ESTELLE AYERS

This young woman has facile feet and a fighting heart.

She is Estelle Ayers, Buchanan, Va., who drank a toast here yesterday in defiance of a fate which has deprived her of the use of her hands since her birth 26 years ago.

She is visiting her sister, Mrs. Fanny Gordon, east Thirteenth Street.

Estelle dresses, eats and performs all the normal everyday acts uses her feet to teach handicraft.

She is supervisor of a National Youth Administration sewing project at Buchanan. She shows the workers how to make dresses and suits, knit, and crochet.

She was graduated from high school in 1933. In her school days she taught in a private kindergarten. Before taking over the NYA project she was supervisor of a similar Works Progress Administration project.

She has hobbies, too. Her favorites are writing (long-hand or typewriter), water-color painting, and drawing silhouettes of friends.

Friends give her a great big hand, because her fighting heart has proved she doesn't need hands at all.

Aug. 9, 1938