Overcoming Dyslexia, Thanks to OLS Spirit and Support
“OLS played such an important role in my life in so many ways. In 1973, I was in kindergarten at Ridgeway Elementary and diagnosed with dyslexia. My mother had planned to send me to Our Lady of Sorrows the next year, but the well-meaning folks at Ridgeway Elementary urged her not to because they had a special class that could teach kids like me to read. My mother then went to talk to the first grade teacher at OLS. Sister Cecile was a new teacher back then. I would be in her third first-grade class. Sister Cecile told my mother: ‘We will teach him to read with everyone else,’ and my mother decided to send me to OLS.
In the eight years that followed, OLS pushed me to overcome the things that were harder for me and encouraged me to discover and develop my strengths. I was never treated differently. I failed a lot of spelling tests but never felt stupid because of it. To the contrary, I was always made to feel “smart” and encouraged — indeed expected — to achieve. I had many great teachers: Mrs. Greenwhich, Mr. Poccia, Mr. Keller, and Mrs. Streibel, to name afew. Only with the benefit of hindsight have I come to appreciate their extraordinary talents and how lucky I was to have them as teachers early in my life. In 1981, I graduated from OLS. I won the science award that year, which balanced out my failing grade in spelling.
So many things have happened to me since then. Four years at Stepinac, four years at Georgetown, three years at Georgetown Law, ten years of practicing law in New York, mostly at Cravath, Swaine and Moore, and 23 years as an antitrust lawyer with Microsoft, where I am an Associate General Counsel today. I’ve had too many blessings to count.