Ben

I was asked to say a few words today, at Alton’s memorial service. I was both honored and a bit concerned. I really didn’t know what to say about him, that you all don’t already know. He was a mediocre student during his early years of primary school who seemed to ‘find his spark’ somewhere around seventh or 8th grade.
###
Accepted into MIT, but ended up doing his undergraduate work close to home, at Case Western Reserve University due to his parent’s poor health.
###
He earned his PhD. from MIT and then founded the international conglomerate known as ‘the robotics group’ shortly thereafter.
###
Revolutionized what medicine was able do for the disabled, through brain wave controlled multi-articulating prosthetics.
###
Saw what the military was doing with his inventions and after a 5 year fight sold the company to those military contractors and set up the charity that I believe he will longest be remembered for.
###
Hands On, Heads Up!
###
Hands On, Heads Up! Has a relentless focus on youth education that was designed to bring thinking and hands on doing together in every subject. Science experiments out in the community where the kids live, language arts that combined speaking, reading and the theatre arts, again out in the community for an audience of many people, to perhaps a few half interested pigeons.
###
In addition to the traditional college preparatory courses, there were the old fashioned industrial arts, such as metal shop and wood working.
###
Alton never talked specifically about why those seemingly anachronistic courses were a part of every student’s schedule. No matter what the student’s expressed career interest, they had to take the courses often derided as ‘the industrials’.
###
Well I am going to share something about my friend that few people know. In my pocket is the reason for ‘the industrials’ and the thing that he told me many times, was the seed of confidence for all his future success.
###
This little wooded thing.
###
It has no purpose. It does not do anything, other than have this little arm that swings out and around. And it was the first thing that Alton ever made with his own two hands in a wood working class we were both in during 8th grade.
###
Now you know why a picture of this thing is the logo for Hands On, Heads Up!
###
He was fascinated with how a he was able cut, shave and shape the block of wood down and then add the metal pins that, as he often said, ‘Give the little arm life’.
###
He carried this with him and he would think about how he had made it. He had control over how the arm was attached, how it could swing one way and not the other. This was such a dramatic contrast to his home life, where the constant health problems of both of his parents kept him feeling like a tree limb in a frothing and frightening current.
###
He carried this with him each and every day, from the moment it was completed in that wood working class over 47 years ago, and now he is gone, but this ‘spark’ that he created remains. In my hand and in every life he has touched.