Celebrating 100 Years Of Glenn Doman
100 Years Ago Today
One of the great pleasures I have (among many) is writing this newsletter each week. I sometimes make the mistake of assuming that everyone who receives this newsletter is an old friend and knows our work and our history. But of course, that is not always the case.
So, old friends bear with me.
One hundred years ago today my Father was born.
It is no secret that, like most daughters, I adore my father. But unlike most daughters, I had the great privilege to grow up with a father who was also adored by thousands and even millions of parents of brain-injured children and parents of well children around the world.
His most prized possession was his treasure trove of letters from a hundred nations – letters from mothers writing to tell their stories: How they helped their hurt child to get much better, how they taught their baby to read and enjoyed every second, how their child has grown up to do things everyone said he would never do.
There are thousands of stories of parents who grew closer to their kids because they knew my father.
Now those letters are one of my most prized possessions.
He was born in Hilltown, Pennsylvania. He was the first child and there is little doubt that he was lavished with love and attention from the moment he arrived. My grandparents adored their children and their grandchildren. By all accounts Daddy was the center of their attention until his younger brother and sister arrived. My grandmother was a farm girl who was the first of her family to go to college. She was an excellent student and she sat my father on her lap and read to him from an early age.
He loved this and quickly learned to read himself. By the time he was four, he could pick out many words and read along with his mother. By age five, the game was over – he could read independently. His mother supplied him with books from the library and he never looked back. His ability to read before he went to school changed his life. It helped to make him who he was and who he would become.
One hundred years ago today a great and wonderful man was born. He spent his life working hard to get every mother and every father to lavish attention and love on their children, to put them on their laps and teach them, to hoist them on their shoulders and encourage them to see things they could not see, to accomplish things that have never been done before.
He is still doing so today through his books and through his lectures. Through the miracle of state-of-the-art video he is still the principle lecturer at The Institutes. Parents who come here today often lament they will not be able to meet him and then discover they will be nose-to-nose with him in his lectures that very day.
Happy Birthday, Daddy. We love you very much.
The home fires of The Institutes are burning brightly. You have taught us what to do and we are doing it. You have taught us never to give up and we will never give up.
Where ever you are and whatever you are doing – soldier on. We know we will meet again.
Here’s to you and all those like you (very few).