By Stowell P. Watters
Staff Writer
    Kim Peek, 56, stroked his hands against one another as his mouth curled in a wide smile and his father Fran Peek put a microphone to his lips. The crowd of about 200 people at St. Martha Parish Church in Kennebunk waited in hushed anticipation.
    “Recognizing and respecting differences in others, and treating everyone like you want them to treat you, will help make our world a better place for everyone. You don’t have to be handicapped to be different,” was Kim Peek’s message, a credo the duo brings to schools, churches and events throughout the nation.
    Kim Peek was born with developmental disabilities, an enlarged head and a photographic memory, classifying him as a savant. Fran Peek told the crowd  how Kim Peek used to “plow” the living room carpet with his forehead because his neck was too weak to lift his head – which was three times the normal size at birth.
    Initially he was diagnosed with severe mental retardation, but as he grew his parents began noticing something different about him. At 20 months he could recite any story read to him by his parents, and through their tracing the words while reading to him, he was able to gain a working understanding of the alphabet.
    According to the book his father wrote (“The Real Rain Man: Kim Peek”), Kim Peek was born with “agenesis of the corpus callosum.” With this condition the two halves of Kim Peek’s brain are not attached by the bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum. He also lacks the secondary connectors known as “anterior commisure,” and as far as doctors can tell, the halves are only connected by neurons.
    At 3-years-old Kim Peek went to his parents with a query. He wanted to know the meaning of the word “confidential,” so his parents guided him to a dictionary. They jokingly told him to look it up, Fran Peek said.
    “Kim was able to find the word using the index and the alphabet. He then phonetically sounded out the definition,” Fran Peek said.
    At 4-years-old, Kim Peek knew every page for any word in a set of “Encyclopedias of Knowledge” that his father owned, and read them daily. When asked by a member of the audience when he first learned to read, Kim Peek began spouting off sentences.
    “Those are the captions to the pictures in the books his mother and I used to read him,” his father said, inciting gasps among the audience.
    NASA completed a study of Kim Peek in which he was asked to read eight pages of “The Hunt for Red October,” while they studied the movement of his eyes. Fran Peek said Kim Peek read the book in an hour and the assigned pages in 53 seconds. Fran Peek also took the test – it took him about 20 minutes to read the eight pages.
    What NASA found, which was shocking to the scientists Fran Peek said, was that Kim Peek’s eyes were not reading the same page. In fact, each eye was reading independently, allowing Kim Peek to read much faster than the average person. Additionally, Kim Peek is, to this day, able to retain 98.9 percent of what he read in the NASA study where as an average person retains about 45 percent, diminishing over time, Fran Peek said.
    The Oscar winning film “Rain Man” starring Dustin Hoffman, was based on Kim Peek’s life. After seeing Kim Peek speak at a convention, director Barry Levinson became captured by the savant’s life. Levinson met with Kim Peek and after extensive research, produced a script for the movie which features the trials and tribulations of a savant, based on Kim Peek’s experiences. After winning the Oscar for best leading role, Hoffman gave Kim Peek the gold-plated award, and said a phrase that Kim Peek said he wont ever forget.
    “I may be the star, but you are the heavens,” Hoffman said.
    Before the event at St. Martha, Kim Peek and Fran Peek spoke to 600 students at the Middle School of the Kennebunks. The day after, they spoke to 200 students at Sea Road School in Kennebunk. All of this, said Director of The Dow Foundation Maureen Dow, is in the name of helping people with special needs.
    “His mind is always going, always putting the pieces together. It is humbling, and amazing to have him come speak in our community,” Dow said. The Dow Foundation is a resource foundation for special needs children, she said.
    Kim Peek has been employed at a workshop for adults with disabilities for most of his adult life and takes leaves so he and his father can give on-site presentations like the one Jan. 24.
    Kim Peek took questions from the crowd.
    Queries ran the gamut of tests for Kim Peek from honest questions regarding the nature of his condition to questions concerning the Medicare and how it pertains to autism. While he was largely unable to answer questions that involved his personal opinion – for example one audience member asked ‘where do you think we go when we die?’ to which he answered by quoting, word for word, a passage from the New Testament – Kim Peek was quick to rattle off any bit of information asked of him.
    The states and their capitals (listed in the order in which they joined the Union), every zip code in the United States, every instance in which the Yankees won the World Series and intricate, minute details regarding every day of Kim Peek’s life were all stated clearly and precisely by Kim Peek.
    Fran Peek said he cannot take Kim Peek to any Shakespeare plays because Kim Peek will blurt out if the actors make a mistake. Together the two have traveled almost two million miles, speaking to crowds about, what Fran Peek called, “the importance of difference.”
    All of the $1,700 raised during the event goes to the church’s World Youth Day Fundraiser, which will send four local youths to Australia in the Spring for an educational seminar with other children around the world.
    To contact Stowell P. Watters, call 282-4337 ext. 219 or email news@kennebunkpost.com.