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SALT LAKE CITY -- Childlike and beyond brilliant, with a charming sense of humor, Utahn Kim Peek, who died in 2009, was the mega-savant who inspired a Hollywood screenwriter, Barry Morrow, to create "Rain Man."
The film won four Academy Awards and made Peek a celebrity who traveled the world with Morrow's Oscar, changing perceptions of people with disabilities. Thursday, that 'most loved Oscar' -- so named because more than 400-thousand people have touched it, will be given to Salt Lake City.
Dr. Temple Grandin, who has Asperber's syndrome is a professor, author, motivational speaker and has transformed animal handling in America. She will receive the first annual Peek Award for Disabilities in Media, and along with the Emmy and Golden Globe winning film, can inspire children on the autism spectrum and teach them that they can achieve.
"A lot of the kids I've seen here at the school are like a lot of kids I went to school with, they'd be just labeled geeky and nerdy, and there's many of these kids out in industry," Grandin said. "They are the kind of kids who keep your computer going --half of the NASA space scientists probably have been on the spectrum."
Email: cmikita@ksl.com.
