              WHO ARE THE BLIND WHO LEAD THE BLIND

                          INTRODUCTION

     The National Federation of the Blind has become by far the
most significant force in the affairs of the blind today, and its
actions have had an impact on many other groups and programs. The
Federation's President, Marc Maurer, radiates confidence and
persuasiveness. He says, "If I can find twenty people who care
about a thing, then we can get it done. And if there are two
hundred, two thousand, or twenty thousand--well, that's even
better." The National Federation of the Blind is a civil rights
movement with all that the term implies. 
     President Maurer says, "You can't expect to obtain freedom
by having somebody else hand it to you. You have to do the job
yourself. The French could not have won the American Revolution
for us. That would merely have shifted the governing authority
from one colonial power to another. So, too, we the blind are the
only ones who can win freedom for the blind, which is both
frightening and reassuring. If we don't get out and do what we
must, there is no one to blame but ourselves. We have control of
the essential elements."
     Although there are in the United States at the present time
many organizations and agencies for the blind, there is only one
National Federation of the blind. This organization was
established in 1940 when the blind of seven states--Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and
California--sent delegates to its first convention at
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Since that time progress has been
rapid and steady. The Federation is recognized by blind men and
women throughout the entire country as their primary means of
joint expression; and today--with active affiliates in every
state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico--it is the
primary voice of the nation's blind.
     To explain this spectacular growth, three questions must be
asked and answered: (1) What are the conditions in the general
environment of the blind which have impelled them to organize?
(2) What are the purpose, the belief, and the philosophy of the
National Federation of the Blind? (3) Who are its leaders, and
what are their qualifications to understand and solve the
problems of blindness? Even a brief answer to these questions is
instructive.
     When the Federation came into being in 1940, the outlook for
the blind was certainly not bright. The nation's welfare system
was so discouraging to individual initiative that those who were
forced to accept public assistance had little hope of ever
achieving self-support again, and those who sought competitive
employment in regular industry or the professions found most of
the doors barred against them. The universal good will expressed
toward the blind was not the wholesome good will of respect felt
toward equals; it was the misguided goodwill of pity felt toward
inferiors. In effect the system said to the blind, "Sit on the
sidelines of life. This game is not for you. If you have creative
talents, we are sorry, but we cannot use them." The Federation
came into being to combat these expressions of discrimination and
to promote new ways of thought concerning blindness. Although
great progress has been made toward the achievement of these
goals, much still remains to be done.
     The Federation believes that blind people are essentially
normal and that blindness in itself is not a mental or
psychological handicap. It can be reduced to the level of a mere
physical nuisance. Legal, economic, and social discrimination
based upon the false assumption that the blind are somehow
different from the sighted must be abolished, and equality of
opportunity must be made available to blind people. Because of
their personal experience with blindness, the blind themselves
are best qualified to lead the way in solving their own problems,
but the general public should be asked to participate in finding
solutions. Upon these fundamentals the National Federation of the
Blind predicates its philosophy. 
     As for the leadership of the organization, all of the
officers and members of the Board of Directors are blind, and all
give generously of their time and resources in promoting the work
of the Federation. The Board consists of seventeen elected
members, five of whom are the constitutional officers of the
organization. These members of the Board of Directors represent a
wide cross section of the blind population of the United States.
Their backgrounds are different, and their experiences vary
widely; but they are drawn together by the common bond of having
met blindness individually and successfully in their own lives
and by their united desire to see other blind people have the
opportunity to do likewise. A profile of the leadership of the
organization shows why it is so effective and demonstrates the
progress made by blind people during the past half century--for
in the story of the lives of these leaders can be found the
greatest testimonial to the soundness of the Federation's
philosophy. The cumulative record of their individual
achievements is an overwhelming proof, leading to an inescapable
conclusion.

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Jacobus tenBroek.]
[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Hazel tenBroek.]

                      DR. JACOBUS tenBROEK
           Author, Jurist, Professor, Founder of the 
                National Federation of the Blind

     The moving force in the founding of the National Federation
of the Blind (and its spiritual and intellectual father) was
Jacobus tenBroek. Born in 1911, young tenBroek (the son of a
prairie homesteader in Canada) lost the sight of one eye as the
result of a bow-and-arrow accident at the age of seven. His
remaining eyesight deteriorated until at the age of fourteen he
was totally blind. Shortly afterward he and his family traveled
to Berkeley so that he could attend the California School for the
Blind. Within three years he was an active part of the local
organization of the blind. 
     By 1934 he had joined with Dr. Newel Perry and others to
form the California Council of the Blind, which later became the
National Federation of the Blind of California. This organization
was a prototype for the nationwide federation that tenBroek would
form six years later. 
     Even a cursory glance at his professional career shows the
absurdity of the idea that blindness means incapacity. The same
year the Federation was founded (1940) Jacobus tenBroek received
his doctorate in jurisprudence from the University of California,
completed a year as Brandeis Research Fellow at Harvard Law
School, and was appointed to the faculty of the University of
Chicago Law School.
     Two years later he began his teaching career at the
University of California at Berkeley, moving steadily up through
the ranks to become full professor in 1953 and chairman of the
department of speech in 1955. In 1963 he accepted an appointment
as professor of political science.
     During this period Professor tenBroek published several
books and more than fifty articles and monographs in the fields
of welfare, government, and law--establishing a reputation as one
of the nation's foremost scholars on matters of constitutional
law. One of his books, Prejudice, War, and the Constitution, won
the Woodrow Wilson Award of the American Political Science
Association in 1955 as the best book of the year on government
and democracy. Other books are California's Dual System of Family
Law (1964), Hope Deferred: Public Welfare and the Blind (1959),
The Antislavery Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment (1951)--
revised and republished in 1965 as Equal Under Law, and The Law
of the Poor (edited in 1966).
     In the course of his academic career Professor tenBroek was
a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences at Palo Alto and was twice the recipient of fellowships
from the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1947 he earned the degree of
S.J.D. from Harvard Law School. In addition, he was awarded
honorary degrees by two institutions of higher learning. 
     Dr. tenBroek's lifelong companion was his devoted wife
Hazel. Together they raised three children and worked inseparably
on research, writing, and academic and Federation concerns. Mrs.
tenBroek still continues as an active member of the organized
blind movement.
     In 1950 Dr. tenBroek was made a member of the California
State Board of Social Welfare by Governor Earl Warren. Later
reappointed to the board three times, he was elected its chairman
in 1960 and served in that capacity until 1963.
The brilliance of Jacobus tenBroek's career led some skeptics to
suggest that his achievements were beyond the reach of what they
called the "ordinary blind person." What tenBroek recognized in
himself was not that he was exceptional, but that he was normal--
that his blindness had nothing to do with whether he could be a
successful husband and father, do scholarly research, write a
book, make a speech, guide students engaged in social action
movements and causes, or otherwise lead a productive life.
     In any case, the skeptics' theory has been refuted by the
success of the thousands of blind men and women who have put this
philosophy of normality to work in their own lives during the
past fifty years. 
     Jacobus tenBroek died of cancer at the age of fifty-six in
1968. His successor, Kenneth Jernigan, in a memorial address,
said truly of him: "The relationship of this man to the organized
blind movement, which he brought into being in the United States
and around the world, was such that it would be equally accurate
to say that the man was the embodiment of the movement or that
the movement was the expression of the man. 
     "For tens of thousands of blind Americans over more than a
quarter of a century, he was leader, mentor, spokesman, and
philosopher. He gave to the organized blind movement the force of
his intellect and the shape of his dreams. He made it the symbol
of a cause barely imagined before his coming: the cause of self-
expression, self-direction, and self-sufficiency on the part of
blind people. Step by step, year by year, action by action, he
made that cause succeed."

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Kenneth and Mary Ellen Jernigan.]

