“For the Left Hand” goes to college: Higher Ed premiere

We had a revelatory residency at The Defiance College, in Defiance, Ohio.

It all began on the evening of Sept. 30 with Norman and Howard speaking to a Leadership class, the students ranging from 21-year-old locals to veterans who’d seen combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. The vets found common cause with Norman’s trauma, one of them telling the room, “I deal with PTSD every day of my life.” Another student asked Norman how he managed to keep the story of his injury secret for so long, never sharing it with colleagues or students. “I was there to teach,” said Norman. “My life story had nothing to do with that.” By the end of the session, one student summed up Norman’s struggles best: “You did it. You climbed Everest.”

The next day, Norman and Howard spoke to several other classes, fielding intriguing questions from students. Among them: “Do you wish you had done anything differently in your career?” Norman thought about that for a while, then answered, “If I could have played the piano with both hands, it would have solved a lot of problems.”

The high point came with a screening for a couple hundred students. Most of these were not musicians, and few said they’d ever heard of piano works for the left hand, let alone the Ravel Concerto that’s pivotal to the film. Yet the room was hushed from the first frame to the last. “You really could hear a pin drop,” Defiance College president Richanne Mankey said afterward.

“I’ve attended a lot of these kinds of events,” said the friend of a Defiance College trustee. “It’s not unusual to see students often checking their phones or whispering to one another. Not this time. They didn’t take their phones out until Norman started playing the piano — so they could take photos of him.”

All photos courtesy of Ryan Imbrock, Director of Marketing & Public Relations at Defiance College.