Arkansas man living with disability brings happiness through love of music

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Music moves people in many ways, and one Little Rock man has made it his mission to excite people with his piano skills.

As 23-year-old Darnell Paul explains, his music, “makes me feel happy and peaceful” and he believes it does the same for others.

One day each week, he entertains people at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. Darnell doesn’t read sheet music, but he plays by ear.

Each chord and each melody from Darnell is his gift as he explains that he, “had no lessons or anything, I just taught myself.”

All of this is rather remarkable considering, this piano man, among other medical conditions, has an intellectual disability.

I first met Darnell at a cancer fundraiser at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.

Darnell played an electric keyboard that resonated beautifully throughout the open-air stadium.  I would later learn through his adoptive mom, Schelly Paul, that her son was born prematurely, deprived of oxygen, and deals with several emotional and physical challenges.

Schelly described a situation that happened in their neighborhood as one example of what her son has to deal with.

“We had an incident in the community where he was riding his bike ahead of me,” she began to explain.

She went on to say that someone from neighborhood patrol stopped Darnell and began asking a series of questions that he could not answer, including why he wasn’t in school, “and that looks suspicious,” Schelly said.

Darnell and his family hope that sharing this story will enlighten people to recognize the challenges some people with disabilities face day after day.

He reminds all of us that, “our processing speed may vary but our value does not.”

In the meantime, he’ll continue to tickle the ivories each week and hope that people will decode his message in his melodies.

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