                        KENNETH JERNIGAN
                 Teacher, Writer, Administrator

     Kenneth Jernigan has been a leader in the National
Federation of the Blind for more than thirty-five years. He was
President (with one brief interruption) from 1968 until July of
1986. Although Jernigan is no longer President of the Federation,
he continues to be one of its principal leaders. He works closely
with the President, and he continues to be loved and respected by
tens of thousands--members and non-members of the Federation,
both blind and sighted.
     Born in 1926, Kenneth Jernigan grew up on a farm in central
Tennessee. He received his elementary and secondary education at
the school for the blind in Nashville. After high school Jernigan
managed a furniture shop in Beech Grove, Tennessee, making all
furniture and operating the business. 
     In the fall of 1945 Jernigan matriculated at Tennessee
Technological University in Cookeville. Active in campus affairs
from the outset, he was soon elected to office in his class and
to important positions in other student organizations. Jernigan
graduated with honors in 1948 with a B.S. degree in social
science. In 1949 he received a master's degree in English from
Peabody College in Nashville, where he subsequently completed
additional graduate study. While at Peabody he was a staff writer
for the school newspaper, co-founder of an independent literary
magazine, and a member of the Writers Club. In 1949 he received
the Captain Charles W. Browne Award, at that time presented
annually by the American Foundation for the Blind to the nation's
outstanding blind student.
     Jernigan then spent four years as a teacher of English at
the Tennessee School for the Blind. During this period he became
active in the Tennessee Association of the Blind (now the
National Federation of the Blind of Tennessee). He was elected to
the vice presidency of the organization in 1950 and to the
presidency in 1951. In that position he planned the 1952 annual
convention of the National Federation of the Blind, which was
held in Nashville, and he has been planning national conventions
for the Federation ever since. It was in 1952 that Jernigan was
first elected to the NFB Board of Directors. 
     In 1953 he was appointed to the faculty of the California
Orientation Center for the Blind in Oakland, where he played a
major role in developing the best program of its kind then in
existence. 
     From 1958 until 1978, he served as Director of the Iowa
State Commission for the Blind. In this capacity he was
responsible for administering state programs of rehabilitation,
home teaching, home industries, an orientation and adjustment
center, and library services for the blind and physically
handicapped. The improvements made in services to the blind of
Iowa under the Jernigan administration have never before or since
been equaled anywhere in the country.
     In 1960 the Federation presented Jernigan with its Newel
Perry Award for outstanding accomplishment in services for the
blind. In 1968 Jernigan was given a Special Citation by the
President of the United States. Harold Russell, the chairman of
the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped, came
to Des Moines to present the award. He said: "If a person must be
blind, it is better to be blind in Iowa than anywhere else in the
nation or in the world. This statement," the citation went on to
say, "sums up the story of the Iowa Commission for the Blind
during the Jernigan years and more pertinently of its Director,
Kenneth Jernigan. That narrative is much more than a success
story. It is the story of high aspiration magnificently
accomplished--of an impossible dream become reality."
     Jernigan has received too many honors and awards to
enumerate individually, including honorary doctorates from three
institutions of higher education. He has also been asked to serve
as a special consultant to or member of numerous boards and
advisory bodies. The most notable among these are: member of the
National Advisory Committee on Services for the Blind and
Physically Handicapped (appointed by the Secretary of Health,
Education, and Welfare), special consultant on Services for the
Blind (appointed by the Federal Commissioner of Rehabilitation),
advisor on museum programs for blind visitors to the Smithsonian
Institution, and special advisor to the White House Conference on
Library and Information Services (appointed by President Gerald
Ford). In July of 1990 Jernigan received an award for
distinguished service from the President of the United States.
     Kenneth Jernigan's writings and speeches on blindness are
better known and have touched more lives than those of any other
individual writing today. On July 23, 1975, he spoke before the
National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and his address was
broadcast live throughout the nation on National Public Radio.
Through the years he has appeared repeatedly on network radio and
television interview programs--including the "Today Show," the
"Tomorrow Show," and the "Larry King Show."
     In 1978 Jernigan moved to Baltimore to become Executive
Director of the American Brotherhood for the Blind and Director
of the National Center for the Blind. As President of the
National Federation of the Blind at that time, he led the
organization through the most impressive period of growth in its
history. The creation and development of the National Center for
the Blind and the expansion of the NFB into the position of being
the most influential voice and force in the affairs of the blind
stand as the culmination of Kenneth Jernigan's lifework and a
tribute to his brilliance and commitment to the blind of this
nation.
     Jernigan's dynamic wife Mary Ellen is an active member of
the Federation. Although sighted, she works with dedication in
the movement and is known and loved by thousands of
Federationists throughout the country. 
     Speaking at a convention of the National Federation of the
Blind, Jernigan said of the organization and its philosophy (and
also of his own philosophy):
     As we look ahead, the world holds more hope than gloom for
us--and, best of all, the future is in our own hands. For the
first time in history we can be our own masters and do with our
lives what we will; and the sighted (as they learn who we are and
what we are) can and will work with us as equals and partners. In
other words we are capable of full membership in society, and the
sighted are capable of accepting us as such--and, for the most
part, they want to..
     We want no Uncle Toms--no sellouts, no apologists, no
rationalizers; but we also want no militant hell-raisers or
unbudging radicals. One will hurt our cause as much as the other.
We must win true equality in society, but we must not dehumanize
ourselves in the process; and we must not forget the graces and
amenities, the compassions and courtesies which comprise
civilization itself and distinguish people from animals and life
from existence. 
     Let people call us what they will and say what they please
about our motives and our movement. There is only one way for the
blind to achieve first-class citizenship and true equality. It
must be done through collective action and concerted effort; and
that means the National Federation of the Blind. There is no
other way, and those who say otherwise are either uninformed or
unwilling to face the facts. We are the strongest force in the
affairs of the blind today, and we must also recognize the
responsibilities of power and the fact that we must build a world
that is worth living in when the war is over--and, for that
matter, while we are fighting it. In short, we must use both love
and a club, and we must have sense enough to know when to do
which--long on compassion, short on hatred; and, above all, not
using our philosophy as a cop-out for cowardice or inaction or
rationalization. We know who we are and what we must do--and we
will never go back. The public is not against us. Our
determination proclaims it; our gains confirm it; our humanity
demands it.

[PHOTO: Marc Maurer at podium. CAPTION: Marc Maurer.]
[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Patricia Maurer.]

                           MARC MAURER
                     Attorney and Executive

     Born in 1951, Marc Maurer was the second in a family of six
children. His blindness was caused by overexposure to oxygen
after his premature birth, but he and his parents were determined
that this should not prevent him from living a full and normal
life.
     He began his education at the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving
School, where he became an avid Braille reader. In the fifth
grade he returned home to Boone, Iowa, where he attended
parochial schools. During high school (having taken all the
courses in the curriculum) he simultaneously took classes at the
junior college.
     Maurer ran three different businesses before finishing high
school: a paper route, a lawn care business, and an enterprise
producing and marketing maternity garter belts designed by his
mother. This last venture was so successful that his younger
brother took over the business when Maurer left home. 
     In the summer of 1969, after graduating from high school,
Maurer enrolled as a student at the Orientation and Adjustment
Center of the Iowa Commission for the Blind and attended his
first convention of the NFB. He was delighted to discover in both
places that blind people and what they thought mattered. This was
a new phenomenon in his experience, and it changed his life.
Kenneth Jernigan was Director of the Iowa Commission for the
Blind at the time, and Maurer soon grew to admire and respect
him. When Maurer expressed an interest in overhauling a car
engine, the Commission for the Blind purchased the necessary
equipment. Maurer completed that project and actually worked for
a time as an automobile mechanic. He believes today that
mastering engine repair played an important part in changing his
attitudes about blindness.
     Maurer graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame
in 1974. As an undergraduate he took an active part in campus
life, including election to the Honor Society. Then he enrolled
at the University of Indiana School of Law, where he received his
Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1977.
     Marc Maurer was elected President of the Student Division of
the National Federation of the Blind in 1971 and re-elected in
1973 and 1975. Also in 1971 (at the age of twenty) he was elected
Vice President of the National Federation of the Blind of
Indiana. He was elected President in 1973 and re-elected in 1975.
     During law school Maurer worked summers for the office of
the Secretary of State of Indiana. After graduation he moved to
Toledo, Ohio, to accept a position as the Director of the Senior
Legal Assistance Project operated by ABLE (Advocates for Basic
Legal Equality).
     In 1978 Maurer moved to Washington, D.C., to become an
attorney with the Rates and Routes Division in the office of the
General Counsel of the Civil Aeronautics Board. Initially he
worked on rates cases but soon advanced to dealing with
international matters and then to doing research and writing
opinions on constitutional issues and Board action. He wrote
opinions for the Chairman and made appearances before the full
Board to discuss those opinions.
     In 1981 he went into private practice in Baltimore,
Maryland, where he specialized in civil litigation and property
matters. But increasingly he concentrated on representing blind
individuals and groups in the courts. He has now become one of
the most experienced and knowledgeable attorneys in the country
regarding the laws, precedents, and administrative rulings
concerning civil rights and discrimination against the blind. He
is a member of the Bar in Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, and Maryland; and
he is a member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United
States.  
     Maurer has always been active in civic and political
affairs, having run for public office in Baltimore and having
been elected to the board of directors of the Tenants Association
in his apartment complex shortly after his arrival. Later he was
elected to the board of his community association when he became
a home owner. From 1984 until 1986 he served with distinction as
President of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland.
     An important companion in Maurer's activities (and a leader
in her own right) is his wife Patricia. The Maurers were married
in 1973, and they have two children--David Patrick, born March
10, 1984, and Dianna Marie, born July 12, 1987.
     At the 1985 convention in Louisville, Kentucky, Dr. Kenneth
Jernigan announced that he would not stand for re-election as
President of the National Federation of the Blind the following
year, and he recommended Marc Maurer as his successor. In Kansas
City in 1986, the convention elected Maurer by resounding
acclamation, and he has capably served as President ever since.

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Joyce and Tom Scanlan.]

