One Can Make a Difference (10 page)

Together with my graduate students, I developed a software and printer that was able to print Braille, mathematical symbols, and, most importantly, graphs. The letters and graphs are identical to what might appear in a book or magazine except they're larger and embossed so they can be understood by touch. Today you can read charts, graphs, and diagrams in Microsoft Word and Excel. You can even add a little bit to Math Editor, it's a five-minute job, and then you can print everything out on our machine. The first blind person I showed the system to was fascinated. She said, “Oh my, here is a fraction! And here's a numerator over the denominator. I've heard that, but I've never actually seen one! There's a radical sine. It's so easy to see what goes under the sine. It's wonderful!” Blind people of my own generation say, “Boy, if I'd had this when I was in college, I would have majored in science or in math.” Now blind kids find that door is open to them, completely.

I knew this new technology could solve a host of problems not only for blind people, but for anyone. People with dyslexia are now using it, as are disabled folks who can see; it gives them alternative methods of access. I'd been quoting from a speech in which my friend, a teacher, had said that about 45 percent of all the information in any professional literature, in newspapers, even K–12 textbooks, was graphics. When I ran into her, I asked if I had that right. She said, “No more! Now it's about 75 percent. That's how kids get their information.” So, the company I started,ViewPlus, makes this technology accessible. We're mainstreaming information, and pioneering ways to convert graphics information into a form that's the best one for everyone.

There is a motto I like very much. It's from the National Federation of the Blind, an organization that does a lot of good. It's, “Being blind is a nuisance.” My aim is to make it a bit less of one.

ANDY GRANATELLI

Just Pick Yourself Up . . .
and Start All Over Again

Ah, the smell of motor oil in the morning! If you are a garage groupie and track
hound like me, few things in life thrill you like those distinctive fumes or the
sound of engines revving for a race. Andy Granatelli feels the same way, and
he's been a hero of mine for decades. His nickname is “Mr. Indy 500,” and if
you don't know about the Indy, then that title and my car bumper sticker, “Free
the Indy 500,” won't mean a thing. But, if you know that Indianapolis is the
most famous speedway in the world, you are also sure to know that Andy is a
genius, one of the great legends of American motor racing, a man who not only
designed some of the fastest engines ever to power race cars, but also set over 400
land-speed records. His name is also synonymous with STP, the motor oil additive
company he bought quite cheaply in 1963 and made world-famous.

Andy Granatelli has done just about everything in racing, from taking apart
the insides of the cars to designing and inventing parts of them, from being a driver
to being a team owner. As fascinating as it is for me to hear him talk about racing
and engines and about his drivers—among them the amazing Mario Andretti,
Richard Petty (who won the Daytona 500 and the NASCAR championship
seven times each), and British racing legends Graham Hill and Jim Clark—more
important is Andy's rags-to-riches story that all came about because of his will to
succeed. He embodies the “can do” attitude that makes America great. And not
only can he do for himself, but he seems to have limitless ideas of what he “can do”
for others. Andy has given, and continues to give, not only substantial amounts of
money, but also time and boundless energy to nearly 100 philanthropic endeavors
that encompass all aspects of society, including the arts, community health, local
schools, medical and scientific research, alcohol and drug abuse, public safety, disaster
relief, law enforcement, child welfare and development, and youth mentoring.
When he sold Grancor (an automotive company he founded in 1945), he gave
controlling interest of the company to his employees, free of charge. To use a racing
metaphor, Andy's generosity extends from the starting lap to the checkered flag.

He is in his mid-eighties now, but his life's story is a timeless guidebook for
living the American Dream.

M
y mother was killed when I was twelve. She worked hard, taking care of my brothers and my dad, who was sick a lot, and me. There were lots of problems. My father was an Italian immigrant who had to struggle to make ends meet. I knew what it was like to starve, to be hungry. Nothing in life came easily.

A lot of people think my dad got me into racing, but when they read something that they think is about my father, it's about me! We didn't have a car; my dad couldn't change a spark plug his whole life. That's not how I got started. What happened was that I was listening to the radio and the Indianapolis 500 race came on. It was 1935. When I heard those motors zooming around, I was hooked. That noise can do something to you. From that moment on, it was my goal to be around cars, to understand cars, to work on cars. I began tuning them for a dime just so I could learn. By 1945, my brothers, Joe and Vince, and I owned a gas station, Andy's Super Service, in Chicago. We worked very hard; we had drive in us. We built up a net worth of $30,000, which was a lot of money then. Then, one day, we went to work and there was nothing there. Nothing! Thieves had broken in during the night and hauled away all our equipment, all the tools, even our cars! All that was left were the four bare walls. We were cleaned out. That robbery left us dead broke.

I never give up. That's my motto. We started all over again right away, as if we'd never been there before. We started Granatelli Automotive Specialists. It was the first speed shop outside California, and within a year we had another $30,000 built up. Then there was a fire and the place burned to the ground. I started all over again. That's the story of my whole life. If you put in the effort, you can be what you want to be.

Life is a big tug of war, but you must never let go of that rope, never stop pulling, and never stop. You have to have the right attitude, that's all. My brothers and I started taking engines apart and figuring things out from the moment we got started, and we never let anything hold us back.

My first car was a Model A Ford that I bought for $35. I loved it; it meant a lot to me. Since then, I've had hundreds of cars, and I always want to find out what makes them tick. Being an innovator, I've always tried different approaches. My cars always run something different than everyone else's, they're always special, with parts that no one had imagined before. I designed engines for Chrysler, Cadillac, and Studebaker. The Novi was the fastest car in its day, with a supercharged V-8 engine that you had to hear to believe. It ran at Indy from 1941 to 1966. I had a little money by then, so I stepped in and bought the rights, increased the horsepower, and put it back on the track in 1961, making it a four-wheel drive, and raced it for six years. Bobby Unser was one of my drivers. People will always talk about that car; it had such charisma.

