Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Hello Darkness My Old Friend is a memoir written by Sanford Greenberg.

OK so you may think this book is about Art Garfunkel or maybe the duo Simon and Garfunkel, but in effect though Art Garfunkel plays an enormous role in the story this is really not a book about or by Garfunkel.

This is Sanford Greenberg's story.  Not to take anything away from  his story, it is, it turns out an interesting story full of perseverance and determination.  It is the story of a young man who overcomes adversity and is very successful in his life.  But also Greenberg does admit in the end that the circumstances of his childhood and medical disadvantage probably drove him and still makes him work as hard as he does.  He wants to prove to himself that he is not  handicapped and that may not be such a positive trait.

Sanford Greenberg was born and raised in Buffalo New York,  At an early age he lost his father and when his mother remarried her brother-in-law they set up house in North Buffalo.  It was the 1940s.  Sanford talks about his childhood as the son of a junk dealer, whose family had emigrated  to the United States from Poland via Germany as the war was breaking out in Europe.  After High School Sanford heads off to Columbia where he meets his new friend and roommate, Art Garfunkel, who is there to study architecture.  They become close friends.  As Sanford is going attending classes he is having trouble with his eyes.  Different incidents that he brushes aside and does not seek out an eye doctor for.  But as time goes by these problems become worse and more pronounced.  Finally he heads home to Buffalo and his mother, as he is literally becoming blind. 

HIs blindness at first seems like it will be an obstacle, but the message of the book and what makes this an amazing story is what Sanford Greenberg has accomplished in his life. 

Dr. Greenberg received his B.A. as Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1962.  He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard and his M.B.A. from Columbia University.  He was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford and attended Harvard Law School.  Dr. Greenberg is Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Johns Hopkins University Wilmer Eye Institute.  President Clinton appointed him to the National Science Board.  The list goes on.

Greenberg admits that he has spent his life creating and keeping up an image he wants to portray, "Since becoming blind, I have been very conscious of the need to be healthy and strong.  As a result, I do a lot of exercising.... In part this regime has to do with my insistence on looking sharp.  But it all belongs to the determination not to be blind."   He is also very driven he writes to make his parents proud.  Visiting the graves of his parents he thinks about the hard lives they led, about himself and the kind of life he las led.  He writes, "Their judgement was massively important to me. I felt that they would be proud of me. But I sensed no response. (from the graves). " But," of course, he writes, "the response would have to come from inside myself."