{"id":408,"date":"2009-05-05T09:07:07","date_gmt":"2009-05-05T13:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stacyhorn.com\/unbelievable\/?p=408"},"modified":"2014-02-15T11:14:06","modified_gmt":"2014-02-15T15:14:06","slug":"harold-scharper-and-why-i-loved-reading-the-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/?p=408","title":{"rendered":"Harold Scharper and Why I Loved Reading the Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day while going through the Parapsychology Lab archives, I came across this November 9, 1946 letter to J.B. Rhine from Harold A. Scharper, a returning WWII soldier who was now a paraplegic writing from the\u00a0Vaughan Veterans Hospital, in Hines, Illinios. He’d heard about their work and was offering himself up for research.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will have to resort to developing more than I ever dreamed the use of my intellect.\u00a0 I finally believe that this is an asset to most disabled people for we have the time and can develop the patience needed far better than the normal person … I am not going to kid myself into believing I will be able to perform miracles but I do as I said before firmly believe that the work that you are doing can help me and others like myself to become leaders in many fields.\u00a0 I will appreciate deeply anything that you can say or do to confirm my belief.\u201d \u00a0More below …<\/p>\n

\"GizzKids\"<\/a><\/p>\n

J. B. wrote a tender letter back, assuring Harold that it was true, \u201cabout the capacity of the mind to make up in one for the handicaps that may develop\u201d but he wanted to give him more.\u00a0 He included some of the lines from William Cullen Bryant’s poem, The Chambered Nautilus,<\/p>\n

\u201cBuild thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
\nAs the swift seasons roll.
\nLeave thy low-vaulted past.
\nLet each new temple, nobler than the last,
\nShut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast
\nTill thou at length are free
\nLeaving thine outgrown shell by life’s
\nunresting sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he closed with, \u201cOur research does, I think, help support the view that the mind is a free, creative, volitional system.\u00a0 It does encourage one to reach out for greater powers.\u00a0 It adds to the sense of adventure in merely being alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was able to find out a few things about the very active Harold Scharper. He was married the year he wrote Rhine. The next year, in February, 1947, he attended the first meeting of the Paralyzed Veterans of America. He then went on to serve on the Board of Directors for Delta Sigma Omicron, which was founded in 1948 at the University of Illinios, where Harold was a student in psychology at the university. \u201cDelta Sigma Omicron was an integral part of the first comprehensive program of higher education for those with disabilities in the world … It co-sponsored the first National Wheelchair Basketball Tournament in the spring of 1949 and shared in the growth and development of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association and other sport activities for those with disabilities.\u201d Harold played on that first wheelchair basketball team, called the Gizz Kids.<\/p>\n

Sadly, he died the next year, on June 7, 1950. He was only 31 years old. Delta Sigma Omicron established two awards in his name, the Harold Scharper Service and Achievement Awards.<\/p>\n

Harold served in the 15th Infantry and had been wounded at Anzio. Oh god, I just read this in a description of what happened at Anzio. “Efforts by the 4th Rangers and 15th Infantry to rescue the beleaguered units failed, and by noon armored units of the Hermann Goering Division had forced the Rangers into the open. The Americans had only grenades and bazookas for antitank weapons, and as they attempted a fighting withdrawal in small and scattered groups they were cut down mercilessly. Of the 767 men in the two battalions, only 6 eventually returned to Allied lines.”<\/p>\n

The picture is from the University of Illinois Archives. The caption reads, “Member of the University of Illinois Gizz Kids being hugged by a Gizz Kid Cheerleader.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One day while going through the Parapsychology Lab archives, I came across this November 9, 1946 letter to J.B. Rhine from Harold A. Scharper, a … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[9,5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piV6u-6A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2776,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions\/2776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}