Child music prodigy 60 minutes3/11/2023 ![]() ![]() While Rain Man was a marvelous movie-accurately and sensitively done-it left viewers with the impression that, like Raymond, all savants are autistic. Moved to tears by Leslie’s performance on 60 Minutes, Hoffman played the lead role of Raymond Babbitt in the 1988 movie Rain Man. It was Dustin Hoffman who put savant syndrome in the international spotlight. Leslie began to book concert hall appearances and, during the 1980s and 1990s, he toured in Norway, Japan, and in cities throughout the United States.Īt this time savant syndrome was still a little known phenomenon. A slew of appearances and performances soon followed: 60 Minutes, That’s Incredible, The Oprah Winfrey Show (three times), and subsequent rounds of many other TV talk shows. Leslie first gained national attention after his 1980 concert when the story of May Lemke and her remarkable son was covered on a special Christmas edition of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Some might recognize their marvelous story of love and hope from the 1983 movie The Woman Who Willed a Miracle in which Cloris Leachman played the role of May Lemke. Such is the case of Leslie Lemke who, by now, the reader of this article might recall hearing about or seeing along with his mother May on one of their many television appearances during the 1980s. Prodigious savant is a term reserved for those extraordinarily rare individuals in whom the special skill is so outstanding that were it to be seen in a non-impaired person such a person would be termed a prodigy or genius. Talented savants are those in whom musical, art or other special abilities are more conspicuous not only in contrast to individual limitations, but also in contrast to peer group abilities whether disabled or not. Most common are splinter skill savants who have obsessive preoccupation with and memorization of music and sports trivia, birthdays, license plate numbers, historical facts, train or bus schedules, navigation or maps. While admittedly based on a subjective scale at this point, savant skills lie on a spectrum of abilities. In some cases massive memory itself is the special skill. ![]() Whatever the skill, it is always associated with massive memory of a habit or procedural type-very narrow but exceedingly deep within the confines of the special skill. Savant syndrome affects males four to six times more frequently than females, and skills typically occur in five general areas: music, art, calendar calculating, mathematics or mechanical/visual-spatial skills. It seems incredible-until we begin to consider how rare his talent truly is. ![]() Having once heard a piece, he simply never forgets it. ![]() Today, Leslie’s musical repertoire seems bottomless and his talent endless. It was then the miracle of Leslie’s talent came into “full bloom,” according to May. 1 after hearing it for the first time on the sound track of a movie he had listened to with his family earlier that evening. In fact that is what caught May’s attention late one night when he played back Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. Leslie can play back a musical piece of any length flawlessly after hearing it once. While Leslie has spasticity in his hands, which makes it difficult to even hold eating utensils, that spasticity disappears when he sits at the keyboard. Yet, although he has never had a lesson in his life, Leslie’s piano skills are innate and extensive. Leslie grew up blind and cognitively disabled. But May Lemke was determined that Leslie would live. He was given up for adoption by his mother and placed in the care of May Lemke, a nurse-governess, in a sort of hospice-type arrangement. A profoundly ill baby, Leslie was not expected to live more than a few months. Because of his premature birth, Leslie developed retinopathy and had to have his eyes surgically removed during the first several months of life. Leslie was born in 1952 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But I was working in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health when I got to know Leslie and his incredible story. Today I’m a research consultant on autism at St. I’ve been engaged in savant syndrome research since 1962, writing and publishing widely on the subject, participating in numerous broadcast and documentary productions, even consulting for the movie Rain Man. Leslie’s talent stems from a rare but remarkable condition called savant syndrome in which a person with an underlying disability such as autism or other central nervous system illness or injury also has some extraordinary ability that stands in stark contrast to their overall handicap. That concert was my introduction to an extraordinary man and his surprising talent. On a warm summer night in June of 1980, Leslie Lemke gave a piano concert in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. ![]()
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