even Susan Faludi’s new one, “Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man.”

“We read lots of medical books, science books and the classics,” assistant studio director Mike Senzer said. “ ‘War and Peace’ really took a long time.”

The Wimmers often think of the students listening to their recordings. Occasionally, they’ll meet some of them at local events sponsored by the organization. “[The kids will] come up to me and say, ‘Hey! I recognize your voice,’ ” Elinor said.

They know their work is meaningful--which helps them get through reading really dry text, such as bibliographies, indexes or the Periodic Table of Elements, which Bob tackled recently.

“If volunteers didn’t do this,” Elinor said, “then a lot of [disabled kids] couldn’t go to school.”

Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic has studios locally in Hollywood, the South Bay and West Hills. For more information, call (323) 664-5525.

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