                         JOYCE  SCANLAN
                   Teacher and Agency Director

     Joyce Scanlan was born in Fargo, North Dakota, in 1939. She
received her elementary and secondary education at the North
Dakota School for the Blind. Having a strong love of reading and
theater, she went on to earn a B.A. in English and history and a
master's degree in English at the University of North Dakota.
     For the next five years she taught these subjects, along
with social studies and Latin, in high schools in North Dakota
and Montana. Then glaucoma took the rest of her vision, and
Scanlan lost her self-confidence. She says, "I quickly fled from
the job because I had never known a blind teacher in a public
school, and I had had such a struggle those last few weeks in the
classroom that I was positive no blind person could ever teach
sighted children."
     She had trouble finding another job, but as she points out,
her own attitudes were as bad as those of her prospective
employers. She told a counselor who visited her in the hospital:
"I've never seen a blind person amount to anything yet, so
there's no reason to think I can."
     In 1970 the National Federation of the Blind convention was
in Minneapolis, and Scanlan attended the meeting of the NFB
Teachers Division. She says: "I met many teachers there who were
blind. In fact, I met blind people from all over the country who
were engaged in a great variety of occupations. I learned what
the NFB was all about and realized what blind people working
together could do." At that convention she also met Tom Scanlan,
whom she married four years later.
     Joyce Scanlan became active in the NFB in Minnesota. In 1971
she organized a statewide student division. In 1972 she was
elected vice president of the NFB of Minnesota and president in
1973. That same year she was appointed to a newly created
Minnesota Council on Disabilities--the only representative of a
consumer organization on the Commission. Until 1988 she served on
the advisory council to State Services for the Blind, a body
established in large measure because of the work of the NFB of
Minnesota.
     The most exciting undertaking of the NFB of Minnesota,
however, has been the establishment of its own rehabilitation
center for the adult blind, with Joyce Scanlan serving as its
executive director. BLIND, Inc. (Blindness: Learning In New
Dimensions) admitted its first class, consisting of two students,
in January of 1988. This center is establishing a new standard
for rehabilitation services in the Midwest. It is easy to
understand why the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota
enjoys both respect and prestige. It is also easy to understand
why Joyce Scanlan is regarded as able, tough, and determined.
     Scanlan was elected to the NFB Board of Directors in 1974
and has continued to serve in that capacity ever since. In 1988
she was elected Secretary of the organization, and in 1992 she
was elected First Vice President. She says: "The Federation has
made a great difference in my life. I still try to spend time
attending the theater and reading, but I want to give as much
time as possible to working in the NFB. I wish I had known about
it before 1970. I want to be sure every blind person I ever meet
hears all about the Federation. If I have any skill as a teacher,
I'll use it to benefit the Federation."

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Peggy Pinder.]

                          PEGGY PINDER
       Attorney, Political Activist, and Community Leader

     Born in 1953 and raised in Grinnell, Iowa, Peggy Pinder
attended regular schools until the middle of the ninth grade.
When her eye condition was diagnosed as irreversible decline into
total blindness, her father cried for the first and only time in
her life--at least, as far as she knows.
     Pinder then spent what she characterizes as two and a half
unhappy years at the Iowa school for the blind. Academically she
learned nothing that she had not already been taught in public
schools. The students were discouraged from learning to use the
white cane and were never allowed off campus unless they were
accompanied by a sighted person. But most soul-destroying of all,
the students were discouraged from aspiring to success or from
setting themselves challenging goals. Pinder resisted the
stifling atmosphere and drew down upon herself the wrath of the
school administration, which refused to permit her to complete
high school there, forcing her to go back to public school. 
     Knowing that she was not prepared to make this transition,
she and her parents sought help from Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, then
Director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind. Pinder enrolled at
the Orientation and Adjustment Center, where she mastered the
skills of blindness and explored for the first time the healthy
and positive philosophy of blindness that has subsequently
directed her life. 
     Pinder went on to Iowa's Cornell College, where she achieved
an excellent academic record and edited the Cornellian, the
school newspaper. She then completed law school at Yale
University, receiving her J.D. degree in 1979.
     After graduation from law school, Pinder passed the Iowa Bar
in January, 1980. She then began a difficult job search. Although
her academic standing at Yale was better than that of most of her
classmates, she did not receive a single job offer as a result of
the intensive interviewing she had done during her final year of
law school. Virtually all Yale-trained attorneys leave the
university with offers in hand. The inference was inescapable:
employers were discriminating against Pinder because of her
blindness. She eventually was hired as Assistant County Attorney
for Woodbury County in Sioux City, Iowa, where she prosecuted
defendants on behalf of the people.
     Pinder's lifetime interest in helping to improve the world
around her has been expressed in politics as well as in
Federation activity. In 1976 she was a delegate to the Republican
National Convention in Kansas City.  During the Convention she
appeared on national television and in a national news magazine,
taking the occasion to acquaint the public with the philosophy of
the National Federation of the Blind and the real needs of blind
people. At the end of the convention, she was chosen to second
the nomination of Senator Robert Dole to be the candidate of the
Republican Party for the Vice Presidency of the United States. 
     In 1986 she completed a campaign for the Iowa State Senate
in District 27 (East-Central Iowa) on the Republican ticket. She
won the Primary and campaigned hard in a district eighty by
thirty miles in size and containing about 60,000 residents, a
distinct minority of whom are Republican. From April through
November she made hundreds of public appearances and managed an
efficient campaign. Like many candidates, Pinder was not elected
in her first bid for public office, but she made a very strong
showing and is often asked when she will run again. Her interest
in participating in her community has continued through her
service on the Grinnell City Council and in other community
organizations. 
     Pinder's work in the National Federation of the Blind has
been as impressive as her professional career. She held office in
the NFB Student Divisions in Iowa and Connecticut, and then
served as President of the national Student Division from 1977 to
1979. In 1981 she was elected President of the National
Federation of the Blind of Iowa, an office which she continues to
hold. Pinder was first elected to serve on the NFB Board of
Directors in 1977, and in 1984 she was elected Second Vice
President. 
     For the past several years Pinder, a 1976 winner herself,
has chaired the Scholarship Committee of the National Federation
of the Blind. Every year approximately twenty-five scholarships,
ranging in value from $1,800 to $10,000, are presented to the
best blind college students in the nation. 

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Ramona Walhof.]

                          RAMONA WALHOF
          Business Woman and Public Relations Executive

     Born in 1944, Ramona Willoughby Walhof was the second in a
family of three blind children, but the word "blind" was never
used when they were small, especially by the ophthalmologists.
Nevertheless, even the large print books ordered for the children
by the schools did not make reading possible. In the competitive
world of the classroom the truth could not be avoided--they were
blind. So they were packed up and taken more than two hundred
miles away from home to enroll in the Iowa Braille and Sight
Saving School. Walhof remembers that her parents found facing
this alternative easier than struggling with a public school
system that could not find a way to teach three bright youngsters
who could not see print. A school for the blind was better than a
school that didn't educate.
     Walhof remembers learning to lie about what she could see.
She didn't think of it as telling falsehoods, but she says, "It
made adults happy when they thought I could see things, and at
school (even though it was supposedly a school for the blind) one
had privileges and responsibilities to the same degree one had
usable eyesight." 
     During the summer following second grade Walhof commandeered
her brother's Braille slate and stylus and taught herself to
write Braille because the school considered her too young to
learn it. She was taught to read using Braille, but she
understood from the beginning that reading print (if only she
could have managed to decipher it) was better. 
     In 1962 Ramona Willoughby graduated from high school,
valedictorian of her class, but she says "with an extremely
limited education and very little experience." Between high
school and college, she took a short course of training at the
Iowa Commission for the Blind Orientation and Adjustment Center.
It was then that she met Kenneth Jernigan, the Commission's
Director. She refused to learn much about the NFB although she
now says, "The Federation had already begun to have a profound
influence on my life." She found college difficult, she says, 
because her academic background was so weak. Nevertheless, Walhof
graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 1967
with a degree in Russian language. 
     In 1968 Ramona Willoughby married Chuck Walhof of Boise,
Idaho. During the next several years she was busy. She and her
husband had two children, and she taught two sessions of
Headstart and one course in college Russian. She also managed two
vending facilities. After the death of her husband in 1972 she
returned to Des Moines, Iowa, first as a teacher and then as an
assistant director at the Orientation and Adjustment Center of
the Iowa Commission for the Blind. 
     In 1979 Walhof moved to Baltimore, Maryland, to take a
position at the National Center for the Blind as the Assistant
Director of the Job Opportunities for the Blind Program, operated
jointly by the NFB and the U.S. Department of Labor. 
     In 1982 she returned to Idaho to assume the position of
Director of the state Commission for the Blind. Her reputation
for innovative approaches and dynamic forthrightness soon reached
far beyond the borders of Idaho. In 1984 the blind of the state
recognized her achievements by giving her an award in public
ceremonies.
     Later that year she left government employment to go into
private business. Today she operates extensive multi-state public
relations and community outreach programs for the blind and other
groups.
     Ramona Walhof has written widely on topics relating to
blindness, including the following books: Beginning Braille for
Adults, (a teaching manual); Questions Kids Ask about Blindness;
A Handbook for Senior Citizens: Rights, Resources, and
Responsibilities; and Technical Assistance Guide for Employers. 
     In 1988 Walhof became president of the National Federation
of the Blind of Idaho and was also elected to membership on the
Board of Directors of the National Federation of the Blind. In
1992 she was elected Secretary of the National Federation of the
Blind.

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Allen Harris.]

