Jenny's Musings August 2, 2007

I came across this information on Susan Barton's website and thought it might be interesting to read. Be encouraged! Enjoy!

http://www.dys-add.com/

Famous Dyslexics:
What They Remember about School

http://www.dys-add.com/backiss.html#famous (Bright Solutions Website)

I hated school . . . . One of the reasons was a learning disability, dyslexia, which no one understood at the time. I still can't spell . . .
--Loretta Young

I was one of the 'puzzle children' myself -- a dyslexic . . . And I still have a hard time reading today. Accept the fact that you have a problem. Refuse to feel sorry for yourself. You have a challenge; never quit!
--Nelson Rockefeller

I never read in school. I got really bad grades--D's and F's and C's in some classes, and A's and B's in other classes. In the second week of the 11th grade, I just quit. When I was in school, it was really difficult. Almost everything I learned, I had to learn by listening. My report cards always said that I was not living up to my potential.
--Cher

When I had dyslexia, they didn't diagnose it as that. It was frustrating and embarrassing. I could tell you a lot of horror stories about what you feel like on the inside.
--Nolan Ryan

Having made a strenuous effort to understand the symbols he could make nothing of, he wept giant tears . . .
--Caroline Commanville, on her uncle, Gustave Flaubert

I was, on the whole, considerably discouraged by my school days. It was not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the beginning of the race.
--Winston Churchill

He told me that his teachers reported that . . . he was mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in his foolish dreams.
--Hans Albert Einstein, on his father, Albert Einstein

I, myself, was always recognized . . . as the "slow one" in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was . . . an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day.
--Agatha Christie

My teachers say I'm addled . . . my father thought I was stupid, and I almost decided I must be a dunce.
--Thomas Edison

My father was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head.
--W.B. Yeats

Willie was sent to lessons in spelling and grammar, but he never learned to spell. To the end of his life he produced highly idiosyncratic versions of words.
--Biographer A. Norman Jeffares on William Butler Yeats

I grew up in a school system . . . where nobody understood the meaning of learning disorder. In the West Indies, I was constantly being physically abused because the whipping of students was permitted.
--Harry Belafonte

Since I was the stupidest kid in my class, it never occurred to me to try and be perfect, so I've always been happy as a writer just to entertain myself. That's an easier place to start.
--Stephen J. Cannell, screenwriter, producer, & director

I had to train myself to focus my attention. I became very visual and learned how to create mental images in order to comprehend what I read."
--Tom Cruise

You should prefer a good scientist without literary abilities than a literate one without scientific skills.
--Leonardo da Vinci

Kids made fun of me because I was dark skinned, had a wide nose, and was dyslexic. Even as an actor, it took me a long time to realize why words and letters got jumbled in my mind and came out differently.
--Danny Glover, actor

I barely made it through school. I read real slow. But I like to find things that nobody else has found, like a dinosaur egg that has an embryo inside. Well, there are 36 of them in the world, and I found 35.
--Dr. John R. Horner, American paleontologist

I am, myself, a very poor visualizer and find that I can seldom call to mind even a single letter of the alphabet in purely retinal terms. I must trace the letter by running my mental eye over its contour in order that the image of it shall leave any distinctness at all.
--William James, psychologist and philosopher

I just barely got through school. The problem was a learning disability, at a time when there was nowhere to get help.
--Bruce Jenner, Olympic gold medalist

The looks, the stares, the giggles . . . I wanted to show everybody that I could do better and also that I could read.
--Magic Johnson

Young George . . . although he was bright and intelligent and bursting with energy, he was unable to read and write. Patton's wife corrected his spelling, his punctuation, and his grammar.
--Biographer Martin Blumenson on General George Patton

I couldn't read. I just scraped by. My solution back then was to read classic comic books because I could figure them out from the context of the pictures. Now I listen to books on tape.
--Charles Schwabb

My problem was reading very slowly. My parents said "Take as long as you need. As long as you're going to read, just keep at it." We didn't know about learning disabilities back then.
--Roger Wilkins, Head of the Pulitzer Prize Board

As a child, I was called stupid and lazy. On the SAT I got 159 out of 800 in math. My parents had no idea that I had a learning disability.
--Henry Winkler

The following people had either dyslexia, ADHD, or both. These people succeeded BECAUSE of their dyslexic gifts, not despite their dyslexia.

The starting list was created by the Kitty Petty Institute, but it has been added to for years.

http://www.dys-add.com/symptoms.html#famous (Bright Solutions Website)

Actors or Entertainment Industry Figures:
Henry Winkler (The Fonz)
Tom Cruise
Whoopi Goldberg
Danny Glover
Harry Anderson
Daniel Stern
Bill Cosby's brother and son
Steven Spielberg
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Dustin Hoffman
Steve McQueen
Jack Nicholson
Tom Smothers
Suzanne Somers
Sylvester Stallone
Robin Williams
Lindsay Wagner
George C. Scott
George Burns
Anthony Hopkins
Bob Jimenez (TV anchorman)
Tracey Gold
Steven J. Cannell
Jay Leno
Woody Harrelson
Jamie Oliver, "The Naked Chef"
Brian Grazer, producer of "A Beautiful Mind"
Edward James Olmos
Tracey Gold, "Growing Pains"
Walt Disney
Quentin Tarantino
Lara Flynn Boyle
Keira Knightley
Dom Delouise
Dave Foley
Bruce McCulloch
Patrick Dempsey
Orlando Bloom

