The Follansbees and The Averys

In the early 1960s, perhaps as a result of Ambassador Kennedy having been at The Institutes, we were contacted by a woman whose husband had had a stroke. He had lost his ability to speak but could take a few steps, though only with assistance. The result was that he was immobile and could not transport himself. The wife, Nancy Follansbee, wanted my father to treat her husband Rogers Follansbee.

Mrs. Follansbee attended our Initial Evaluation and Certification Program. This was composed of a one-week visit where a complete history, ideology, neurological evaluation, and diagnoses were done. The families attended two days of intensive lectures, the great majority of which were done by my father. The lectures taught about the principles of Neurological Organization and Brain Growth and Development. My father’s work and the Doman Method preceded by 20 years the term neuroplasticity. This term was first coined by neuroscientists in 1975. Neurological Organization and Brain Growth and Development are synonymous with neuroplasticity.

Mr. Follansbee began our program on the grounds of our Intstitutes with the staff doing the program with him. Mrs. Follansbee began to volunteer in our clinic. She helped families go from one office to another and would offer to drive them to their hotels at night. In appreciation, parents would often offer her a tip. She refused because she was a fabulously wealthy multi-millionaire. Her father was Sewell Avery. He was a very successful businessman who rose to be the CEO of Montgomery Ward, which was one of the wealthiest businesses in the country. During the Second World War, Sewell Avery refused to comply with restrictions the government put on businesses during the war. It was particularly egregious that the government confiscated his gorgeous and elaborate yacht, and then did not converted the yacht into a military vessel. After the war, it became the property of Joseph Kennedy! As a result, the Avery family despised the Kennedys with good reason.

Sewell became particularly important because President Roosevelt chose to make an example of him and had soldiers come into his office at Montgomery Ward to arrest him. Sewell was nobody’s fool. He refused to go. The soldiers made a seat by clasping their hands together tightly and carried him out of the building very comfortably in the seated position. The photograph ended up on the cover of Life Magazine. Avery was a hero to some and a villain to others. He later founded United States Gypsum which further expanded his fortune.

Nancy had a sister Arla Avery McMillian. Together these very sweet and generous sisters decided to adopt my father’s Intitutes for the Achievement of Human Potential. Today they would be considered Angel Investors. Of course they were not investors, they were donors.

Among my father’s many accomplishments was the fact that he was a superb teacher and lecturer. When he went to Officers’ Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia during the war, the course was famously difficult with many candidates quitting or being eliminated during the intensive intellectual and physical training. My father said the instructors were by far the best teachers he ever had in his life. He adopted their best practices and used them when teaching the parents of children with brain injuries. Even if you didn’t have a child with brain injuries, my father’s lectures about Brain Growth Development and The Doman Method were captivating. For decades, I was his assistant and listened to his lectures hundreds of times. One of his best practices was that you had to lecture every time like it was the first time you were giving that lecture. Meaning the information was new and had all of your original energy and enthusiasm. He kept me engaged too, because every lecture was like his first.

Glenn Doman lecturing.

The Avery sisters understood this and funded the construction of a gorgeous state-of-the-art 100-person auditorium. My father personally designed the entire building and auditorium in order to help him maintain his best practices in teaching and lecturing. The auditorium had a top-of-the-line audio/video system. It also has six translation booths. For the first time, it permitted us to accept non-English speaking families. Little did my father, or the staff, or the Averys know that this translation would provide the foundation which enabled the Doman Method to become an international organization.

Throughout the 1960s, my father’s work and the Doman Method began to greatly expand. Previously, it has been mentioned that the waiting list for appointments became impossibly long. This lead to the national and international units my father helped establish. It became clear that to meet the demand, the Institutes would need to train Child Brain Developmentalists who were qualified to evaluate, diagnose, and teach parents cognitive, physical, respiratory, and social programs.

It was decided that the best way to do this was to make The Institutes into a university. The Institutes began its first medical journal Human Potential in 1968. Around this time, ground was broken on The Institutes’ campus to build a beautiful library which would serve the university. The Avery sisters generosity supplied all the funds. Their generosity amounted to $2 million. In today’s dollars, this would be equivalent to $17,500,000.

It is ironic that in that moment in the history of my father’s work, everything was in place to vastly expand help to the number of children and adults with brain injuries who so desperately needed our work. The media was constantly reporting on our work. Local newspapers around the US were reporting children with extraordinary results. Documentaries like Whatever Happened to Eight? further educated the public on the great potential children had no matter how severely they had been injured.

Many doctors had also been drawn to the work. They had attended lectures at The Institutes and the most enthusiastic were creating the units around the United States. Our own medical staff’s scientific papers were being published in medical journals and their books were being published by medical publishers. Neurophysiologists continued to study the brain and prove the principles of Neurological Organization and the Doman Method.

My father loved his work but disliked what he called “begging for money”. As the founder and the chief spokesman, raising donations for the non-profit organization was his job. Now, he had found two very affable and generous women who understood the importance of his work for millions of children around the world. It is not a coincidence that exactly at this time in 1968 the attack occurred. The medical societies understood that the foundation of the philosophy behind their treatments was threatened. If Glenn Doman was correct, their work was invalid. Their work was insignificant and parents knew it.

Nancy and Arla can rest in peace and contentedly because thousands of children have been helped due to their generosity. Their legacy has only just begun. My father’s work significantly preceded the neuroscience. He paid a huge price for this as well as tens of thousands of children around the world who should have received the benefits of our program from 1970 until today. Now, the neuroscience validates The Doman Method and what my father worked so tirelessly to achieve.

Written by: Douglas Doman