Jenny Wren, By Tracey Vale

On my fifth birthday, Miss Millington, my new teacher at the Wolverhampton Road Infant's School, was expecting me. Isabel, having grown up in the same house we were now living with my grandparents, had been a pupil of the same school and had filled Miss Millington in on my 'shyness'. But I knew, as I think my new teacher did also, that it was not shyness but only a desire not to be different. I simply wanted to observe, fit in and not be laughed at if my speech was considered amusing.

So, in this new environment, with these new people, I again kept my mouth firmly closed. However, I did speak out on the initial roll call. When 'Joan' was called, I spoke out and corrected it to 'Joan Mary', a name some of my relatives called me by and one I preferred. No, I was not shy!

I was seated next to a child by the name of Jenny Wren. We soon became friends and often walked home together. I can recall her so clearly--and not because she talked too much and I did not talk enough, although this was true. Jenny was constantly in trouble for talking, while I was always asked to "speak up". But rather, my memory of her is sharp because of a sadness I feel for her and a hope that she didn't miss all the opportunities life had to offer because of a decision made by her parents when she was so young.

When we first started school, Jenny and I were the same height but, by year three, I was much taller. Also, as each year passed, I became more talkative while Jenny became increasingly less talkative. She had been diagnosed with Bone Dysplasia, or dwarfism, and was to face a life very different from mine or any of our classmates. By the end of Year 3, she was gone, and without a 'goodbye'--virtually ushered away silently, her parents not wanting to give an explaination.

Some years later, I learned she had been admitted to a 'Special Home' simply because she was a person of short stature. Institutionalisation was not uncommon then for those with dwarfism. This was not the right place for a bright girl like Jenny Wren. It is with a heavy heart that I often wonder what became of her.

The unfairness of such institutionalisation and the discrimination of short-statured people was to become an issue for me and was at the centre of a fight I won to allow a young boy to begin his school life at the same school as his 'normal-sized' sister as late as the 1980's.