                          ALLEN HARRIS
                   Teacher and Wrestling Coach

     Allen Harris of Dearborn, Michigan, was elected to the Board
of Directors of the National Federation of the Blind in 1981. In
1985 he became Secretary, and in 1988 he was elected Treasurer.
He says, "I take some satisfaction in many of the things I have
accomplished in my life, but nothing has given me more pleasure
and reward than my work in the Federation."
     Harris may well take satisfaction in his accomplishments.
Blind since birth in 1945, he completed high school at the
Michigan School for the Blind in Lansing. He says of this period,
"The two most valuable things I learned in high school were
wrestling and typing. Although I could have used some other
things, these two skills have served me well ever since." Allen
Harris was a championship wrestler throughout high school and
college. He was also a champion debater at Wayne State University
and graduated magna cum laude in 1967.
     Harris then began looking for a teaching position and
enrolled in graduate school. At that time high school teachers
were much in demand. He sent out 167 applications and went to 96
interviews without receiving a single job offer. After a year of
futile search Harris was depressed, and his friends were
outraged. One friend went to a meeting of the school board of the
Dearborn Public School System. She spoke openly about the blind
applicant for a teaching position who was so well qualified, yet
was being ignored by scores of school districts.
     The tactic worked. Officials of the school district said
that they were unaware of Harris's candidacy although he had
submitted an application. He was called for an interview and
hired to teach social studies. In addition to a full-time
teaching schedule, he coached high school wrestling, as well as
swimming and wrestling for boys from age five to fourteen. He has
coached at least six high school wrestling teams that have won
league championships and one high school state championship team.
His age group swimming teams have won five state conference
championships, and his age group wrestling teams have won six.
Harris also worked for several years in the administration of the
age group program, and the Dearborn teams continued to excel.
     In 1982 Allen Harris became a social studies teacher at
Edsel Ford High School in Dearborn. He became head of the social
studies department in 1984. Because of limited time, he gave up
the head coaching job and now works only with ninth graders, who
have not lost since he has been their coach. In 1985 Harris was
selected by the National Council of Social Studies as one of two
outstanding teachers of social studies in the state of Michigan.
     Harris says that he was aware of some Federation materials
at the time he was looking for his first teaching position and
that he found them helpful, but his real knowledge of and
involvement in the Federation began in 1969 when an organizing
team came to his door to pay a visit. They told him there was to
be a state convention of the Federation that weekend in Lansing
and that he should go. He did, and he was elected secretary of
the NFB of Michigan. He served as president of the Detroit
chapter of the NFB from 1970 to 1975 and has been the president
of the NFB of Michigan since 1976.
     During the years of Allen Harris's presidency, services to
the blind in Michigan have been consolidated into a single and
separate commission for the blind, a major victory indeed. In
1983 Harris was appointed by the governor to the board of the
Michigan Commission for the Blind, and he was reappointed in 1985
and 1988. In 1992 Harris received the prestigious Blind Educator
of the Year Award from the National Federation of the Blind.

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Steve and Peg Benson.]

                       STEPHEN O. BENSON 
      Teacher, Rehabilitation Specialist, and Administrator

     President of the National Federation of the Blind of
Illinois, Stephen O. Benson was born in Kewanee, Illinois, in
1941. Blind from birth, he attended the Chicago Public Schools,
using large print books through the first four grades. He was not
excited about attending Braille classes the next year, but he did
so and for the first time in his life learned to read well. He
also began to learn the other skills of blindness, which he found
more efficient than using sight. In high school Benson was barred
from taking physical education although he would have liked to do
so. He found this prohibition disturbing and nonsensical since he
was permitted to take the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC)
course, swimming in the same pool that the physical education
classes used. In fact, in Boy Scouts he was able to earn his
swimming merit badge and took life saving. Benson found ROTC a
positive experience and enjoyed scouting, but he never could
understand why regular physical education classes were off
limits. 
     In 1965 Benson graduated from De Paul University with a
major in English and a minor in education. Before he decided to
specialize in English, he had intended to major in psychology.
The state rehabilitation agency for the blind threatened to cut
off financial assistance to him because of his change in plans.
According to the experts, blind people could not teach in public
schools, and as a result, the rehabilitation officials refused to
finance such an absurd major. Benson remembers that his attitude
at the time was "I dare you to try to stop me!"--and the
government agency backed down. 
     After graduation he prepared himself for the usually
difficult task of job-hunting. Surprisingly, he found employment
rather quickly as a tenth-grade teacher of honors English at
Gordon Technical High School in Chicago. But teaching was not
satisfying to Benson. In 1968 he sold insurance while looking for
another job. He took one in 1969 with the Veterans Administration
Hospital in Hines, Illinois, teaching Braille and techniques of
daily living. His title was Rehabilitation Specialist. He
continued to work at Hines Blind Rehabilitation Center, Veterans
Administration Hospital, until 1983. In 1984 he became assistant
director of the Guild for the Blind in Chicago. Today he serves
in the press office of the Chicago Public Library.
     Benson married Margaret (Peggy) Gull in 1984. They have one
child, Patrick Owen, born in 1985.
     Benson first joined the National Federation of the Blind in
1968 when a new affiliate was being formed in Illinois. He was
immediately elected to the state board of directors. From 1974 to
1978 he served as President of the Chicago chapter, after which
he became President of the NFB of Illinois, a post which he has
held ever since. He was first elected to the Board of Directors
of the National Federation of the Blind in 1982.
     Benson has received many honors and appointments. In 1963
and '64 he was president of Lambda Tau Lambda fraternity. From
1976 to 1981 he served on the governing board of the State
Division of Vocational Rehabilitation in Illinois. He has served
on the Advisory Board of the Illinois State Library for the Blind
and Physically Handicapped and on the Advisory Board to the
Attorney General's Advocacy for the Handicapped Division.
     "Although I have had good blindness skills for many years,"
Benson says, "my involvement in the NFB has imbued me with
confidence and perspective on life and blindness that have
focused my activities and energized my efforts on my own behalf
as well as for other blind people."

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Charles Brown.]
[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Jacqueline Brown.]

                        CHARLES S. BROWN
                  Attorney and Federal Official

     With a bachelor's degree from Harvard and a law degree from
Northwestern, Charles Brown should have found the job market both
exciting and receptive in 1970, a year of expanded economy and
bright prospects, but this was not the case. Even though he had
impressive credentials and good grades, his job search was
difficult. He was blind. It was not the first time he had
observed adverse and extraordinary treatment of the blind, but it
was the first time he had personally faced such serious
discrimination. It took him an entire year and more than a
hundred interviews before he found a job.
     In 1971 Brown became a staff attorney for the U.S.
Department of Labor, and he received regular promotions as long
as he was there. In April of 1991 he left his position of Counsel
for Special Legal Services in the Office of the Solicitor at the
Department of Labor to become Assistant General Counsel at the
National Science Foundation. The Department of Labor presented
Brown with achievement awards five times--in 1979, 1985, twice in
1986, and 1987. In 1982 he was presented with the Distinguished
Career Service Award, one of the Department of Labor's highest
honors--often presented at the time of retirement. But Attorney
Brown was chosen for this honor after only eleven years of
service. 
     Born blind in 1944 with congenital cataracts, Charlie Brown
entered a family that expected success from its members, and he
met the expectation. He attended Perkins School for the Blind
until the eighth grade. Brown then attended Wellesley Senior High
School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1963, going
immediately on to Harvard. When he applied to Northwestern Law
School, questions were raised about blindness. He answered them
satisfactorily and believes he was one of the first blind law
students ever to study there. 
     During summer jobs in 1966, 1967, and 1968 at agencies
serving the blind in Chicago, Brown learned firsthand of the
abuses of the sheltered workshop system for the blind in this
country. It was also at that time that he met Dr. Kenneth
Jernigan and made his initial contact with the National
Federation of the Blind. Jernigan was speaking at a national
conference which, among other things, was considering ways of
improving methods of instruction and increasing the availability
of Braille. After the meeting Brown talked with Jernigan and
began to subscribe to the Braille Monitor, the Federation's
magazine. It was not until 1973, however, when Brown received a
personal invitation from a chapter member in Northern Virginia,
that he went to a Federation meeting. 
     Through a chapter in Northern Virginia Brown officially
joined the Federation in 1974 and later that year was elected to
office. In 1978 he became president of the National Federation of
the Blind of Virginia and has been re-elected to that position
for successive two-year terms ever since. He was first elected to
the Board of Directors of the National Federation of the Blind in
1984.
     Brown has always taken an active part in the life of the
United Church of Christ. He teaches Sunday school and serves
energetically on committees at the Rock Spring Congregational
Church and has served generously at the Church's national level.
In 1979 he was elected a corporate member of the United Church
Board of Homeland Ministries (the body that oversees the missions
work of the United Church of Christ). Within two years he was
named Chairman of the prestigious Policy and Planning Committee
and a member of the Executive Committee, both positions that he
filled with distinction for four years. 
     Brown met his wife Jacqueline during law school, and the
couple now has two sons, Richard (born in 1974) and Stephen (born
in 1978). 
     Brown says: "I used to believe that one had to overcome
blindness in order to be successful, but I have come to realize
that it is respectable to be blind. Our challenge as
Federationists is to persuade society of this truth."

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Donald and Betty Capps.]

