The day after his retirement, Chris suffered a haemorrhagic stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. The language area of his brain was the most affected, depriving him of speech. To regain his most valued skill – to express himself with the written and spoken word – he had to begin again, re-learning words and their meanings, and to write using his left hand. His urge to use language as before was so strong that he was able to recover little by little what the stroke had cruelly taken away. It took two years until his abilities improved enough to be seated in his wheelchair to read and write. He never felt impeded by his disability. With a tape recorder, a notebook, and a typewriter, Chris picked up where he had left off – his inspiration awakened anew.
Since childhood, Chris loved reading and writing, demonstrating a strong affinity for the written word. Born and schooled in Union City, NJ; after earning a BA in English, from Jersey City State College, N. J., he taught for a while and was pursuing his interest in film and photography when he received a job as an art photographer in New York and for the next 24 years, he was commuting to the city and loved the energy and variety that inspired him to write and fill his pockets with notes. We have notebooks with his right hand written poetry. After a debilitating stroke that left him partially paralyzed, he forced himself to make new skills and connections, switching from his right hand to his left. Happy that his brain reconnected functions remembering his earlier work, he was adding freely, inspired lines in many new notebooks.