Courage and Dyslexia

Lorry Pace

Description

The story of a boy growing up through hardships ,not knowing that he suffered with Dyslexia not
realising why he was unable to keep up with school work, always being bullied and ridiculed.
Struggling in life and achieving great heights even though he had plenty disappointments,he always amazed people around him.
This true life story is about a boy with very little education and becoming the CEO and always hiding his identity.
Story will take you through the life he led, the ups and downs and the concealments of his life story.
Stories of my life as a child Migrating from Motticella Calabria Italy , to Footscray Melbourne Australia, together with my family .
The hardships my family went through in Australia . 4 years after our arrival my mother became a widow with no support and hardly any money.
Dyslexia had a big influence on my life.
With the recession we had to have and the downfall of my business.
The greatest achievements ...meeting with some exciting politicians and being invited to the Celebration of his Majesty the Emperor of Japan Birthday party ...also becoming a candidate in the Federal elections in the Palmer United party.

Sujets

• Biography
• Dyslexia
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris AU
• Date de parution: 06 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798369491737
• Langue: English

Extrait

COURAGE AND DYSLEXIA
 
 
 
 
Lorry Pace
 
Copyright © 2023 by Lorry Pace.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023909598
ISBN:
Hardcover
979-8-3694-9175-1
 
Softcover
979-8-3694-9174-4
 
eBook
979-8-3694-9173-7

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Rev. date: 05/24/2023
 
 
Xlibris
AU TFN: 1 800 844 927 (Toll Free inside Australia)
AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)
www.Xlibris.com.au
849125
INTRODUCTION
T his story is about a poor family who arrived in Australia in 1955. The mother and four children were so excited to meet their father after four years.
The father died three and a half years later, and the mother was left alone with four children. Maria was only thirty-five years old at the time and spoke very little English.
In 1955, there was no Social Security that we knew of, especially for migrants.
All Maria knew was that she had to keep her children safe. She had very few blankets and very little food. In the winter, she would light a fire in the backyard, warm up bricks, wrap them up in newspaper, and put them in our beds overnight to keep us warm.
At times, you could hear Mum crying at night. In the morning, she would be up before us, trying to make some breakfast and something we could take to school. Mum had a tough life.
As if she didn’t have enough problems, she was going to get more with her third son, Pat, who developed chronic nosebleeds and was rushed to the eye and ear hospital in Melbourne.
The priest had been called in as Pat was near death. Her son recovered a few months later, which meant that Maria had to look after him. Pat also had other problems. He didn’t seem to be getting anywhere at school in reading and writing. He was struggling with dyslexia.
In 1955, the school system had no idea how to treat dyslexia. They did not know what it was. They set up a dunce class and put us kids in a separate classroom. The treatment was to let us do whatever we liked. They checked on us every now and then.
Pat couldn’t spell cat or dog. Dyslexia is a disease that confuses the brain. You cannot spell the word correctly because it always seems the same.
Instead of saying turn left, you say turn right. When you look at words, they are all jumbled. When you talk to a person, you mispronounce the words. Sometimes people wonder what you’re talking about, and you try to hide the embarrassment you feel.
I’ve been living with dyslexia for seventy-three years, and I fight the disease every day. The trick is to not let it get on top of you – be positive
With today’s technology, you can get around it. People with dyslexia are very smart people even though they cannot read and write properly. You’ll be very good at other things. Don’t be afraid to let people know that you’ve got dyslexia because when you do, it will be a lot easier to deal with. Lots of people in Australia have it, and instead of dealing with it, they try to hide it.
In the past seventy-three years, I’ve been hiding the fact that I have a chronic case of dyslexia. My wife discovered my secret, and she started putting two and two together. When I was driving and we were coming up to the street, I said I would turn right, but instead, I would turn left. She would always get annoyed.
She said to me, ‘Pat, I think you have dyslexia, and I think we should read up on it’. Now I have no secret. She knows, and with the help of my wife, it is a lot easier
With dyslexia, you’ll never be able to spell properly.
You’ll never pronounce words properly.
You’ll read in a different way.
But dyslexia doesn’t affect mathematics.
With dyslexia, your brain works twenty-four hours a day, solving problems.