                         DONALD C. CAPPS
              Insurance Executive and Civic Leader

     Few more compelling examples of personal independence and
social contribution can be found among either sighted or blind
Americans than Donald C. Capps of Columbia, South Carolina. Since
the inception of the National Federation of the Blind of South
Carolina in 1956, he has served eleven two-year terms as
president and presently holds that office. Capps was elected to
the second vice presidency of the National Federation of the
Blind in 1959 and served in that capacity until 1968. In that
year he was elected First Vice President and served with
distinction in that position until 1984 when, for health reasons,
he asked that his name not be placed in nomination. In 1985 Capps
(restored in health) was again enthusiastically and unanimously
elected to membership on the Board of Directors of the National
Federation of the Blind, a position which he still holds. 
     Born in 1928, Capps was educated at the South Carolina
School for the Blind and later in public schools. Following his
graduation from high school he enrolled in Draughon's Business
College in Columbia and, upon receiving his diploma, joined the
Colonial Life and Accident Insurance Company of Columbia as a
claims examiner trainee. By the time of his retirement, he had
risen to the position of Staff Manager of the Claims Department.
     Capps first became interested in the organized blind
movement in 1953 and by the following year had been elected
president of the Columbia Chapter of the Aurora Club of the Blind
(now the NFB of South Carolina), which he headed for two years
before assuming the presidency of the state organization. Under
Capps's energetic leadership the NFB of South Carolina has
successfully backed twenty-six pieces of legislation concerning
the blind in the state, including establishment of a separate
agency serving the blind. Capps edits the Palmetto Blind, the
quarterly publication of the NFB of South Carolina, articles from
which are frequently reprinted in national journals for the
blind. In 1960 Capps directed a campaign which led to
construction of the National Federation of the Blind of South
Carolina's $250,000 education and recreation center, which was
expanded in 1970, and again in 1978. He now serves as a member of
its Board of Trustees. In this role he has been instrumental in
establishing full-time daily operation of the Federation Center.
In addition, Capps has served for more than thirty years as the
successful fund-raising chairman of the Columbia Chapter. In 1963
Capps was appointed to the Governor's Committee on the Employment
of the Physically Handicapped.
     In December, 1972, the Colonial Life and Accident Insurance
Company presented Capps with an award for "twenty-five years of
efficient, faithful, and loyal service" in his managerial
capacity. In 1984 Don Capps retired from the Colonial Life and
Accident Insurance Company after thirty-eight years of service. 
     In 1965 Donald Capps was honored as Handicapped Man of the
Year, both by his city of Columbia and by his state. In 1967 he
was appointed to the Governor's Statewide Planning Committee on
Rehabilitation Needs of the Disabled. Capps was elected president
of the Rotary Club of Forest Acres of Columbia in 1974. In 1977
he was elected Vice Chairman of the South Carolina Commission for
the Blind Consumer Advisory Committee. Also in 1977, at the
annual convention of the National Federation of the Blind, Don
Capps received the highest honor that can be bestowed by the
organized blind movement, the Jacobus tenBroek Award. 
     Honor and recognition continue to come to Donald Capps. In
1981 he was appointed by the Governor of South Carolina to
membership on the Board of Commissioners of the South Carolina
School for the Blind, a body on which he now serves as Vice
Chairman. In September, 1988, Donald Capps was a member of the
NFB delegation to the Second General Assembly of the World Blind
Union, held in Madrid, Spain. In October of 1992 Capps was a
member of the NFB delegation to the Third General Assembly of the
World Blind Union, held in Cairo, Egypt.
     Betty Capps has been an active Federationist as long as her
husband has. The Cappses have two grown children, Craig and Beth,
and three grandchildren. Although Donald Capps has retired from
business, he continues to be as active and effective as ever in
the Federation, exemplifying leadership and confidence. His
ongoing dedication to the National Federation of the Blind
provides inspiration and encouragement to his many colleagues and
friends within and outside the Federation. 

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Glenn and Norma Crosby.]

                          GLENN CROSBY
                Businessman and Community Leader

     The President of the National Federation of the Blind of
Texas is Glenn Crosby of Houston. He was first elected to that
position in 1968 and served until 1970. He was again elected in
1978. Crosby is a successful restaurant owner and manager, having
opened his first snack bar in 1968. During the past twenty years
he has owned food service businesses at five separate locations,
usually two or three at a time. He has served on the school board
of All Saints Elementary Catholic School, been a director of the
Houston Heights Little League, and been active in several city
and county political campaigns. 
     On April 15, 1989, Glenn Crosby and Norma Beathard were
married. Norma is the capable President of the National
Federation of the Blind of Houston. 
     Born in 1945, Glenn Crosby was blinded at the age of three
by an accident. He was educated at the Texas School for the
Blind. He says that there were so many restrictive rules at that
school that the students learned to defy them. "It was the only
way to survive," he says. "We learned (for better or worse) to
take risks when we were still young." 
     The only dating permitted was expeditions to school socials.
Students could leave the campus only in groups and only on
Saturday afternoons twice a month unless they had specific
parental permission for additional trips. Crosby graduated in
1963. The preceding year half the senior class was not graduated
because they had left campus a few days before the ceremony for a
celebration. The message to the Class of '63 was perhaps not what
school officials had intended. The students did not forego their
party; they merely took pains to insure that they were not
caught. Crosby's assessment of the school's curriculum is that
the classes were not bad but that the courses that would have
allowed admission to the best colleges and universities were not
available. He earned state championships in wrestling and was
offered the opportunity to compete for the Olympics in 1964.
Crosby believes that blindness was the reason he was not offered
a wrestling scholarship at a prestigious school. 
     Poor as his education was, Crosby is grateful that he was
among the relative handful of blind Texans who were educated at
all at the time. Many blind youngsters were sent to the school
for the blind as teenagers to learn a trade if they could, and
most of these people are now employed in the state's thirteen
sheltered workshops, frequently earning painfully low wages. It
is not hard to understand why Glenn Crosby devotes a large part
of his time and energy to the National Federation of the Blind--
the consumer organization working to improve the lives and
prospects of blind people.
     Crosby's first job was with the Poverty Program. The only
blind people he knew who earned a decent living worked in food
service under the Randolph-Sheppard program. His parents had been
in business and had done some fast food service. Crosby did not
want a business run by the state commission for the blind. He
believed that he had had enough experience with state bureaucracy
at the School for the Blind. Besides, he had learned to take
risks young. Crosby does not doubt today that he made the right
decision.
     "If I had not seen it for myself, it would be hard for me to
believe that the blind have made as much progress as we have
since I have been a part of the Federation--a little more than
twenty years. There are still thousands of blind people in Texas
(and I am sure even more throughout the country) who have never
had much of an education or much constructive help. The quality
of their lives is poor. One day at a time I try to do my part to
help improve the quality of life for all of us who are blind."

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Priscilla and Jack Ferris.]

                        PRISCILLA FERRIS
              Homemaker, Girl Scout Administrator,
                     and Community Volunteer

     In 1938 Priscilla Pacheco Ferris was born in Dighton,
Massachusetts. From the time she was a small child, she knew she
had weak eyesight, but she and her family did not know that the
condition, retinitis pigmentosa, would deteriorate into total
blindness. During her early school years Ferris used print, but
three years later, when her brother (who had the same eye
condition) entered school, the staff refused to teach two blind
children. So the Pacheco youngsters enrolled in the Perkins
School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts.
     When Ferris entered Perkins, she was beginning the fourth
grade, and  she was expected to learn Braille immediately even
though she could still read large print. She remembers that it
took her about a month. She didn't feel put upon; it was simply a
challenge. Today she recalls this when she must deal with debates
about whether a blind child should read Braille or print. "Teach
both," Ferris says unequivocally. "Low-vision children were not
too stupid to learn both when I was a kid, and things haven't
changed that much since." 
     After high school graduation in 1956, Priscilla Pacheco
worked in a curtain factory for a year. She would have liked to
go to college but did not have the money. Then she worked for
five years in a cookie factory, doing whatever needed to be done,
including assembly line work, packaging, and packing. She married
Jack Ferris in 1961, and in 1963 she resigned to begin a family.
The Ferrises now have two grown daughters.
     In 1977, Priscilla Ferris finally had an opportunity to
attend business school, where she earned a degree and graduated
with distinction. Then she found a job as secretary for the Fall
River Public Schools. By the time funding cuts eliminated her
position, she was too busy with community activities and work for
the Federation to look for another job. 
     Ferris led her first Girl Scout troop while working at the
cookie factory in the 1950's. From that time until her own
daughters were in Scouts she led troops from time to time. In
1974 she began fourteen years as town administrator for the Girl
Scouts in Somerset, Massachusetts, a job in which she was
responsible for the entire scouting program for the city. She
quips that, not only can she light a fire in the rain, raise a
tent in a storm, and dig a latrine almost anywhere, but she can
teach anyone else to. In 1986 she was elected to the Board of
Directors of the Girl Scout Council of Plymouth Bay, and she has
recently been elected to another three-year term. Ferris's
contribution to scouting was recognized by the Council when it
presented her with an award as the Outstanding Adult in 1986.
     Ferris first heard of the National Federation of the Blind
when a new chapter was formed in her area in 1961. She was mildly
interested, but she did not join the Federation until 1974,
shortly before losing the remainder of her eyesight. In 1976
Ferris was elected president of the Greater Fall River Chapter of
the NFB of Massachusetts. She has been re-elected president every
year from that time until the present.
     In 1977, Ferris was elected second vice president of the NFB
of Massachusetts and in 1981 first vice president. In 1985, she
was elected President of the National Federation of the Blind of
Massachusetts, and she has been re-elected for succeeding
two-year terms ever since. She was elected to the Board of
Directors of the National Federation of the Blind in July of
1987.

