"It Wasn't Difficult"

Ever since he showed up on campus in 1951, the quiet young man with the white glove has been watched and admired by the students and professors at little (enrollment: 750) Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio. The glove bears all the letters of the alphabet, and the young man wears it when among strangers so that they may talk to him by pressing the letters. Richard Kinney, 30, is totally blind and deaf, but through his fine mind and the wondrous sensitivity of his right hand he has managed to become a campus legend.

Born in East Sparta, Ohio, Richard began life as a normal boy. Then, in 1930 at age seven, for reasons no doctor has ever fully explained, he lost his sight.

He learned Braille at the Waring School in Cleveland, took special courses from the Hadley Correspondence School in Winnetka, ILL., finally returned to graduate as valedictorian of his high-school class. In 1943, during his sophomore year at Mount Union, Richard was struck again. Just as mysteriously as he had gone blind, he went deaf.

It was not until seven years later that indomitable Richard Kinney was able to go back to college. By that time, he had heard of a student named Robert Smithdas who had gone through St. John's University in Brooklyn by listening through his hands. Like Smithdas, Richard found companions who could help him. They went with him to lectures, and by using his hand as a sort of typewriter --a knuckle for one letter, a fingertip for another--they read him everything he could not find in Braille. Richard not only took his full load of courses, he also became one of the busiest men in town.

He ran a thriving magazine-subscription service, wrote a column for the student paper Dynamo, and served as its poetry editor. He played a good game of chess, became his fraternity's chaplain, was a member of the Student Christian Association and the social-science honorary society, Pi Gamma Mu. Meanwhile, he majored in history and literature ("The record of humanity is in both"), and in his spare time turned out two volumes of poetry. But what amazed his professors most was his academic record.

Last week the college announced that Richard had completed all his requirements with a 3.94 average out of a possible 4.0. "It really wasn't difficult at all," says Richard, who certainly ought to know. When he receives his diploma next June, it will carry the three words, summa cum laude.

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