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Text transcribed from caption: PCJ-46600 RABBI, FATHER OF BRAIN-DAMAGED SON,
FINDS ‘MIRACLES’ NEW YORK -- A Chicago rabbi and his wife has discovered,
with the aid of their brain-damaged son and his Christian school teacher,
that God always answers prayers -- although not always in a way expected.
“Miracles were happening all the time, but not the obvious ones we were
hoping for,” said Rabbi Hyman Agress, whose “smug little world” was
shattered in 1962 with the diagnosis that his first-born son, Michael, was
retarded and would never be “normal.” Rabbi Agress, author of Why Me?
(Creation House), said in an interview in New York that God did not give
Michael the miraculous healing for which he so desperately prayed at first.
But the seeming tragedy has knit the family closer together and made them
infinitely better people. In Why Me? Rabbi Agress tells how, after years of
attempting to find help and schooling for Michael, he and his wife turned to
the relatively unknown Grove School for Exceptional Children in Deerfield,
Ill., operated by a “devout Quaker woman,” Virginia Matson. Rabbi Agress
said he regards finding the school one of the miracles. The school not only
began to bring order in Michael’s and his family’s lives but also gave
them new hope and regained faith. Here, the Agress family plays with an
electric train set in their home in the Chicago suburb of Aurora, where Rabbi
Agress is spiritual leader of Temple B’nai Israel. From left are, Mrs.
Agress, Steve, 13, Rabbi Agress, Alexandra, 9, and Michael, now 15. Credit
Must Read: RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE PHOTO (C-CHI-1B-75-DS)