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Kim Johnson Reporting The very best art students of the Granite District's ten high schools competed this evening at the third annual "Souper Art night." It's an event that celebrates the artistic achievements of local high schoolers, but it also has special significance for a former teacher, who was a victim of vicious crime.
Don Marr taught art and pottery in the public school system for 24 years. Sometimes he worked at convenience stores at night to supplement his income. While he was pulling a shift on a September night back in 1990, Don's life changed forever.
Don Marr: "Just boom, hit me right up in here with a metal flash light. It was one of those big ones that the police use."
After the first blow, Don says he ran out the front doors, but the assailant followed, kicking Don in the chest and knocking him over backward. The back of his head hit the curb's edge.
Don Marr: "I felt crunching all the way from my head clear to my spine. It was as if something, just boom, just compressed."
Even though Don went right back to teaching, he soon realized his career was over. He suffered chronic pain and lost the ability to read, sing, do simple math. His vocabulary, his fine motor skills on the left side and his balance all gone.
Don Marr: "Sometimes the walls would wiggle or the floor or ceiling. It was weird."
Nancy Marr, Don's Wife: "It was like living with a four or five year old again. The brain damage was so bad. I guess it was like someone who has a stroke and has to start all over again."
Don suffered severe depression for more than a decade, but something changed the night he accompanied his wife to the very first Souper Art Night two years ago. He says he watched talented high schoolers sketching and painting.
Don Marr: "Then I saw the pottery. I saw kids doing large size pottery that took me years to learn to do. I could see their progress and I thought, 'I've got to get involved with this again."
And he did find the inspiration to try again. His hands were too weak to even knead the clay, but with the help of friends, he returned to the potters wheel for the first time in 14 years, with hope and fear in his heart.
Don Marr: "I thought, 'Why waste the time if it's going to flop?' But it didn't flop. It clicked. It was as if a cloud just lifted."
And then came the affirmation, from another an acclaimed pottery teacher.
Don Marr: "He said, 'It looks to me like you're getting your technique back.' Coming to me from a man like him, I figured it must not only be true, but a real compliment."
Don keeps that very first pot close by, a reminder that as his gifted, deft fingers again bring life to clay, pottery has given Don his life back too.