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Sam and Vanessa Gleese.]

                           SAM GLEESE
                Businessman and Ordained Minister

     In 1947 Vicksburg, Mississippi, was not an ideal place for a
black child to be born with congenital cataracts. For years no
one even noticed that little Sam Gleese had difficulty seeing,
least of all Sam himself. He simply assumed that everyone else
saw things with the hazy imprecision that he did. 
     One day, when he was in the second grade, the teacher in the
segregated school he attended sent a note home, asking his mother
to come to school for a conference. To the Gleese family's
astonishment she told them that he had significant difficulty
seeing to read and do board work. By the fourth grade the bouts
of surgery had begun. Glasses (which Sam hated and forgot to wear
most of the time) were prescribed. But none of this effort
enabled young Sam to glimpse much of what his friends could see.
Then, in 1962 when he was fifteen, Sam underwent surgery that
gave him enough vision to show him by comparison just how little
he had seen until that time. 
     He graduated from high school in 1966 and enrolled that fall
at Jackson State College, where he majored in business
administration. Looking back, Sam is sure that he was legally
blind throughout these years, but he never considered that he
might have anything in common with the blind students he saw on
campus. His struggle was always to see, and that made him
sighted. Occasionally he was forced to deal with his difficulty
in reading, particularly when a fellow student or teacher pointed
out what he seemed to be missing, but for the most part he denied
his situation and resented those who tried to make him face his
problem. 
     After graduation in 1970, Sam joined a management training
program conducted by K-Mart. Everyone agreed that he was
excellent on the floor and dealing with employees, but, though he
did not realize it, he was extremely unreliable in doing
paperwork. He consistently put information on the wrong line. His
supervisor confronted him with the problem and told him he had
vision trouble. Sam hotly denied it, but within the year he was
out of the program. 
     During the following years Gleese applied repeatedly for
jobs that would use his business training. When he supplied
information about his medical history and his vision, would-be
employers lost interest. Finally in late 1972 he got a job as
assistant night stock clerk with a grocery chain. He had a wife
to support--he and Vanessa Smith had married in August of 1970--
and he needed whatever job he could find. Gradually he worked his
way up to assistant frozen food manager in the chain, though it
wasn't easy. 
     Then in 1979 his retinas detached, and within a few weeks
late in the year he had become almost totally blind. For a month
or two he was profoundly depressed. His wife, however, refused to
give up on him or his situation. Gradually Gleese began to
realize that she was right. He could still provide for his family
and find meaningful work to do. He just had to master the
alternative methods used by blind people. Early in 1980 he
enrolled in an adult training center in Jackson, where he learned
Braille, cane travel, and daily living skills. He is still
remembered in the program for the speed with which he completed
his training. By the following summer he was working as a
volunteer counselor at the center, and in the fall, with the help
of the state vocational rehabilitation agency, he and his wife
Vanessa were working in their own tax preparation business. 
     It was difficult, however, to maintain a sufficient income
year round, and the Gleeses had a daughter Nicole, born in 1976,
to think about. In 1983 Sam decided to try taking a job making
mops in the area sheltered workshop for the blind. He worked
there for two years until a staff member pointed out that he
could do better for himself in the state's Randolph-Sheppard
Vending Program, which had finally been opened to African
Americans in 1980-81.
     In January of 1985 Sam Gleese was assigned the worst vending
stand in the state of Mississippi. Because of his degree in
business administration, his phenomenal record in personal
rehabilitation, and his work history in the grocery business,
officials decided that he needed no training but could learn the
program in his own location. He spent two years in that facility,
mastering the business and improving his techniques. Then he
moved to a better location for a further two years. He now
operates a small lunch and snack facility in the federal building
in Jackson, Mississippi, while he waits for a better location to
come along. In 1992 he bid on an excellent facility and appealed
the decision which awarded it to another vendor. Though the
appeal decision which eventually came down did not help him
directly, it did correct unfair practices that had plagued many
vendors in Mississippi for years. 
     Gleese has always been active in the Missionary Baptist
Church. From 1973 to 1990 he taught the adult Sunday school class
in his own church, and in 1980 he became a Deacon. In the fall of
1991 Gleese began attending night classes at Mississippi Baptist
Seminary part-time, and he expects to graduate in 1994. He was
ordained to the ministry in November of 1992 and now teaches the
church's new members and heads its scouting program. 
     Sam Gleese first heard about the National Federation of the
Blind in the early 1980's and attended his first national
convention in 1983. He reports that from that moment on he has
been a committed Federationist. Vanessa has worked steadily
beside him through the years as he has struggled to improve the
lives of Mississippi's blind citizens. He became president of one
of the state's three chapters in 1985, and the following year he
was elected for a two-year term as state president. In 1990 he
was returned to the affiliate's presidency, where he continues to
serve. But now under his leadership, there are seven chapters and
another soon to be organized. 
     In 1992 Gleese was elected to the Board of Directors of the
National Federation of the Blind. He has dedicated his life to
educating the public, blind and sighted alike, about the
abilities of blind people. According to him, too many people in
Mississippi believe, as he did for so many years, that blind
people can do nothing and belong in rocking chairs and back
rooms. Sam Gleese is making a difference everywhere he puts his
hand.

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Frank Lee.]
[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Frankie Lee.]

                            FRANK LEE
                            Minister

     In Huntsville, Alabama, the pastor of Lakeside United
Methodist Church is the Reverend Frank Lee. Lakeside claims one
of the best-educated congregations of United Methodist churches
in Alabama. The Reverend Lee has experienced far more
discrimination and misunderstanding within the church and outside
it because of his blindness than because of his race. When he
first became an ordained minister ready for assignment to a
church, the conference leadership planned that he would be a
conference evangelist serving without salary. He objected because
the church to which he hoped to be assigned was being left
without a minister. There was no escaping the conclusion that the
conference leaders believed a blind person could not handle the
responsibilities of a church pastor. Church members in all but
one of the churches to which the Reverend Lee has been assigned
have also objected at first to having a blind minister, but Lee
has always won their love and respect in short order. 
     In the United Methodist Church in the mid-seventies it was
not customary for the pastor to request a particular church.
Rather, the conference bishop and district superintendents
conferred with local churches to make assignments. The Reverend
Lee found that he must depart from this practice and make the
request. As a young minister, he had to challenge the decisions
of his superiors, something not calculated ordinarily to gain
their confidence and respect, but it was necessary. Winning the
trust and affection of church leaders and parishioners has taken
time, but Lee has done it. 
     Frank Lee was born in Semmes, Alabama, in 1942. Soon
afterward, his family moved to Dothan. He found himself in the
middle of a farm family of fifteen children. When he was six, one
eye was injured in an accident. The medicine available to the
Lees at the time could not prevent infection from spreading to
the other eye, causing total blindness within a few months.
     Lee feels fortunate that his family learned about the school
for the blind in Talladega, and he went there a year later. He
remembers crying when he had to leave home and return to school.
He also remembers that it was the only way for him to get an
education. The academic curriculum was quite good. Lee
participated in many sports, including baseball and volleyball,
as well as singing in the choir from elementary through high
school.
     The school Lee attended was the Alabama Institute for the
Deaf and Blind, which consisted of four separate schools: the
white deaf, the white blind, the black deaf, and the black blind.
The campus for the black blind was very small, and it was
separated from all the others.
     Frank Lee remembers things that were exciting opportunities
to him at the time. In 1952 he was the first child in his part of
the school to use the Perkins Braille Writer. In 1962 he was in
the third class to graduate from the black blind school. Prior to
1959 there were so few black blind high school students that they
took courses in a public school in Talladega, receiving high
school diplomas there. While most schools for the blind in the
1950's and early 1960's were just getting a good start at
integrating blind youngsters into public school classes, Lee's
school was just getting enough blind students to offer a complete
high school curriculum. Integration of the races was still almost
a decade away. 
     Between 1962 and 1966 Frank Lee spent twenty-one months
operating a vending facility under the Randolph-Sheppard program,
but he wanted to go to college. He had earned good grades, but
not until 1966 could he convince the state rehabilitation agency
for the blind to help him. In 1970 he earned a bachelor's degree
in psychology from Talladega College. During these years Lee
worked periodically as a camp counselor and in vending
facilities. He was also active in church work. He had been
singing in church choirs for years, and in 1962 he preached his
first sermon. In 1973 he completed studies at the
Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. He also
studied at Colgate Rochester Divinity School in Rochester, New
York.
     In 1976 Frank Lee married Frankie Boyd, whom he met in
college.
     Lee joined the National Federation of the Blind in 1982 and
was elected Treasurer of the NFB of Alabama in 1985. In 1986 he
was elected to the National Board of Directors and has been
re-elected for successive two-year terms ever since.

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Diane McGeorge.]
[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Ray McGeorge.]

