'Hello Darkness, My Old Friend'

I've been missing out on a terrific read — “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man's Blindness into an Extraordinary Vision for Life” — a memoir by Sanford Greenberg. Growing up with Simon and Garfunkel's song, “The Sound of Silence,” I easily recognize the line, “Hello darkness, my old friend.” I had no idea the muscle behind this greeting.

Sanford, “Sandy,” Greenburg and Arthur (as he was called then) Garfunkel were college roommates in 1961 who made a pact to “always be there for each other in times of trouble.” Soon after, Sandy unexpectedly went blind — his optic nerves destroyed by glaucoma. He dropped out of school and went home, refusing to talk to anyone.

He hadn't counted on his roommate flying in — insisting he return to school — that he would help him. They had a sacred pact.

Arthur walked with him to class and bandaged him up when he fell. Most important he read to him. In a show of support for his friend Arthur began calling himself, “Darkness.” He'd say, “Darkness is going to read to you now.”

One day, saying he had a school assignment, he left Sandy alone among the crowd at New York's Grand Central Station. Sandy lived a nightmare. He stumbled into people, he fell, he knocked over coffee cups and briefcases. He cut his forehead and bloodied his socks. He recalled, “It was a horrendous feeling of shame.”

He found his train and got back to Columbia University. There he encountered his friend. He was furious at what had been done — but it had worked. Sandy called it a “colossally insightful, brilliant yet wildly risky strategy.”

Arthur had been there all the time, watching him, following him. Sandy said, “He knew it was only when I could prove to myself that I could do it that I would have real independence.” After that he began living a life “without fear, without doubt.”

He graduated with a BA and MBA from Columbia, and eventually an MA and PhD from Harvard. He also studied at Oxford. During his time in England he got a call from Garfunkel, who needed $400 to record his first album with Paul Simon. Sandy and his wife had exactly $404 in their bank account. It was his chance — finally — to make good on their roommate pact. He sent it all to Arthur.

The 1964 album was a bust. However it contained one song, released the next year as a single, that became a worldwide hit — ”The Sound of Silence.”

Garfunkel says, “With Sandy my real life emerged. I became a better guy in my own eyes, and began to see who I was — somebody who gives to a friend.”

Greenberg says Arthur “lifted me out of the grave.” He recently awarded $3 million to scientists searching for a cure for blindness.

I'll never hear “Hello darkness, my old friend” the same. College students who meant what they said— that they would be there for each other in anything. Who could imagine so much light could shine from the dark.