Doug Grow, Star Tribune

June 9, 2007

Here’s how author Christopher Harmon writes:

He puts his face within 6 inches of his computer screen. His lip-reading interpreter, one of the remarkable people who give him voice, moves in tight.

Harmon, who is legally blind and deaf, can’t speak and breathes with the assistance of a ventilator, goes to work. His lips move. The interpreter reads his lips and strokes the keys on the computer because Harmon’s hands are paralyzed.

Quote Hi comma quote the girl said period quote hit enter hit tab.

His mind is fast, the process tedious.

But Harmon perseveres. He always perseveres.

I first met Harmon on a miserable winter day in 2005 in the dreary room of a group home in St. Paul. He turned out to be one of those unforgettable people who make being a journalist a privilege, not a job.

For 31 of his 37 years, a rare neurological ailment, spinocerebellar degeneration, has torn away most of the physical aspects of humanity. But it hasn’t touched his mind or his will or his creativity or his soul.

When we first met, Harmon had created a company, Legacy Pictures Inc., and was pouring himself into a movie project. With Doug Klozzner, he’d written the script for a family film, “Sparkle, Serena!”

Now the unusual moviemaker is the subject of a full-length documentary himself.

But it is the movie he desperately wants to make – a film filled with dance and song and magic and villains and overcoming obstacles – that drives him.

“Sparkle, Serena!” still is $5 million short of showing up in the cinema. But there has been progress. The script made it into the quarterfinals of a national contest, beating out 8,000 others along the way. Contacts have been made.

“When you’re an independent filmmaker, things don’t move quickly,” Harmon said through an interpreter.

But he keeps pushing. This film will happen.

In the meantime, Harmon has moved to an apartment in Burnsville that is far less gloomy than the group home. He can unhook the ventilator and take “walks” in his wheelchair around a nearby lake.

“It’s beautiful,” said the man who can smell and sense the surroundings he can’t see or hear."

In this new environment, he’s written and self-published a historical novel for adolescents. “Treasures of the Shadows,” which he hopes will be the first of a series.

Through his main character, Jessie Bell, Harmon is able to speak and to run and to have adventures and to taste sweet strawberries and see beautiful flowers.

“She’s a reflection of myself,” said Harmon. “With filmmaking and writing I have the ability to speak again.”

It’s incredible that his artistic voice is filled with hope.

Information on buying the book can be found at www.caharmon.com.

The movie-length documentary about Harmon is being done by Brian Schiller, with the help from the American Occupational Therapy Association and the National Ataxia Foundation. Schiller dreams almost as big as Harmon does. He envisions a documentary similar to “Murderball,” the much honored 2005 film about the U.S. Quadriplegic Rugby team.

“Christopher isn’t just a role model for people with disabilities,” said Schiller, who has been working on the project for several months. “He’s a role model for anyone. He’s extraordinary.”

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