Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: Entertainment

Remembering a name is one thing, remembering a face is another but remembering someone you had never met is entirely another thing but this was one of Kim Peeks many talents.
Bewildered, my reply was, "excuse me?" To which Peek simply replied, "Whenever I have a talk, I see you walking around very busy, wanting to listen but you never have enough time."
Who was this man? How did he remember so much?
After getting the chance to sit and listen to his talk, questions slowly got answered. However, many more popped up, it seemed only fitting that a movie was created about this fascinating man.
Peek became an honored member of our LPC community and a dear friend to Ernie Jones, an instructor of our LPC psychology department.
For the past four years LPC welcomed Kim Peek and his father Fran Peek to tell their story.
It was fascinating to watch the way Peek would connect objects, people, places, etc together. For example, Jones spoke of an incident when he and Peek were driving and Kim saw the road sign, Dougherty Road in Dublin California, which was spelled the same way from the movie.
He explained that in the movie 'The Rain Man,' the house they used kept the original family who lived there for the scene where Dustin Hoffman's character, Raymond Babbitt has to watch a certain t.v show.
Peek was a savant, which is a rare form of (A.S.D) Autism Spectrum Disorder.
He had a brain where the two sides worked independently of each other, which allowed Peek to do many things such as read two pages of a book at once, this meant that he retained much more information than the average human.
Even with all this knowledge Peek loved to laugh reminised Jones, "bursting out laughing like two school boys at last April's California film festival, we laughed so hard for no imparticular reason, we thought we would be thrown out, good job he [Peek] was there to recieve an award." He chuckled.
Jones who knew Peek for four years is still saddened by his loss but stated that "Kim [Peek] had an innate ability to let things go, I shall remember him the way he was and start to let the saddness pass."

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools