Visionary Voices Interview with Graynle Edwards, PhD
January 23, 2013
Part I
Chapter 1: Childhood and Family
10:59:42:20 – 11:00:00:29
Q. My name is Lisa Sonneborn and I’m interviewing Doctor Graynle Edwards, um, on January 23rd 2013 at Temple University, Philadelphia PA. Also present is Oscar Molina and Dr. Edwards, do I have your permission to begin our interview?
A. You have my permission.
Q. Thank you.
A. (Laughs)
11:00:00:29 – 11:00:17:16
Q. Even though I know your name I’m going to ask you if you would kindly restate your name and your current working title.
A. Graynle Edwards. Uh, Adjunct professor at Lincoln University teaching Environmental Sciences.
Q. Thank you. And Dr. Edwards, can you tell me when and where you were born?
11:00:41:19 – 11:00:46:16
I was born in Philadelphia, December the 7th 1936.
11:00:46:16 – 11:01:03:29
Q. Um, Dr. Edwards, you’re the parent of a man with an intellectual disability, Graynle Edwards Jr. Um, we’re certainly going to be talking about your son during this interview, but first I wanted to ask you a little bit about your own background. Um, I knew that you grew up in North Philadelphia.
A. That’s correct.
11:01:03:29 – 11:01:36:28
Q. Mm Hm. Can you tell me a little bit about your family? For instance, did you have brothers and sisters?
A. Yes, I had, uh, four siblings; one brother and three sisters. Uh, I was the youngest of the clan. Uh, the older sister was nine years older than myself and uh, the next one is four years older; three years older. My brother’s about a year and a half older. (Laughs)
11:01:36:28 – 11:07:03:13
Q. How would you describe your parents?
A. It’s an interesting household. We had, um, Attila the Hun, and we had uh, uh, uh, what was it? Uh, Nightingale, I’m trying to think of her first name. The nightingale was the nurse?
Q. Florence.
A. Florence! Florence Nightingale, yeah. My mother was basically the one that, who could, uh, we could probably get over on my mother but not my father. He was the one who, uh, he was the one with the iron first. If we did anything wrong my mother would let us know that she’ll let, uh, daddy know about it when he gets home from work. Uh, both of my parents, uh, in my judgment, were extremely bright but neither of them, uh, finished high school. Uh, my father came out of school during the time when many students, uh, left public education at the end of eighth grade. Uh, whereas my mother, uh, she went to Frankfurt High School and uh, but just prior to, uh, uh, graduating; that would be her senior year, she was married and never finished, uh, never finished. Uh, back in those days often times if you were with child in a school; it was time for you to leave school. (Laughs) And, uh, the, uh, but interestingly enough, both of them were readers. And they brought that into the household; brought that into the clan, the importance of having books around. Uh, my, uh, my mother was, uh, what you would call a child prodigy as relates to music. And she would go from, uh, church to church performing and uh, the uh, she took up that craft, uh, or that skill, uh, late in the, uh, marriage. I guess she was about 35, 36 before, uh, she was a nursery school aide who was transformed into the nursery music teacher because the, uh, director saw; was able to identify those skills. And for, uh, a number of years, she came to Temple University taking courses, uh, that were aligned with, uh, early childhood education and uh, so she, uh ended her career, uh, over at Swarthmore College working in their early childhood program as the music teacher. Uh, my father was a postal worker, who uh, as I said before; well read, spent a lot of time in the library, uh, towards his free time. And he was also an artist. Uh, in act, that’s one of the skills you find in about four of the children who are artistically inclined. And uh, so he was what you would call, uh, fine arts was his avocation. And, uh, for years, uh, he spent a lot of time in the basement producing a number of works that, uh, that merited him being, uh, being given an exhibit at the, uh, at the Art Alliance at over at Broad, I think Broad and Arch. Uh, the, uh, uh, my father, uh, was a... a lot of people gravitated to him because he was bright; he was very smart in fact. I remember a number of college graduates coming to my house, uh, to be apart of that. They had a social, uh, uh, set that came together for libation as well as meaningful dialogue. (Laughs) And he was basically at the center of that core. Uh, he, uh, was also a very religious person who, uh, who had trouble with that we call organized religion. Uh, in fact, he was a part of a group that actually established a church; small church. It sat about a hundred members but he was always one who conducted the household with strong religious principles. In spite of the fact in his act of involvement; his leadership of the church, he decided that was just something he didn’t want to be a part of. Uh, I guess that’s about the long and the short of it in terms of, uh, my parents.
11:07:03:13 – 11:07:53:11
Q. Dr. Edwards, did you have any experience with disability in your family growing up?
A. Yeah, my sister had Polio. Uh, the, I guess, that the, that certainly sensitized us to the fact the there’s some individuals that have to deal with disabilities in their life and my sister contracted Polio, I can’t give you the exact years, but I never remember my sister not having Polio which means that, uh, I certainly remember my sister from the time I was about six years old; at least five years old; five or six. And she had Polio so she was four years older than mine, me; which means that, which suggests, that she probably contracted the disease in her sixth or seventh year. Yeah.
