Blindness and Later Life
One night in 1935 while driving home from a performance, Nawahi was suddenly struck blind. No medical cause was ever identified. The loss of vision was permanent, but he never allowed it to impede his life, as he continued performing and touring until the 1970s, when he was partially paralyzed by a stroke.
Nawahi set a remarkable swimming record for blind people in 1946. He swam the 22 miles of choppy Pacific Ocean waters from San Pedro, California to Santa Catalina Island in just over 22 hours, guided only by coach John Sonnichson and a bell on a lead boat.
He appeared briefly in the 1985 Academy Award-nominated documentary film on Roy Smeck, Wizard of the Strings.
He died in Long Beach, California on January 29, 1985.
Read more about this topic: "King" Bennie Nawahi
Famous quotes containing the words blindness and, blindness and/or life:
“the heart,
this child of myself that resides in the flesh,
this ultimate signature of the me, the start
of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“the heart,
this child of myself that resides in the flesh,
this ultimate signature of the me, the start
of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“You haf slafed your life away in de bosses’ mills and your fadhers before you and your kids after you yet. Vat is a man to do with seventeen-fifty a week? His wife must work nights to make another ten, must vork nights and cook and wash in day an’ vatfor? So that the bosses can get rich an’ the stockholders and bondholders. It is too much... ve stood it before because ve vere not organized. Now we have union... We must all stand together for union.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)