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timesleader.com
THE TIMES LEADER
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SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2012
“People don’t think he can necessarily accomplish a lot. Physically he really can’t, but mentally it’s overdrive. He’s got more between his ears than anyone I know. He really enjoys proving people wrong.”
TOM MOONEY OUT ON A LIMB
Birth, death records more readily available
Tim Wambach, aide and friend of Mike Berkson
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AP PHOTOS
Mike Berkson, right, laughs with his aide, champion, and sidekick Tim Wambach, as they are driven to Mike’s dental appointment by his father Denis in Glenview, Ill. Wambach and Berkson have teamed up to create a stage show titled ‘Handicap This’ to dispel myths about cerebral palsy and disabilities, encouraging others to overcome obstacles.
Man with cerebral palsy, aide take story on the road By SHARON COHEN AP National Writer
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KOKIE, Ill. — In the hushed darkness of a crowded theater, the spotlight finds a young man in a wheelchair at center stage, his hands clenched, his head tilted, his motionless body leaning to one side. His first words are a declaration, uttered with a sense of urgency. “I have,” he says, “cerebral palsy.” A second man bounds out stage left, introduces himself and adds: “... And I don’t.”
So begins a one-of-a-kind reality show starring Mike Berkson, a sharp-witted, movie-obsessed 22-year-old college student, and Tim Wambach, his aide, champion and sidekick on and off over the last decade. They’re on stage this night to celebrate their friendship, reminisce about shared experiences (the good, bad and unforgettable) and offer theater-goers what they call life lessons about perseverance. It’s familiar territory for Berkson, who has learned (with Wambach’s help) to finds laughs from the awkward stares of strangers, cope with a body where he can control just a single finger and fend off those darkest of days when he wants to end it all.
It’s a story heavy on unvarnished truths and light on political correctness (“gimp” is in, “challenged” is out). It’s a story designed to motivate, educate and inspire. But most of all, it’s a buddy story. ••• They bonded about 10 years ago in a suburban Chicago food court mall when Tim Wambach, recently hired to help a young Mike as his aide in elementary school, took him on their first solo adventure. Mike wanted to eat at Taco Bell. Fine, thought Wambach, not realizing that feeding a crumbling-gooey concoction See DECLARATION, Page 11B
MEET JOE SHERIDAN
J CLARK VAN ORDEN/THE TIMES LEADER
oe Sheridan is an actor, director and set designer for the Little Theater and Kiss Theater in Wilkes-Barre. He has been a cake decorator and from 1997 to 2007 owned floral shops called the Clay Pot with locations in Larksville and Forty Fort. Joe is also a retired substitute teacher who taught at Wilkes-Barre Vocational Technical School and Luzerne Community College. Sheridan, 58, is a graduate of Central Catholic High School and Misericordia University where he received a degree in special education and early childhood. He and his partner of 20 years, Judy Fried, have two Tsitzu dogs named Dori, 9, and Butch, 1. They adopted Butch on Christmas Eve after he was rescued while wandering the streets. They live in Kingston.
Your life’s endeavors over the years are probably as diverse as the characters you have portrayed when acting. How did you get involved in the dramatic arts? “When I was a sophomore in high school I was very shy. A friend of mine asked me to come out and audition for ‘The Mouse That Roared.’ I got a pretty big part, the Sultan of Bashir, and things kind of took off from there.” So you pursued acting in college as well? “Not originally. I attended Kings College and when I transferred to Misericordia I needed credits in public speaking.
The theater director there, Rusty Anderson, gave me an independent study and had me tryout for a role in ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ I got the part of the Mad Hatter. I enjoyed that so I also auditioned for a part in ‘Little Mary Sunshine’ and won the part of Captain Big Jim Warrington.”
crowd behind a glass window. I actually got the job but did not take it due to some of the time constraints and logistics.”
When you graduated college what did you do? “I started out substitute teaching at WilkesBarre Vo-tech but was not able to get full time. I also taught floral You mentioned that you were a decorating at LCCC. Students and cake decorator. “I did it in college faculty there would ask me where for a bit and when I chaperoned a or how I would get certain ideas class of mine on a field trip to for floral arrangements, so in 1977 Disney World I was persuaded to I opened floral shops called The audition as a performing cake Clay Pot in Larksville and Forty decorator. They were hiring some- Fort. At the same time I opened one who would decorate cakes the stores I was offered full time while hamming it up in front of a at Vo-tech as an intermediate life
skills teacher and I took it. I worked both jobs for two years but it became too much so I settled on the flower shops.” During that time after college what were some of your most memorable moments? “Many of my memories revolve around the theater. I got to do summer stock in Connecticut and I met some celebrities while attending Broadway plays in New York. Locally, I acted in several commercials ranging from Quik Joe to Rainbow Jewelers ads. I was the priest offering to buy the couple’s gold See SHERIDAN, Page 11B
ennsylvania has taken a step toward making birth and death records more readily available to genealogists and other members of the public. But, according to a records activist group, that step is not quite far enough. Starting in about mid-February, birth certificates 105 years old and more as well as death certificates 50 years old and more will be open to the public, but with some limits. You will have to visit the Pennsylvania Archives in Harrisburg and search on a computer there or be a subscriber to Ancestry.com, which is digitizing the records. The new law, signed by Gov. Tom Corbett in December, will replace the current system, under which for all those birth and death records it is necessary to submit a postal mail request, or visit a state Vital Records office, give the date and place of death and pay a fee. Genealogists, of course, are the heaviest users of birth and death records, and they have long found the process for obtaining them difficult and time-consuming — particularly since the state maintains no index. While the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania in its newsletter hailed the reform as “an early Christmas gift to Pennsylvania genealogists,” the group People for Better Pennsylvania Historical Records Access” is more cautious. That group, headed by Tim Gruber, calls the new law a step forward but believes that the older birth and death records should be maintained by the Pennsylvania Archives, placed online and indexed to make finding a name as easy as possible from any computer. “With these records in a database and using a search engine it would be possible to search all of these records in a way that is light years away from manually checking every county year by year and manually retrieving each record,” the group says on its website. Gruber asks genealogists and others to contact the governor’s office and urge this next step. Incidentally, Pennsylvania did not require birth and death certificates until 1906, and so barely two years’ worth of birth records will be available. Pre-1962 death records will be available. That availability, of course, will increase over time. Resources: “The Historical Record,” a fascinating multi-volume collection of Northeastern Pennsylvania history and lore from a century and more ago, is being digitized by the Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society. Ten volumes have been completed, but the society has not been able to find volumes two, four and 12. Anyone who has them is asked to contact this column at the address below. The project is a worthy one, because the few existing copies of these old books are faded and crumbling. They are largely articles run between the 1880s and the early 1900s in the old Wilkes-Barre Record and Record of the Times newspapers. They were compiled by Dr. Frederick Johnson, an avid local historian and owner of the papers. News Notes: Hats off to U.S. Rep. Tom Marino, R-Lycoming Twp., for joining the Library of Congress project to record war veterans’ stories. Those recordings, according to a recent Times Leader article, will be posted online at Youtube and the Library of Congress website. Anyone in the area who’s interested in genealogy should support the effort by the Luzerne County Historical Society to double its membership and increase its storage space for records. The society’s Bishop Library, a Victorian-era home, cannot accommodate much more in the way of books and other records, and expansion is heavily dependent upon membership. The Historical Society has long been a go-to institution for family research.
Tom Mooney is a Times Leader genealogy columnist. Reach him at tmooney2@ptd.net.