11:07:53:11 – 11:09:02:09
Q. What was your sister’s name?
A. Sonya.
Q. And did your family make concessions or allowances for Sonya because of her…
A. None. Zero. (Laughs) In fact, in fact, I mean, we knew she had a bad leg but that’s all she had. Other than that, she was just like anybody else. She was expected to do the same things and uh, so interesting, as we were growing up, she would run and uh, as, uh, as much as that bad leg would allow her to run, dance and what have you so that, uh. While we knew that there was a handicap there, we didn’t allow that, uh to have any impact on how we related to her. In fact, me be the youngest there was more than a few times where she would just walk up and punch me right in my chest. (Laughs) I guess that’s all a part of the big, the older sister, uh, having to dominate the younger, the younger sibling, you know but that went on until I was about 12 or 13 and I put a stop to all that. (Laughs)
11:09:02:09 – 11:10:37:16
Q. You said she liked to dance, did she teach you to dance?
A. Yeah that’s an interesting story. The, uh, I guess I was about 12, no maybe 11, 11 or 12 and uh my two sisters, uh, wanted to, uh, dance, but they wanted to have a boy to dance with. So they used to draft me. I’d be out in the street playing and they’d drag me into the house. “Come on, we want you to dance, we want you to dance, want you to dance with us” Uh, actually what they really were trying out their steps, you know, but in the process, I learned how to dance. So there was a pay off because when I went to junior high school. Uh I was one of the better dances in my junior high school. I forgot to mention, I did have an older sister, my older sister died of tuberculosis. I was seven at the time so that would make her 16. Uh, she, uh, had to go away up, somewhere in upstate Pennsylvania and they were not able to capture the disease and as a result, she passed. So, uh, so when I speak of my older sister, it’s really the sister that was really with me for many, many years as opposed to the, uh, literal older sister in the family.
11:10:37:16 – 11:11:25;24
Q. You mentioned that your family didn’t make any concessions for Sonya because of her disability. Did any friends or neighborhood people in the community treat her differently or you differently by proxy?
A. Never noticed it, never noticed it and I think its because, uh, Sonya would not allow anybody to, as she got older, she would not allow anyone to treat her in any way other than the rest of the folks. And I used to see her interact with her girlfriends, you never got a sense of “Oh Sonya has Polio so we’re gonna do X Y Z” Didn’t happened. Uh, she was, uh, a much a part of the gang as any of the other, uh, girls in her group. So, no, no that’s… it didn’t happen.
Chapter 2: Dr. Edwards as a Student | Professional Aspirations
11:11:25:24 – 11:13:26:26
Q. Dr. Edwards, when we spoke before, you talked about, um, one of your first experiences, really seeing how people with intellectual disabilities were treated. Um, you mentioned working for the department of welfare and some training you had done at Byberry and I was wondered if you could tell me a little about, um, that experience; that first time you really did see, um, how people with intellectual disabilities…
A. Well actually the, when I spoke with you last, my first exposure to large number of disabled individuals was a cerebral palsy group that came to Temple University. I was a lifeguard at that time and on Saturday mornings, the group would come in and I would have a chance to work with them. So that was my first exposure. That was a very positive, very pleasant experience to see the care, the tenderness of the aides who came with them and supported them as they tried to adjust to the water, the water situation, swimming situation. That was positive and the next, uh, large exposure to the disabled was when through a training program, we had to visit certain facilities and Byberry was one of them and uh, I was appalled with watt I saw. The, uh, it was almost as if I was going to a zoo, the way individuals certain areas were behind the cages and um, you know, just looking out as us and uh, you got no sense of, uh, any kind of normal interaction taken place with the, uh, with the patients. Uh, if it happened, then I just didn’t see that, uh, but I left Byberry with a very, very negative experience with intuitional life for the disabled.
