Most remarkable interview: Conversation with Rain Man

I have met many interesting people during my travels as a journalist and as a citizen. Of movie stars there are several: Debbie Reynolds, Mitzi Gaynor and Anthony Perkins come to mind. President Jimmy Carter, both before his presidency and after, stand among my treasured memories. I have interviewed Newt Gingrinch at a Wendy’s, in a car and in his Washington office as speaker of the House.
Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, once ran over my foot with one by way of answering when I asked him what would happen if he ran over someone’s foot with it. It doesn’t hurt.
I listened to a sermon preached by Pope Paul VI with 400,000 of my closest friends in St. Peter’s Square. That made up for missing Woodstock.
I saw Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart on the London stage on successive nights in a memorable month spent exploring that most fascinating city.
But Hillside Elementary School in Roswell was the scene of what I am sure will be one my most memorable interviews. There I met the Rain Man and his father. His real name is Kim Peek, and he is the most remarkable person I have ever met.
His story defies description. He read the encyclopedia at the age of 2. He is still a voracious reader and retains 98 percent of everything he reads or hears. Ask him for the day of the week for any date since the year 1 A.D., and he can tell you within seven seconds.
Tell him your birthday and he will tell the day of the week you were born, the day of the week it falls this year (Sunday for me) and the day you will retire. He assumes it will be the day you hit 65, the present economy notwithstanding.
He is almost my exact contemporary, born four months after me.

Yet because he was born with brain damage, a doctor told his parents to put him in a home and forget about him. Dr. Petter Lindström, whose only other claim to fame was to have been married to Ingrid Bergman, could only spare the Peeks five minutes because he didn’t want to be late for a golf outing.
The Peeks did not do that. Instead, they nurtured their son and that spark in him that struggled to emerge. They eventually divorced, but his father, Fran Peek, has cared for him to this day, dressing him, shaving him and doing the innumerable daily chores we take for granted.
Kim finally learned to walk at 4, but was denied public school in those unenlightened days. We, the world, would never have known him except for a chance encounter with screenwriter Barry Morrow in the 1980s. Morrow had written the TV movie “Bill,” the true story of Bill Sackter.
Sackter was born developmentally disabled and spent decades institutionalized and forgotten until found by a young college student – Morrow. He became a part of Morrow’s family, which Morrow later immortalized with Mickey Rooney.
Morrow wrote the screenplay for “Rain Man” with Kim as its inspiration. Kim next met Dustin Hoffman, who based much of his characterization on him. As Fran relates, Hoffman told Kim, “I am the star, but you are the heavens.”
“Rain Man” was the coming out of Kim. The movie put him into the spotlight, even more so when Morrow won the Academy Award (among four Oscars for the film). Again, it was Hoffman who insisted Fran share Kim with the world.
Fran was reluctant, but he allowed Kim to speak at a local school. He wowed them, answering their prepared questions on history, geography, literature, music, numbers (although he cannot do math) and sports.
Before “Rain Man,” Kim would never look anyone in the eye. Today, he engages total strangers in open conversation. His career as a speaker has not only given the world Kim Peek, it has given Kim the world.
He and Fran bring a message to the world. Do not judge a book by its cover. In each of us is a soul with the right to human dignity. That was why Robyn Benjamin, special needs teacher at Hillside, arranged for Kim to come to speak to the students as part of Georgia’s Exceptional Children’s Week.
Kim is not autistic, as Rain Man was portrayed. He is what doctors call a savant. He is not supposed to be capable of critical thought, yet he comments on such topics as the war in Afghanistan and Islamic terrorism.
A doctor recently asked him if he understood what a symbiotic relationship he has with his father. Kim replied, “Oh doctor, why do you use such big words? Can’t you just say my father and I share the same shadow?”
NASA has taken an interest in how Kim’s brain has improvised to find order in his universe. NASA scientists say he is the “most prodigious mega-memory savant the world has ever produced.”
Kim has a measurable IQ of 87, yet so much of what he knows is immeasurable. His greatest gift is the ability to inspire. The story of Kim and Fran Peek is that the spark of God lives in us all. I say it is their story because you cannot understand Kim’s message without Fran, though I have given Fran short shrift here.
What I can say is that in the teacher’s lounge at Hillside Elementary, I met a giant.

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