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Getting to know Victor Jones
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Location: Blogs Now We're Talking |
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| Posted by: Joe Byrnes |
8/29/2007 11:12 AM |
Marian Wingo telephoned recently to say she is proud of her grandson. He's 12 and going into the sixth grade.
Big deal, huh? Well, yeah.
Victor Jones - son of Vanguard High basketball star Toni Wingo - is a quiet, hearing-impaired child, as neat as a pin, with wire-rimmed glasses and the sweet hint of a smile.
Marian Wingo, 77, has taken care of Victor since he was a baby and cared for his older brother, Richard Vaughn, as well. Their mother has struggled with mental illness.
This summer Richard, now 16, went to live with other relatives in North Carolina. Victor stayed on with his grandmother. She has severe arthritis and gets assistance from Marion County Senior Services, and Victor, too, helps around the house and folds the laundry.
"He knows I'm not well, and he tries to help me as much as possible," she said.
Monday was the first day of school for him. On Sunday at the McDonald's on West State Road 40, he boarded a bus for the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine. Its student body of more than 850 includes at least 19 from Marion County.
Marian Wingo and Victor Jones stand next to his bus on Sunday.
Victor was glad to be going back. He would see his friends (they sent messages to one another over the summer) and get ready to play football and ace his math tests, as usual. He will stay in a dorm with other hearing-impaired students and take the bus home every weekend.
Victor has weak eyesight, too. He has Usher's syndrome, and with that inherited condition the patient's eyesight gets progressively worse, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
"I still don't think he's going to go blind. He might get a little weaker. ... He doesn't like the word B-L-I-N-D," Victor's grandmother said. We sat talking beside him for about an hour last Friday in their Ocala apartment.
In many ways, Victor is your typical 12-year-old boy - he likes to eat (even making his own homemade biscuits) and enjoys hand-held video games. His favorite one is "Smack Down vs. RAW 2006." Sometimes at night, when his grandmother is turning out the lights before bed, she'll find him watching pro wrestling in a rocking chair pulled up close to a silent television.
"I don't get angry with him," Wingo said. "I let him enjoy himself."
Victor showed me the book he's reading - "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville, a child's abridged edition from the "Treasury of Illustrated Classics."
His grandmother is so proud of him.
"He comes from a silent world" and has overcome the obstacles of deafness and weak eyesight," she said. "When he was a baby, you could tell there was sadness in him."
For her part, Wingo has learned not to be discouraged. "It's up to me," she said, "to overcome that and let him know the joy I feel."
She talks about the people - mostly women - who have been there for them: family members, a pediatrician, a teacher at South Ocala Elementary, a Bible instructor who visits twice a week, a School District employee for whom they are like family.
And she handed me a short, handwritten letter from Eufala, Ala.
"I want you to be good and do what is right," Victor's mother wrote last week. "Always say your prayers and talk to your friend Jesus. ... Victor, Mama loves you, too. Study hard and get your lessons. I hope this will make you happy."
It did.
Joe Byrnes may be reached at joe@ocala.com or 352-867-4112. |
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