Sports:
Magic Johnson
Greg Louganis (Olympic diver)
Bruce Jenner
Jackie Stewart, inducted into the Grand Prix Hall of Fame
Dexter Manley, former NFL player
Carl Lewis
Pete Rose
Nolan Ryan
Billy Blanks, Captain of 1980 U.S. Olympic Karate Team, Creator of Tae-Bo
Terry Bradshaw
Rulon Gardner, Gold Medal Winner in Greco-Roman wrestling, 2000 Summer Olympics
Adam Heidt, Luge competitor
Jim Shea, Jr., Gold Medal Winner in Skeleton, 2002 Winter Olympics
Stan Wattles, Indy race car driver
Mohammad Ali, boxer
Ellie Hawkins, rock climber
Eric Wynalda, professional soccer player
Neil Smith, NFL
Don Coryell, San Diego football coach (NFL & NCAA)
Duncan Goodhew, Swimmer
Bob Anderson, coach of Olympic wrestling team

Politicians:
Winston Churchill
Benjamin Franklin
Woodrow Wilson
Nelson Rockefeller
Thomas Kean, governor of New Jersey
Gaston Caperton, governor of West Virginia
Frank Dunkle, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
John F. Kennedy
Robert Kennedy
Luci Baines Johnson Nugent
Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy
James Carville, Political Analyst
Peter Leonard, member, State House of Representatives, New Hampshire
Julius Caesar
Andrew Jackson
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Anwar Sadat
Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco
John Hickenlooper, mayor of Denver

Military:
General George Patton
Dwight D. Eisenhower
General Westmoreland
Napoleon Bonaparte

Artists:
Rodin
Leonardo da Vinci
Gustave Flaubert
Robert Rauschenberg
Chuck Close, artist (photorealist portraits)
Margaret Whittington
Allison Merriweather
Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert comic strip)
Charles Schulz (creator of Peanuts comic strip)
Ansel Adams
Fredrick Law Olmsted, Landscape Engineer: designed Central Park in New York City and Chicago's Grant Park
Robert "Bob" Fowler, Sculptor & jewelry maker
Robert Toth
Mark Wilkinson, kitchen & furniture designer
Martha Sturdy, Designer
P. Buckley Moss
Michelangelo
Pablo Picasso
Vincent Van Gogh

Musicians:
Harry Belafonte
Cher
Beethoven
John Lennon
Mozart
Aimee Osbourne (Ozzie's eldest)
Jewel

Science & Medicine:
Thomas Edison
Michael Faraday
James Clerk Maxwell
Nicolai Tesla
Albert Einstein
Alexander Graham Bell
The Wright Brothers
Benjamin Franklin
Henry Ford
Galileo
Steven Hawkings
Louis Pasteur
Tom Francis (AIDS researcher)
Jack Horner (paleontologist)
Baruj Benacerraf, MD (winner of the Nobel prize in Physiology)
Charles "Pete" Conrad (astronaut)
Dr. Fred Epstein, Brain Surgeon
Dr. Edward Hollowell (ADD Specialist)
Dr. Larry Silvers (ADD Specialist)
Paul MacCready, "Engineer of the Century", invented "Gossamer Condor"
Dr. Harvey Cushing, Father of Modern Brain Surgery
Charles Darwin
William Spicer
Dr. Delphos Cogrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation

Writers and Poets:
William Butler Yeats
Agatha Christie
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hans Christian Anderson
Richard Cohen, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post
Marc Flanagan, TV writer and producer
Elizabeth D. Squire
Edgar Allen Poe
Thomas Thoreau
Jules Verne
John Irving
Elizabeth Daniels Squire
Robert Scheer
Fanny Flagg, wrote "Fried Green Tomatoes"
Richard Ford, wrote "Independence Day"
Patricia Polacco, Author and Illustrator of children's books
Norla Chee, Native American Poet
Victor Villasenor, Mexican-American Writer
Debbie Macomber, Novelist
John Schumacher, Cookbook Author and Chef
Mark Twain
John Grisham

Entrepreneurs & Business Leaders:
Charles Schwab
Bill Hewlett, co-founder of HP
Richard C. Strauss, real-estate financier
Mark Torrance, CEO, Musak Corporation
Malcolm Goodridge III, senior vice president, American Express
William Doyle, chairman, William Doyle Auction Galleries of New York
Paul J. Orfalea, founder and chairman, Kinko's copy shops
G. Chris Anderson, vice-chairman of PaineWebber
Weyerhauser family
William Wrigley, Jr.
Russell Varian
Craig McCaw (McCaw Cellular)
Fred Friendly (former CBS News president)
David Murdock, CEO, Dole Foods
John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Systems
Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Corporation (Airline, Records)
Diane Swonk, Bank One
Tommy Hilfiger, Fashion Designer
Donald Winkler, CEO of Ford Motor Credit
Horst Rechelbacher, Founder of Aveda Corporation

Other:
Ann Bancroft, arctic explorer
Roger W. Wilkins, scholar and head of the Pulitzer Prize Board
Hugh Newell Jacobsen, famous architect, winner of 90 different awards for design, including 20 Architectural Record Awards for the best house design of the year.
Son of former U.S. President, George H.W. Bush
Prince Charles
Erin Brockovich, Enviromental Activist
Dexter Scott King, son of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & President & CEO of The King Center in Atlanta, GA
Peter W.D. Wright, Special Education Attorney