My dad came from good working class
stock. He was the fourth child of five
and there was nearly a six year gap between him and his next older sibling. His
mother decided to hold him back from going to school until his younger brother
was old enough, so that the two siblings could keep each other company. Dad had very little in common with his
youngest sibling who was always getting into strife. But being dad, he just went with the flow and
didn’t question the decision.
Dad was a good sportsman, an average
performer at school and had decided to become a teacher. He was 19 years of
age, in his second year of teacher training when something extraordinary
happened to him. He lost his
eye-sight. He lost the sight in one eye
in January 1954 and then the other in May 1954.
The medical system couldn’t explain it.
He could see nothing in front of him, and just shapes in his peripheral
vision. He spent 10 weeks in hospital
and was told that his eyesight was bad but it wouldn’t get any worse.
Life was turned on its head. He had to withdraw from teacher training and
his beloved sport. He lay in the
hospital bed feeling very sorry for himself.
To cut a long story short, he heard a girl come in to his ward and tell
people to breathe in and out. He thought
that this sounded like an easy job and enquired about it. She was a physiotherapist, and he found out
that there was a School for the Blind for Physiotherapy in London. He got sponsorship from the New Zealand
Foundation for the Blind and off he went -- alone on a six week boat trip, first
time out of New Zealand with minimal eyesight. He had a fabulous three years training
in London, establishing friendships with other blind physiotherapists that
lasted a life time.
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| John "Jack" Alexander Semple in England, 1958; photograph courtesy of Sarah Semple |
So how does this relate to genealogy? Well, it all comes back to the rare eye disease called Leber’s Optic Atrophy. When researching this disease, I found out that it is genetic, but that it is only passed on from the female. So a male can inherit it (like my dad), but his children can never get it. His sister however could both inherit the gene and develop the disease, as could her children.
So with this information, I approached a renowned Opthamologist who confirmed that as far as he knew there were only two families in New Zealand with this disease. He had studied the other family to understand the heredity patterns of the disease.
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| Jack Semple playing bowls; photograph courtesy of Sarah Semple |
I found that one of my dad’s aunts had also
inherited the disease and had died after accidentally drinking a bottle of
poison that she thought was a soft drink.
I also found women in dad’s family with poor eyesight that people had
attributed to old age, however may well have been the same eye condition.
So when I come across or hear about people
(especially young men) who lose their eyesight at an early age to Leber’s, I
always ask the question… what was their mother and grandmother’s maiden names? Chances are, we could be related.
