If joy and gratitude could be personified, they would surely take the shape of 45-year-old Harry Lewis of Greenport.
For someone looking at Lewis’ life from the outside, sympathy may bubble up for the tough circumstances he’s had to deal with, but Lewis would immediately dismiss it.
Self-pity is not part of his vocabulary.
The youngest of six children, Lewis weighed only three pounds when he was born prematurely in 1971 at Eastern Long Island Hospital. As a result he has mild cerebral palsy.
“In my case it means I’m in a wheelchair and can’t walk,” he says. “With other people CP can mean different things, but for me it’s just that I can’t walk.”
Lewis’ positivity and humor are at the forefront no matter what the subject of a conversation might be. While discussing his CP, he points out how grateful he is that it didn’t affect his ability to speak.
“That would kill me, not being able to talk. I can’t shut up; I love to talk!” he says with a contagious laugh that starts deep down in his belly. It’s impossible not to laugh with him.
Harry Lewis has had more than his share of tragedy in life, but characteristically points out that he’s not unique; people deal with all kinds of problems. Two of his five sisters died at a young age; Nancy in 2002 and Cherie in 2003. Later that year his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and a few years after that his mother developed congestive heart failure. He lost his mom in 2008 and his dad in 2009.
But Lewis does not dwell on the negative; instead he is comforted by memories of time spent with his mom, playing with Smurfs, writing and drawing.
“People used to feel sorry for my mom, saying how sad it was that she had a disabled child. But my mom always said that God gave her a loving boy, a good baby and someone who would stay around a little longer after my sisters flew the coop,” he says with a laugh.
Lewis’ mom was also instrumental in enhancing his education and spent long hours at home teaching him how to read and do math, lessons he wasn’t learning at St. Charles Children’s Hospital where he went as a child.
“In those days, they took all the disabled children and transported them to St. Charles in Port Jefferson. It was a rehabilitation school — and I use the term ‘school’ loosely,” says Lewis. “Their focus was not on academics and they were constantly repeating lessons for kids who were taken out of class for therapy.”
At the age of 12, Lewis was mainstreamed into Greenport Schools but by that time his classmates had known each other for years and he felt socially isolated. Still, with the help of family, he got a well-rounded education and has no bitterness about the experience.
Lewis lives in the house his parents bought when he was a year old: a cozy and inviting place with twinkle lights strewn here and there and shelves lined with photographs and memorabilia, much of it with a British theme. When asked about his connection with England, Lewis tells a remarkable story of a friendship that began over a decade ago.
In 2006, with both his parents ill, Lewis enjoyed listening to podcasts as a way of escaping the stress of caring for them. He happened upon a podcast given by two English men named Jason and Andrew and began following their broadcasts.
“They were such fun to listen to,” says Lewis. “They were really sweet fellows; they talked about life in England, equality, kindness and decency — all of these wonderful, wonderful things. I would listen to them with great love and anticipation and we would email back and forth and we became really close. We talked about the essence of who we were, about what was going on. Their spirits really shined through.”
In 2006 the men traveled from Liverpool to America for vacation and arranged to meet Lewis for lunch in Greenport. They hit it off in person as much as they had over video chats and emails and in 2008 Jason and Andrew invited Lewis to England for their wedding.
After reassuring his worried mother that he would be fine on his adventure, Lewis traveled to Liverpool, where he was met at the airport with “much love and fanfare.” He was delighted to discover that his friends had planned an extensive itinerary of wheelchair accessible sights to see.
At the wedding, Lewis was honored with a seat at the wedding table and “the boys,” as Lewis refers to his friends, announced him to everyone, thanking him for coming all the way from America for their wedding.
“Everyone got up and applauded and hugged me,” says Lewis, his eyes tearing up at the memory. “It was one of the most wonderful events of my life and it was done with such pure love and kindness, it restored my faith in humanity and in people.”
So you see, being wheelchair-bound has never stopped Lewis from enjoying life; he rolls through Greenport Village nearly every day to visit with friends at The Market or in Mitchell Park. Three days a week he makes his way to the bus stop to begin his two-bus, 70-minute commute to Suffolk Community College in Riverhead, where he has worked for 15 years in the student support services department.
He has been back to Liverpool several times since 2006, using money carefully set aside from birthday and Christmas gifts. He wishes he could go more often, but the old house he lives in — it was built in the late 1800s — is always in need of repairs.
After his parents passed away, friends who visited noticed that the house was not set up for wheelchair accessibility except for a ramp that Lewis’ father had built in the 1980s. His parents never made accommodations for Lewis’ disability; his mom reminded him that the world was set up for people who can walk and he should learn to be adaptable.
“I told my friends not to worry; it was fine,” says Lewis, “I’ve been living here like this for years.”
“Living like this” included dragging himself up the stairs to sleep and throwing himself to the ground to crawl into the bathroom, which had a doorway the wheelchair couldn’t fit through.
“Sometimes I forget that it’s shocking for people to see a person throw himself out of a wheelchair, but I always like to give it the old college try,” says Lewis, laughing.
His friends took matters into their own hands to help get Lewis’ house in shape, first submitting his story to “Extreme Home Makeovers” (they were turned down) and then creating The Harry Project, an initiative to raise money for repairs and modifications. Spearheaded by his friends and co-workers Iris Rilling and the late Gwen Branch, The Harry Project enlisted the help of the Greenport Rotary in 2012 to build a wheelchair accessible bathroom, fix the roof and upgrade the electricity.
“Such goodwill went into the whole project,” says Lewis. “In addition to the bathroom, roof and electric upgrade, they moved the circuit breaker box from the cellar up to the ground floor so I didn’t have to try to go downstairs if the lights went out.”
It was a blessing, he says. “My biggest fear was that I’d be crawling around down there with the spiders and rats and would see something, have a heart attack and die. People would be saying ‘Where is Harry and what was he doing in the basement?’”
There are few things in life that Lewis can’t find humor in, and he regales visitors with stories of his “wheelchair adventures,” including one which found Lewis at the top of the stairs at his house, the wheelchair left downstairs, trying to move a clothes rack to the ground floor so he could have more space for hanging his wardrobe.
“All was going well,” he recalls. “I gave it a gentle shove and it went about halfway down and got stuck, blocking the stairway.”
Lewis spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to get himself out of the dilemma until he finally dragged the clothes rack back up the stairs and over his head.
“For one brief moment the adventurer in me said I can swing down to the front porch from the ledge outside the second story window,” he says, laughing. “But I decided against that.”
Friends, neighbors and his beloved Aunt Val continue to look out for Lewis’ well-being and recently Adele Terwilliger, one of his co-workers, alarmed at the fact that Lewis only had one ramp — one exit in case of fire — at the house, jumped in to help rectify that. There was a bit of money left in the Harry Project fund and Terwilliger discovered an organization named Rebuilding Together Long Island, a group made up of volunteers who perform repairs for disabled homeowners.
Lewis was interviewed by Catherine Harper, one of the organization’s home visitors, who was quite impressed.
“I’ve met a lot of people in the course of my life and work, but Harry is really extraordinary,” she said. “He’s just an amazing person — so charismatic. He was ultra-prepared for our interview; he had all the paperwork ready. I feel so lucky to have met him.”
Rebuilding Together LI hopes to begin work at Lewis’ house by the end of the summer.
For all of this, Lewis is grateful, although he said he’d be fine with flinging himself out the back door in case of fire.
“But my friends said ‘Harry, you’re getting older. Some day you might not want to be throwing yourself down the stairs.'”
He laughs and admits that they may be right. “I’m so blessed to have such wonderful and caring friends,” he says.
