World War II.
When the United States entered the war in December 1941, the already-significant rehabilitation demands from peacetime accidents and illness were about to be multiplied by the casualties of global conflict. Young men came home from North Africa, from the Pacific, from Europe — missing arms, missing legs, their nervous systems damaged by shrapnel and explosion and the close physical violence of combat.
Blount began working with these veterans. She worked with amputees — men who had lost one or both arms, sometimes both legs, sometimes combinations that left them dependent on others for the most basic functions of daily life: eating, washing, writing, moving through the world.
This is where the seven-year-old’s response to being punished for writing with her left hand became professionally relevant.
Blount taught veterans who had lost the use of their hands new ways to perform everyday tasks. She taught them to write with a pencil in their teeth. She taught them to use their feet. She taught them the techniques she had developed in childhood as a response to her teacher’s restriction — techniques she had never expected to need as a professional skill, but which turned out to be exactly what was needed.
The connection between her childhood defiance and her adult professional practice is one of the most striking elements of her biography. The punishment had not been intended to develop her resilience or her manual versatility. But it had.