Miami Beach Bandshell — Named South Beach Jazz Festival Venue
Audible crosswalk signals and accessible live performances are among the changes R. David New has pursued in Miami Beach. Blind after an AIDS diagnosis led to spinal meningitis and months in hospitals, New has made improving how people with disabilities navigate the city a focus of his advocacy.
New described the AIDS diagnosis, the spinal meningitis that followed, and the months in hospitals that cost him his sight, hearing and mobility in an account detailed by Miami’s Community News. “When you’re in it, when you’re in the thick of it, you are just thinking about survival,” he said of that period. He also credited his family with helping him through it, describing his mother as a source of energy and his father as a steady support, according to the same account.
A Slow, Incomplete Recovery
New’s hearing eventually returned, and through grueling physical therapy he relearned to walk. His blindness, however, remained permanent. His mother spent years urging him to put the experience into words, a nudge that eventually became the memoir he has just released, per the report…