ANDERSON — When Nate Thomas was learning his way around a world that he could no longer see, he was comforted by some familiar voices.
As he headed to the S.C. Commission for the Blind in Columbia, he packed a suitcase full of puppets. He took along his favorites: “Grandpa,” “Possum Stew,” “Dexter the Boy Genius,” and “R.K. the Parrot.”
After all, working with puppets, coming up with characters and voices for them, has been a major part of his life as well as his full-time job for 12 years.
“There was a familiarity with it that was comforting,” he said. “I realized that I have not lost my passion for performing. I’ve just made some adjustments.”
At 51, he’s relearned a skill that he began training for when he was a boy in Erie, Pa.
Thomas was introduced to the art of ventriloquism through a gift from his parents. The gift was a Jimmy Nelson puppet, along with a record about learning how to be ventriloquist. Jimmy Nelson was a well-known ventriloquist in the 1950s and 1960s who performed in commercials, including one for Hershey’s chocolate.
“I think Mom and Dad were trying to harness my energy,” Thomas said. “I saw it as a challenge. I would come home from school and practice with it.”
He kept it as a hobby well into his teenage years. “For a while, I was ‘too cool’ to do puppets,” Thomas said.
But when he was in his early 20s, he picked the art back up again.
Eventually, he practiced enough that he could perform and earn money with those performances. For several years, he sold insurance full time and would work with the puppets in his spare time, picking up shows here and there.
The goal became shedding that “regular” job, he said.
He got his wish 12 years ago. When he and his wife lived in Cleveland, Ohio, he was performing 150 to 200 shows a year. In that time, he added several characters to his act. In his shows, he mixes comedy with life lessons — and sometimes lessons about faith.
These days, Thomas has about 20 puppets.
“I guess I like to entertain, and I guess, if I’m honest, I like to be the center of attention,” Thomas said, laughing.
He’s performed at fairs, in churches, at summer camps, street festivals, in libraries, in nursing homes and at YMCAs in Ohio and Anderson since he and his wife moved to Anderson several years ago.
“There’s not an age group that I haven’t performed for,” he said.
His life has been spent traveling the roads, and flying to a variety of places, always taking a suitcase full of all sorts of puppets — like the book puppet, his baby orangutan, his bumblebee or his talking rat.
Then two years ago, he started feeling severe pain on his face, around his eyes. He had been having vision loss for about 10 years, but could still see at that point. For a while, doctors tried to treat the pain with medicine.
“It felt like electric shocks were going off on my face,” he said. “That was a terrible, terrible time.”
In December 2008, doctors discovered that some of the blood vessels in his brain had adhered to his nerves. At first, doctors tried treating his pain with medicine. When the medicine didn’t work, surgery was the next option. In January 2010, he went through brain surgery.
As his body healed, his vision did not.
He is now legally blind. If words are enlarged enough on a computer screen, he can read them. And he can still see shades of light and dark. But the details are all gone.
“I have some vision in pockets,” he said. “It’s almost like looking through fragmented glass.”
Some of the medication he took early on caused him to experience some symptoms of dementia. He had to relearn ventriloquism. And he went to the S.C. Commission for the Blind so he could learn how to live independently without his eyesight.
All of these changes, however, have not dampened his spirit, he said. In fact, he’s simply found a way to use the puppets to spread awareness for those who have disabilities.
And he’s back on the road again.
“Your life doesn’t have to change for the worst just because you are going through stuff,” Thomas said. “Everybody goes through stuff. This is just my stuff. This doesn’t mean I am out of the picture. There’s still so much work to be done.
“Besides, I love to hear somebody laugh. It’s good for me too.”
© 2011 Anderson Independent Mail. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A puppet named Dexter is one of the several puppets that Nathan Thomas uses in his ventriloquist act.
Photo by Nathan Gray
Nathan Thomas, who is legally blind and has degenerative macular disease, shows some of the puppets that he uses in his ventriloquist act
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