                         DIANE MCGEORGE
              Medical Secretary and Agency Director

     Diane McGeorge was born in 1932 and grew up in Nebraska. She
was blinded by meningitis at age two. She says that she was
"slightly educated" at the Nebraska School for the Blind. Upon
graduating she learned that no blind person--regardless of how
well-qualified--has an easy time in the job market. She enrolled
in a Denver business college to learn typing and transcribing
before going on to the University of Colorado to train as a
medical secretary, her profession for a number of years, with
time away to raise her family.  
     McGeorge spent eight years as a full-time homemaker and
mother, including stints as den mother, Sunday school teacher,
and PTA officer. Throughout these years she was a passive member
of the Federation. She served on committees and prepared
refreshments, but she did not consider that she had any part in
the struggle of the blind against discrimination. Her husband Ray
was much more active in the Federation. She ignored or overlooked
the instances when she had been turned down by landlords or
barred from restaurants because of her dog guide, describing her
actions as "looking on the bright side."  
     However, McGeorge attended the 1973 NFB convention in New
York City and discovered for herself the power and commitment
that derive from shared experience and determination to alter the
status quo. From that moment her life began to change. This is
the way she tells it:  
     "One bitterly cold day in December, Ray and I stopped at a
run-down coffee shop. It was the only warm place available, or we
wouldn't have set foot in it. We did so, however, and when we
did, the proprietor told us we couldn't bring my dog in. I was so
furious I almost burst into tears. I walked out, but I thought
and thought about that experience--and I said, deep in my heart,
that nobody was ever going to make me feel that way again. I had
been a coward to let it happen.
     "About six months later we attempted to go to a movie, and
the manager said we couldn't bring the dog into the theater. I
was well acquainted with Colorado's White Cane Law, so we had
what turned out to be a two-hour battle over the issue. I came
away from there not feeling cowardly or guilty or as if I were
not quite as good as the manager because he could see and I
couldn't." 
     In 1976 Diane McGeorge assumed the state presidency of the
NFB of Colorado, and she served in that office until she decided
to step down in September of 1991. Under her leadership the NFB
of Colorado became one of the strongest state affiliates in the
Federation. Recently the NFB of Colorado took a giant step
forward in serving the blind of the state. In January of 1988 the
Colorado Center for the Blind with Diane McGeorge as executive
director opened its doors for business. Four students enrolled
initially, and the numbers have been growing ever since. These
students learn the skills of blindness from teachers who believe
in the fundamental competence of the blind. But even more
important, they learn positive attitudes about blindness.   
     In 1977 McGeorge was elected to the Board of Directors of
the National Federation of the Blind, an honor and responsibility
which she continues to hold. From 1984 to 1992 she served as the
organization's First Vice President. In 1982 Diane and Ray
McGeorge were presented with the Jacobus tenBroek Award for their
work in improving the lives of the blind of the nation.  
     McGeorge says of her life since 1973, "These years have been
more stimulating and rewarding than any previous period in my
life. I don't wish to imply that I was unhappy prior to my
becoming active in the Federation--quite the contrary. I was
busy, and the things I was doing were important. But they were
not as important as the Federation's agenda. Each thing the NFB
does affects tens of thousands of people. Part of what I have
learned is that what I do matters.
     "I suppose," she says, "it is a commentary on the way I used
to feel about myself; but until the last few years, it never
occurred to me that anyone could do what I am now doing--let
alone that I could. I would have been astonished to learn that
thousands of blind people could and would work together to make
real changes that affect all of us profoundly."   

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Betty and Charles Niceley.]

                          BETTY NICELEY
         Rehabilitation Instructor and Outreach Educator

     Born in 1934, Betty Niceley was largely raised by her
grandparents, who managed a series of country stores in Kentucky.
She remembers three of these, each one larger than the one
before. The family lived beside the stores, doing whatever needed
to be done. It was all part of the family lifestyle--stocking
shelves, filling orders, cashiering--and it was good experience
for a blind child, who might have had trouble finding work
elsewhere.
     At the age of nine, Betty Niceley left home to attend the
Kentucky School for the Blind in Louisville. There she believes
she got a reasonably good education. However, she transferred
back home to Bell County High School, where she graduated. Her
senior class chose her as queen and the person most likely to
succeed.
     Niceley attended Georgetown College in central Kentucky,
where she received a bachelor's degree in English and a secondary
teaching certificate. It was at this time that she met her
husband Charles. The Niceleys now have a daughter and two
grandsons.
     Her first real job after graduating from college was with
the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville. She did
public relations and development work as well as filling in
wherever Braille expertise, poise, or common sense were needed.
After thirteen years at the Printing House, she changed jobs and
began teaching Braille at the Rehabilitation Center operated by
the Kentucky Department for the Blind. When the state's
Independent Living Center opened in the fall of 1980, she joined
the staff and again found herself doing whatever needed to be
done. She taught Braille, techniques of daily living, and
rudimentary travel skills to people of all ages. She also did
virtually all the outreach education for groups who need
instruction about blindness and dealing with blind people. She
now works as information specialist for the Kentucky Department
for the Blind.
     Betty Niceley first joined the Federation in 1968 although
she had known about it for a long time without, as she puts it,
"finding the time to get involved." Then she joined, and it was
not long before her commitment and performance were such that she
was elected secretary of the National Federation of the Blind of
Kentucky. At about this time she was also president of the
Greater Louisville Chapter, a position she held until 1975.
Niceley has served as president of the National Federation of the
Blind of Kentucky since 1979. 
     In 1977 the State of Kentucky created a separate Department
for the Blind, responsible directly to the Governor. Niceley
points to this as one of the NFB of Kentucky's many
accomplishments of which she is especially proud. "When my poor
vision worsened and I became totally blind in my senior year of
college, I had little trouble adjusting. I had learned to read
and write Braille as a child and kept up both skills. That is one
of the reasons I have been so excited about the National
Association to Promote the Use of Braille (NAPUB)." Betty Niceley
was elected its first president, a position which she still
holds. She was elected to the Board of Directors of the National
Federation of the Blind in 1985 and has been re-elected for
successive two-year terms ever since.

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Fred and Cathy Schroeder.]

                         FRED SCHROEDER
         Teacher, Administrator, and Government Official

     Fred Schroeder, the youngest member of the Board of
Directors of the National Federation of the Blind, was born in
1957 in Lima, Peru. His parents decided that he and his brother
(six years older) would have better opportunities growing up in
the United States, so they took steps to make it happen. By the
time he was two, Fred had been adopted by Florence Schroeder of
Albuquerque, New Mexico.  
     When he was seven, Schroeder developed a little-known
disorder known as Stephens-Johnson's Syndrome, which caused a
gradual deterioration of eyesight and other serious physical
problems. By the time he was sixteen, he was totally blind.  
     In order to do his school work during junior high and high
school, he used a combination of taped materials, live readers,
and simply not doing homework. He was able to take extra courses
during these years and still maintain above-average grades. In
spite of worsening eyesight, however, he resisted the idea of
learning to read and write Braille. But by the time he was a
senior in high school, he had changed his mind and taught himself
to read and write it. He used Braille constantly throughout
college.  
     Schroeder received a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1977
from San Francisco State UniversIty. In 1978 he earned a master's
in elementary education and qualified for a California teaching
certificate. He had then just turned twenty-one. 
     By 1977 Fred Schroeder had attended several conventions of
the National Federation of the Blind of California, and in that
year he was elected president of the Student Division in that
state. He attended his first National Convention in Baltimore
during July of 1978. While there, he was offered a job as travel
instructor at the Orientation and Adjustment Center in Lincoln,
Nebraska. Initially Schroeder turned the job down, preferring to
teach children. By the time he received his master's in August,
however, he had decided to take the job and move to Nebraska,
where he worked for two years. During this time he met Cathlene
Nusser, a leader in the NFB of Nebraska, and the two were married
in January of 1981.  
     Also during these Nebraska years, Schroeder took course work 
at San Francisco State University to strengthen his credentials
as an instructor in orientation and mobility. 
     In September of 1980 Schroeder moved back to Albuquerque,
New Mexico, where he became an itinerant teacher of blind
children for the Albuquerque Public Schools. He worked for a year
in this job before being promoted to the position of coordinator
of low-incidence programs for the Albuquerque Public School
System, a job he held with distinction for five years. 
     In 1986 he was appointed director of the newly-established
New Mexico Commission for the Blind. In that position he has
earned a nationwide reputation as one of the most dynamic and
innovative administrators in the field of work with the blind.
Schroeder has completed course work for a Ph.D. in educational
administration from the University of New Mexico. He is currently
writing his dissertation on teacher evaluation. 
     Schroeder has served his community and state in a number of
positions. With only a two-year respite, he has been a member of
the Braille Authority of North America since 1982, serving as
vice chairman for a term. He has also served on the governing
board of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf in New Mexico
beginning in 1984. Schroeder represented the Braille Authority of
North America and the National Federation of the Blind at the
International Conference on English Literary Braille in London,
England, in 1988. Since 1987 he has served on the New Mexico
Governor's Committee on Concerns of the Handicapped and was
elected to serve as vice chairman during the first year of his
second six-year term as a member of that body. In 1991 he became
the first president of the newly established International
Council on English Braille. 
     In 1980 Schroeder was elected to the board of directors of
the National Federation of the Blind of New Mexico and in 1982
became the president of the organization, a position he held
until 1986. In 1984 Schroeder was elected to the Board of
Directors of the National Federation of the Blind. From 1983 to
1989 he served as president of the National Association of Blind
Educators. 
     Schroeder remembers: "In 1978 I was getting a master's
degree in the education of blind children, a field in which there
was a nationwide shortage. After thirty-five or forty interviews,
I didn't have a single job offer. I had to deal firsthand with
the very real fact of discrimination against the blind. It is
hard to keep an experience like that from eroding your
self-confidence. It makes you question whether as a blind person
you can compete in society, whether you can get past people's
expectations and prejudices to show them what you can really do.
The National Federation of the Blind makes the difference. It
provides a way for blind people to give each other moral support,
encouragement, and meaningful information. It helps the people
who are coming along to have advantages we didn't--and in the
very act of encouraging and supporting others, we sustain and
nurture our own morale and self-belief."  

