Blind, Wheelchair-Bound Student Doesn't Fail to Inspire

Nov. 10, 2006 — -- When I met 18-year old Patrick Henry Hughes, I knew he was musically talented. I had been told so, had read that he was very able for someone his age and who had been blind and crippled since birth.

Patrick's eyes are not functional; his body and legs are stunted. He is in a wheelchair. When we first shook hands, his fingers seemed entirely too thick to be nimble. So when he offered to play the piano for me and his father rolled his wheelchair up to the baby grand, I confess that I thought to myself, "Well, this will be sweet. He has overcome so much. How nice that he can play piano."

The original plan, I thought, would be this: We were going to talk a bit as he played. That was the plan. Hughes would explain how he managed to navigate the keyboard and how he first learned the piano and what his favorite songs were.

But then Patrick put his hands to the keyboard, and his fingers began to race across it -- the entire span of it, his fingers moving up and back and over and across the keys so quickly and intricately that my fully-functional eyesight couldn't keep up with them. I was stunned.

The music his hands drew from that piano was so lovely and lyrical and haunting, so rich and complex and beyond anything I had imagined he would play that there was nothing I could say. All I could do was listen.

That is the power of Patrick Henry Hughes. He quietly makes you listen.

"I mean, God made me blind and didn't give me the ability to walk. I mean, big deal." Patrick said, smiling. "He gave me the talent to play piano and trumpet and all that good stuff."

This is Patrick's philosophy in life, and he wants people to know it. He isn't fazed by what many of us would consider insurmountable obstacles.

"I'm the kind of person that's always going to fight till I win," he said. "That's my main objective. I'm gonna fight till I win."

Patrick also attends the University of Louisville and plays trumpet in the marching band. The band director suggested it, and Patrick and his father, Patrick John Hughes, who have faced tougher challenges together, decided "Why not?"