Harold Eliot Krents, Subject for ‘Butterflies Are Free,’ Dies at 42

Harold Eliot Krents, whose successful struggles to overcome his blindness became the subject of the play and film “Butterflies Are Free,” has died of a brain tumor.

Krents, 42, died Monday in a hospice in New York City.

He had been working recently in Washington as a lawyer for a firm involved in defending the rights of the disabled and as a consultant to the Vera Institute of Justice.

Crisis at Age 9

Krents was 9 years old when he was told that his severely limited vision would lead to total blindness in a short time. He told Life magazine in a 1970 interview that he “bawled my head off” when doctors told him that, “but I remember lying in bed that night and growing up. I knew I had to grow up or fold up--to be dependent or independent.”

Despite his handicap he earned law degrees at Harvard and University College of Oxford University, working both in government and private practice to defend and promote the rights of the disabled.

Playwright Leonard Gershe told the story of Krents as a young man winning his independence while living alone in New York in “Butterflies Are Free,” which opened on Broadway in 1968. Gershe adapted his play to the screen in 1972 and Eileen Heckart won an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her portrayal of the mother.

Krents wrote a 1972 autobiography, “To Race the Wind,” which was made into a television movie in 1980.

White House Fellow

That same year Krents became a White House fellow in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Earlier he had been a member of the President’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped.

In 1975, he founded Mainstream Inc., a nonprofit group that promotes the legal rights of the disabled.

Krents was also noted for his humor. In 1968 when a student at Harvard law school, his draft board reclassified him 1-A, saying that he couldn’t be declared blind until he had taken a preinduction physical examination for the armed forces.

“I’m particularly anxious to take the eye test,” Krents said at the time. “And (if they accept me) I want to be a bombardier.”