B efore leaving Italy, my grandmother and grandfather lived high in the mountains of Italy. They went by the name Gina and Enzo. They had six children, two daughters and four sons.
They lost one of the boys at the age of twenty-one. He died of a blood disorder. The boys all worked on the farm. Gina, my grandmother, and the girls also worked on the farm, but they also had to do all the house chores. My mother, Maria, was only sixteen at the time.
Antonic had just got back from World War 2 and also lived in the Regent.
Those days, marriages were arranged, and my grandfather had arranged for my mother to marry Antonic. She had been stripped of her childhood. Also, living in the mountains, Mum had no education. She had no idea how big the world was.
Maria married her husband, Antonic. He was sixteen years her senior. Even though he was older than her, he always looked after her. They bought a piece of land with fifty olive trees and started their new life.
Later in life, they were able to buy a couple of cows and sheep, and life was good; they were happy. Then came Charlie. He is my older brother. Mum was not able to stay home during the picking season, so she packed Charlie in a basket and placed him under an olive tree and kept an eye on him. Every time Charlie cried, she would go and attend to him.
My mother, Maria, and father, Antonic, were hard workers. The olive season was almost over when tragedy struck. My grandmother, Gina, told me that my mum had an accident. She was picking olives on one of the trees and fell off. She had landed on a rock and was in bad shape. She had a lot of wounds on her face and broken bones and had to be taken to the city with the help of the neighbour’s donkey.
There was no other means into the city other than the neighbour’s donkey. It took Maria a long time to recover. After she recovered, my sister Mimma came along. Just what Mum needed was a little girl. Now she had a pigeon pair, and she didn’t need any more children. Life was good again. My mum suffered from head problems for years. She still looked after the family. The most important thing in my mum’s life was her family. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for them.
Two and a half years later and Maria was in labour again. Another one was on the way. This time, it was a boy named Pat.
Things were starting to get tough. My father, Antonic, had to look after the farm and do work for the neighbours as well.
There was very little money coming in. The years went past, and things were still getting tougher.
I was playing with my grandmother, Gina, under a fig tree. It was unusual; there were other women in the house. Then this old man ran past us, carrying a bag, and he yelled out to my grandmother, ‘Where is she?’ My grandma replied, ‘In the house.’ She told me my mum was having a baby! Mum had the baby, and they named him Bernie.
Life was really good now, no money, no food, and a new baby boy. Things were getting really tough.
Just in time, The American and Australian governments were allowing Europeans to enter their countries. If they have a sponsor in Australia, they could come to Australia.
Not realising what a sponsor meant, everyone went looking for sponsors. My father was one of the lucky ones; he found one. He was getting sponsored for only £50. Antonic couldn’t read or write, so he put a cross on the bottom line for his signature.
He didn’t know at the time that this would take a long time to pay back and would bring trouble in the future. He arrived in Australia in 1951. My grandmother, Gina, and my mother worked the farm for the next three years. My grandmother had a house in town. When my grandfather passed away, we moved in with my grandmother because it would be too dangerous for us to live on the farm alone. Calabria was a very dangerous place in the 1950s.
There was lots of Mafia activity, and a woman alone would never be safe. My mother and my grandmother would travel to the farm in the morning and come back late at night. We only had a few animals and always found one missing in the morning. The Mafia would pick a farm and knock off one or two animals. This got too much for my mother and my grandmother, so they decided to sell all the animals. This way, they could concentrate on the vineyard and all the other things around the farm and attend to the olive trees.
The olive trees were our main source of income. When the olives were picked, they would be taken down to the mill to be crushed. The mill was on the edge of the river. I used to like going to it. I will never forget the smell of crushed olives. Even though we had no money to pay the mill, they would crush the olives and take half as payment.
My brother Charlie helped on the farm too, but he had school to attend. I was so proud of my big brother; he had a favourite hobby. Sometimes when Mum was working in the paddocks, Charlie would piggyback me to his favourite spot to catch baby crows. He would clip their wings and train them as pets. He was also an altar boy training to be a priest.
But Charlie never made it to priesthood. The day had come. We were standing on the bottom steps of the monastery, saying our goodbyes to Charlie. He only had to walk through the doors and be on his way to becoming a priest. Halfway up the steps, Charlie tripped and broke his arm.