In 1967, long after the auto shop days, my brothers and I had been working secretly on a revolutionary type of car, one with a quiet turbine engine. Nothing like it had ever been seen before, so we had to keep it under wraps until it was time to race. Then we wheeled it out, and the media went crazy over how radically different this STP-Paxton turbine car was. It looked good, it ran beautifully, and it was quiet as a mouse.

So, I've had a lot of success, don't get me wrong, but I think it's important for people to know who, at times, are struggling toward their own goals, that nothing ever came easy.There were always major obstacles and misfortunes, and it took work to turn them around. For instance, with the Novi, although it was the fastest car on the track, a car spun out in front of us and totaled the car. That was heartbreaking. We'd worked so hard; the car had even been in a garage fire and we'd got it built up again and put it back in the race. Another time, in 1969, my brothers and I built a very special four-wheel-drive Ford-powered Indy racecar. It took the fastest time on the track. It was going great when my other car hit it, demolishing both cars! I could have hung it up, given up, but that's not my nature. I try again. This time, we put the previous year's car back on the track and won the race by a full lap! There's no point in ever feeling sorry for yourself, you've got to fight to stay alive. If there's no effort, what's the point? If I give you a million dollars today, you'll be over the moon. But if I give you a million dollars every day, day in and day out, your whole desire will change; it won't mean as much, or much of anything, to you, will it?

Every year I take twenty-five to thirty people to Indy. I pay for a private jet, their hotels, the works; they give $50,000 each to charity, that's the deal. Often the wives don't want to come; they don't know what this Indy thing is, this obsession with cars going around a track. But, I tell you, when they hear, “Gentlemen, start your engines,” and that roar begins, and then the biggest single crowd at any specialized sport in the whole world rises to its feet as one and roars back, they understand! And they want to come back.

Regrets? By the time my father died in 1977, I'd been in twenty-two Halls of Fame in twelve different categories, so he knew I was a success, but I still wish he had been around to see me being knighted by the president of Italy in 1994. That would have made his heart sing like one of my engines! More than anything, I wish my mother could have seen my achievements. It would have made her so proud. Throughout all the ups and downs, though, I never let depression enter my sights.

I never look back in life, always forward. You could say I have no rearview mirror!

DR. TEMPLE GRANDIN

Thinking in Pictures

Dr. Temple Grandin has autism. She also designs slaughterhouse systems that
reduce stress for animals killed for meat. Long ago, I went to Washington to
present her with an award for leadership. Many people were puzzled how
I could support Temple's work, given that PETA and I are anxious to stop
people from eating animals. But I admire her. In a world where not everyone is
ready to go vegetarian, she has relieved massive amounts of suffering through
her innate ability to see, in her mind's eye, what “spooks” the cows and pigs
who are herded into the chutes.

Temple is a scholar and a teacher (she studies and teaches at Colorado
State University), as well as an author who describes herself as a “weird nerd.”
And it is what's inside her head that makes her stand out. By putting to use
her “dis”ability to see in pictures, she has helped countless individuals, both
human and non. She can teach us much because of that and because she has
also single-handedly elevated the status and built the self-confidence of people
with autism.

W
hen I was in high school and college I assumed everybody thought in pictures the same way I did. I gradually learned that my thinking was different by interviewing other people about how their mind processed information. I asked them to think about a church steeple and discovered that some people only visualized a vague generalized steeple instead of the specific identifiable steeple pictures that I see. The ability to think in pictures is a real asset for a person who designs equipment. For instance, I can test run equipment in my imagination. I run a 3-D virtual-reality video in my head.

Visual thinking is probably more like how an animal thinks. There was no one single point where I discovered I could see and feel like cows, but some animals do not have verbal language so their thinking has to be based on associations between visual images, sounds, and other sensory-based memories. Having thought patterns that are more like that myself makes it easier for me to understand them. Likewise, my achievements in the livestock industry are not the result of a single event but a long, steady progression of work over thirty years.

When I first started talking about thinking in pictures, some twenty years ago, many autism professionals thought it sounded crazy. Recently, I had my brain scanned with the latest scanner that can map larger brain circuits. I found that I have a huge cable in my right hemisphere that goes from my primary visual cortex up to my frontal cortex. It's almost twice as thick as the one in my sex-age-matched control scan, which supports the notion that people on the autism spectrum really do think in pictures. What interests me most in this type of research is consciousness, both in my autism and my animal work. To me it was always clear that animals are conscious; therefore, when I started my work, it seemed obvious to me to get down into the chute and see what the cattle were seeing. Not only seeing, but feeling as well. People with autism often have body boundary problems.We don't know where we end and, say, the chair we're sitting in begins. This served me well in the chute, because I was able to experience the machine as an extension of my limbs. Because of this, I could “feel” the cattle and know how much pressure was the right pressure, a comforting pressure, one that wouldn't panic or hurt them during their last moments of life. I believe in a hereafter, and I believe animals have souls, so this time with them was extremely precious, and being able to make this work properly was like a religious experience. Naturally, being involved with watching the animals die made me look at my own mortality. When you look at your own mortality, you wonder about the meaning of life. When it becomes my time to die I will ask myself “Did I do something to make the world a better place?” Looking at your own mortality is a great motivator to do something of value.