Silent Music

About the Book

Silent Music brings to life the true story of Ira Cochin, who at age seven was nearly killed in a hit-and-run accident. The truck hit him, threw him some fifteen feet, and then ran over him. The attending physician told Ira that a miracle occurred which spared his life. The doctor went on to give an explanation that Ira was spared to fulfill his mission in life. But Ira never knew what that mission was destined to be. However it was clear that Ira owed a spiritual debt.

Ira was drafted into the army during World War II and lost an eye during basic training. The injury worsened and the surgeon felt pessimistic about saving Ira´s remaining eye. While struggling with the uncertainty, Ira found a way to entertain amputees in the army hospital and helped them to live with the trauma of lost limbs. He wondered if this was his mission in life.

It seemed if he was rewarded, for the eye doctor saved the sight in Ira´s remaining eye. After the war ended, and with the danger of blindness behind him, Ira went to college and earned his bachelor´s degree in engineering. He had several jobs as a research scientist and developed systems in the guidance field. He then went to Cooper Union for his doctorate and became the first person to earn the PhD at that school in its 110 year history. Following this, he became a full professor at NJIT, where he taught engineering and automatic controls.

Married and with three children, Ira changed jobs in order to spend quality time with his family. He told his children stories in a way that allowed them to act out and to fantasize. He took the children on a treasure hunt, using a real treasure map, climbing fences and following trails.

Then Ira decided to search for his missing father, without knowing the man´s name or his whereabouts. Against insurmountable odds, he found the man and filled him with encouragement and happiness. Ira visited his father often and they became pals, working together, building machines, and getting the most out of life. Then blindness struck.

After all the torture and nightmares in army hospitals, some 23 years later, Ira lost his eyesight after all. It took some doing and some time, but Ira became acclimated to his affliction. He learned to read Braille and had all his class notes transcribed into Braille. While blind, Ira set up a lab for blind scientists and taught them to be creative about their disability. The story of Ira and his lab for the handicapped appeared in the New York Times in December 18, 1977.

To fund the lab, Ira wrote proposals and was awarded several grants. He arranged sighted and blind students to work together in the lab. They developed special devices that helped a blind scientist to perform experiments. This opened the doors to employment of blind people with technical skills. Although he helped many handicapped people to develop careers in science, it never occurred to him that this might be his mission in life.

Then deafness struck. Ira became deaf and blind.

Now without the two most powerful senses, life appeared incongruous to Ira. Nevertheless, he continued teaching and running the lab for the handicapped. He became the world´s first deaf-blind professor to teach a graphical subject like engineering to non-handicapped students.

While both deaf and blind, Ira met a deaf-blind man who was destined to an institutional life. Ira befriended the man. Ira learned the man didn´t have a language, but he had some kind of communication of his own. Ira learned the man´s language and helped him to be mainstreamed.

On the home front, Ira teamed up with his wife, Dinah, in the creation of exhibits for her class. These replicas demonstrated either a character of a book that the class read, or some event in their history lesson. Their home and Dinah´s classroom resembled a museum.

Ira collaborated with Dinah to write musical comedies for Dinah´s fourth grade class

About the Author

Ira Cochin worked as an engineer for 15 years in industry for such companies as Kearfott, and Bendix. Then he was a professor for 36 years at New Jersey Institute of Technology. During his professorship, Ira became blind and then deaf. He went for training at the Helen Keller Center for the Deaf-Blind. He returned to NJIT and became the world’s first deaf-blind professor to teach engineering. His accomplishments appeared in the New Jersey Supplement of the Sunday New York Times in December 18, 1977. Other books by Ira Cochin are as follows: Analysis and Design of Dynamic Systems, Analysis and Design of the Gyroscope for Inertial Guidance, Passion Hunter, Father of My Soul, Ravenous River, dozens of articles in various magazines and trade journals, and four articles concerning the handicapped.