11:13:26:26 – 11:17:21:26
Q. Thank you. As a young man what were your professional aspirations? What did you want to be when you grew up?
A. (Laughs) Well you know its interesting you would raise that question. I remember a friend of my father asked me, uh, what do you want to do when you graduate from high school? What do you want to study? I said I want to be a dentist. And he looked at me, a dentist? These guys, these were college graduates. A dentist? Why do you want to be a dentist? I don’t know why I want to be a dentist (Laughs) I just thought that was something I needed to say at the time, you know. But then I began to zero in, uh, maybe that’s not such a bad idea to become a dentist and, uh, so I began to pursue sciences as I went into my undergraduate years as a bio major; a chem. minor. Um, I spent, uh, my years at two colleges. I started at Virginia Union, and uh transferred into Temple as what you would call a rising sophomore. Uh, they gave me a number of credits. I think I came to the university with about 60-63 credits and they gave me 40 of them so that wasn’t a bad deal. Uh, so I brought some good grades out of Virginia Union. So as I began to pursue my quest as becoming a dentist, the uh, it was a lot more difficult here at Temple than I had anticipated in that, I, uh, I’ll give you an example; one professor would, uh, assign 90 pages to you. I’ll never forget his style-ogy, 90 pages, and they had open recitations which meant that when you came to class, the next Wednesday or Thursday, whatever day that was, you could be called on and you were expected to, uh to respond to questions that he would raise about those 90 pages. That was tough! It was tough so that the expectations in my judgment from the professorial prospective were high but at the same time, uh, I had difficulty grasping so much material in just a weeks time because at the same token, I had calculus; I had history and I had cat anatomy and some of my colleagues say you should never take history with cat anatomy in the same semester. Well what did I know? I’m a transfer student. Well to make a long story short, I used to tell everyone my 81, from 79 to 81, 82 came directly from this brain. Whereas there were guys who had old exams who, that we had to compete against, and uh what happened is that if you have an old exam and you cant get a high B or low A you had no business being a science major in the first place, you see. But it was just when it came time to, uh, get into the professional school; you know dental school or medical school, my grades just weren’t enough. That C, that 2.4 to 2.5 just didn’t cut it. Uh, now what I could have done, I could have gone and got a Masters in a Biology or Chemistry related area and I could have upped the ante for getting into medical school but by that time I was married and, uh, had a child so that was just, that was put on the back burned; not the back burner, I took it off the stove. (Laughs)
11:17:21:26 – 11:18:51:08
Q. You mentioned that you were married. When did you meet your wife?
A. Actually, uh, I met my wife as an undergrad at Virginia Union and uh, the, uh, uh, I transferred for the reason that I thought that I’d have a better shot of getting into dental school uh, or medical school by coming out of Temple. And it just turned out that I was just wrong, wrong, wrong; because where I faired with the group at Virginia Union, I was like number 4 or 5 position in terms of science majors so I could have gotten into Howard or Harry. Uh, but the, uh, but it just didn’t work out for me. But anyhow, I transferred out of Virginia Union. We kept our relationship going and by the time, uh, I had almost finished school in 59, we got married. I had to take, uh, a year of Physics and a year of German, That’s what happens when you transfer, you get stuff all messed up in the terms of how you take courses. My last year of college, I had something like, uh, seven semester hours the first semester; seven semester hours the second semester. So Physics and uh, German; Physics and German so that’s crazy, that’s the way it worked, yeah. Okay.
11:19:11:06 – 11:24:52:25
Q. Thanks. Um, Dr. Edwards, I believe you also served in the Army?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Um, that was, uh, that was an experience in that, uh, I was what you call, a, uh, a reservist. A reservist goes to work, goes into service for six months. And uh, that was serious training for the first, uh, 16 weeks. And then, uh, I guess by the time I was in the tenth week, we had tryouts for the, uh, regimen basketball team and uh, of course I made the team. And uh, you heard I said of course I made the team and uh, as a result, I went into what you call special service. Which meant that, uh, you had to get up with the troops in the morning but at eleven o’clock your day was gone because then you went over to the gym to practice your basketball craft so uh, that was, uh, a joke. You know, I was serious the first, like I said, the first ten weeks, I was serious trying to learn a craft of being a combat engineer. But once they, I transformed into special service; I kind of forgot about being a soldier and just, just be a basketball player. And uh, so at the end of February, my six months were up so of course, I’m home now to work as a, continue my service as a reservist where you go to, uh, training, I think we went to training, was it once a month or I think, once a month, we had to go for two or three hours at 57th and uh, 57th and Chestnut, yeah. Uh, and I did that from February until August. And then they had the Berlin crisis, and the Cuban crisis so, uh, they called back all the reservists. Now that, I thought, now that was going to be real serious because, you know, you know, you hear the media, they’re talking about, are we going to have a nuclear war and all this kind of stuff. We have to send troops to Germany and uh we may have to send troops to Cuba. I’m saying geez, why did I join the reserves to get caught up in this stuff because by the time that happened, if you were married with a child, you didn’t have to go. You didn’t have to go to service because things had changed. You see, but people who were already in it, you’re stuck. You were stuck, but that turned out to be, uh, that was almost a picnic in terms of they sent us to Ft Bragg, North Carolina. And uh, we had a, we must have had ten lawyers in our company. These are enlisted men who were reservists who were called back to duty. We must have had ten and these guys would question everything. (Laughs) We were the beneficiary of it, you see. I remember one, I’ll never forget this, they said at four o’clock on Friday it is our right to practice our Sabbath. Well, they were right so the Adjutant General said, uh, they’re absolutely right. So they will have no duties at 4 pm through Saturday. Well the rest of us are saying, wait a minute, if these guys aren’t doing anything, we’re not going to do anything! And if we did do something, we were going to do it in a lackadaisical fashion. Knew nothing about cooking but they wanted to know who wants to work in the mess hall? Well my cousins told me, they said listen, if you ever have a chance, these are cousins who’d been in the service, if you ever have a chance to work in the kitchen, you work in the in the kitchen! So I raised my hand, I’d like to work in the kitchen and it was a tremendous pay off because the people who worked in the kitchen, they would take food out to the field and then come back. Didn’t have to stay overnight, you see, in the field.