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Joanne and Harold Wilson.]

                          JOANNE WILSON
                  Teacher and Agency Director  

     Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1946, Joanne Ziehan Wilson
moved with her parents to Webster City, Iowa, when she was seven.
When she was 3, doctors had discovered that she had retinitis
pigmentosa. She remembers everyone's attitude toward her poor
eyesight. No one regarded her as blind, but everyone knew her eye
condition could lead to blindness, a fact which friends and
family did not want to confront. The whispers taught Wilson that
this being "blind" was a dreadful thing. She learned to pretend
she could see to avoid the pity that would follow if she could
not. And she learned to avoid thinking about blindness. It was
too awful. Never once can Wilson remember discussing blindness
with a teacher or friend at school. She never met a single blind
person. All she knew was that she did not want to be blind or
think about it. Being blind wasn't respectable. 
     After Wilson graduated from high school, she enrolled in a
junior college. At that time the Iowa Commission for the Blind
conducted a career day for blind students, which she attended.
For the first time she met blind people. They were confident and
capable. She decided that at the end of her second year of junior
college she would take time out to attend the Orientation and
Adjustment Center. Those nine months she describes as "the most
exciting time of my life. I found freedom, and it wasn't always
easy." 
     In 1969 Joanne Wilson graduated with honor from Iowa State
University, where she received a B.S. in Elementary Education.
During one quarter she was selected as a Merrill Palmer Scholar
to do advanced work in education in Detroit, Michigan. 
     For the next four years Wilson taught elementary school
(second and fourth grades) in the Ames, Iowa, public school
system. In 1971 she received a master's degree in Guidance and
Counseling. During this time Wilson helped to organize the North
Central Iowa Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, and
she served for several years as its president. From 1977 to 1979
she was first vice president of the National Federation of the
Blind of Iowa. 
     In 1973 Wilson had stopped teaching to begin a family. She
is now the mother of 5 children ages 5 to 15. In 1979 she and her
family moved to Louisiana, and here she continued her Federation
work. In 1981 Wilson led the formation of a new NFB chapter in
her hometown of Ruston, Louisiana, and forty people attended the
first meeting. It was the eighth chapter in the state. Today in
Louisiana there are twenty-one chapters. 
     Joanne Wilson was elected President of the NFB of Louisiana
in 1983 and has been elected for successive two-year terms ever
since. In 1985 Governor Edwin Edwards recommended to the State
Legislature that money be appropriated directly to the NFB of
Louisiana for a training center for blind adults, and the
prestige and reputation of the organization were such that the
legislature responded affirmatively.  
     The Louisiana Center for the Blind opened in October of 1985
with Joanne Wilson as its director, and the program which she has
built is rapidly coming to be recognized throughout the nation as
a model of excellence. Well over two hundred students have now
enrolled in the program, and they graduate ready for competition
in the mainstream of society and convinced that it is respectable
to be blind. In the spring of 1991 Joanne, who had been divorced
from her first husband for a number of years, married Harold
Wilson, a quiet man who shares his wife's dedication to improving
the lives of blind people everywhere. 

[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Gary Wunder.]
[PHOTO: Portrait. CAPTION: Sue Wunder.]

                           GARY WUNDER
                  Senior Programmer Analyst and
                    Electronics Technologist

     Gary Wunder was born three months prematurely in 1955, the
oldest of four children. His family lived in Kansas City,
Missouri, and Wunder remembers that since he was blind from
birth, he managed to persuade everyone in his family except his
father to do precisely what he wanted. It would be many years
before Wunder could appreciate his father's instinctive
understanding that Gary had to learn to do things for himself.  
     Wunder tells with amusement the story of his dawning
awareness of his blindness. When he was two, his home had sliding
glass doors separating the living room from the patio. When those
doors were closed, he could not hear and therefore did not know
what was happening on the other side and assumed that no one else
could either. One day he found several soft drink bottles on the
patio and broke them. His father then opened the doors and asked
if he had broken the bottles. Gary said he had not and that he
did not know how they had been broken. His father then astonished
him by saying that both his parents had watched him break the
bottles and that his mother was now crying because she had
thought surely her baby couldn't tell a lie. Gary's response was
to say, "Well, she knows better now."  
     Wunder attended grades one through five at a Kansas City
public school. When he was ten, a boy who attended the Missouri
School for the Blind persuaded him that he was missing real life
by staying at home. At the school, his friend told him kids rode
trains and buses. They could bowl and swim and didn't have to
listen to parents. As a result Wunder did some persuading at home
and was on hand for sixth grade and some necessary but painful
lessons about that real world.   
     At the close of seventh grade Wunder returned to public
schools, having learned several vitally important lessons: he
knew the basics of using a white cane; he recognized that his
father's demands on him had sprung from strong love and eagerness
for his son to succeed; and he understood that people beyond his
own family had worth and deserved his respect. But he had also
learned that the school for the blind was not the promised land,
and he was delighted to be once more in public schools for eighth
grade and high school. He was elected to the National Honor
Society his senior year but struggled with the mechanics of
getting his work done. Braille was not readily available, and
readers were hard to recruit without the money to pay them.  
     Wunder planned to attend the University of Missouri at
Kansas City in order to live with his grandmother, but after a
taste of freedom at the orientation center in Columbia, Missouri,
the summer before college he decided to enroll at the
University's Columbia campus, where everyone walked everywhere
and where he could contrive as many as three or four dates an
evening if he hurried from place to place.  
     Wunder enjoys recounting the adventure which  persuaded him
that a blind person should always carry a white cane: "I was
having dinner with a young woman who lived near me, so I had not
brought my cane, figuring that I wouldn't need it. To my
consternation and her distress, my plate of liver and onions slid
into my lap. She asked if I wanted her to walk me home so that I
could change. I was already so embarrassed that I assured her I
would be right back and that I did not need her assistance. The
busiest intersection in Columbia lay between me and clean slacks,
and after I successfully survived that street crossing, I swore
that I would never again be caught without my cane."  
     Wunder decided to major in political science and philosophy
because he felt compelled to avoid the science and math that he
loved but feared to take. During his sophomore year he met a
professor from Central Missouri State University who suggested
that he was ducking the challenge. Together they explored the
question of whether or not a blind person could follow schematics
and read volt-meters. The answers seemed to be yes, so Wunder
transferred to Central Missouri State, where he graduated in 1977
with a degree in electronics technology. He had done well with
the courses, but he did not see how he could run a repair shop
with its responsibility for mastering hundreds of schematics for
appliances. He could teach electronics, but the professors from
whom he had learned the most were those who had firsthand
experience. He didn't want to be the theory-only kind of teacher. 
     Wunder looked for interim jobs after graduation while he
tried to decide what to do, and he discovered the hard way that
blind job-seekers have to be better than the competition in order
to be considered at all. He vowed to become so well trained at
doing something that would-be employers could not ignore him.
Wunder enrolled in a ten-month course in computer programming
offered by the Extension Division of the University of Missouri.
No blind person had ever entered the program before, but Wunder
completed it successfully and was hired immediately (in the fall
of 1978) by the Pathology Department of the University of
Missouri Hospital and Clinics in Columbia. Years and promotions
later, Wunder is successfully working at the hospital and is now
a senior programmer analyst in the Information Services
Department.  
     Wunder first learned about the National Federation of the
Blind the summer before his senior year of high school. He says,
"In the beginning I thought this talk about discrimination was a
pretty good racket. No one did those things to me, and I assumed
that all this Federation talk about jobs' being denied and
parents' having children taken away from them was an effective
way of raising funds. I didn't realize that my father's name and
reputation in my hometown were protecting me from the worst of
real life. So far I had gotten what I wanted, including a
motorcycle to ride on our farm and my own horse. It was some time
before I recognized that these talented and committed blind
people whom I was getting to know in the Federation were trying
to teach me about the world that I was going to inherit. They
frightened me a little, but more and more I wanted to be like
them."  
     In late 1973, several months after Wunder started college in
Columbia, Missouri, a Federation organizing team arrived to
establish a new chapter, and he took an active part in the
preparations. Wunder was elected president, and when he
transferred to Central Missouri State two years later, he
organized a chapter in Warrensburg. In 1977 Wunder was elected
first vice president of the NFB of Missouri, and in 1979 he
became president. Except for one two-year term, he has continued
in that post ever since. Wunder was elected to the Board of
Directors of the National Federation of the Blind in 1985.
     Wunder is a devoted family man. He is married to the former
Sue Micich, who was at the time of their marriage president of
the NFB of Wisconsin.  
     Looking back reflectively over the years of his involvement
with and commitment to the Federation, Wunder says: "Of all I
learned from my parents about honor, responsibility, and the
necessity to be competent, what I could never get from them was a
sense of where blind people fit in a world composed mostly of
sighted people. Friends and loved ones had always told me how
wonderful I was (wonderful for a blind person, that is), but
until I came to know members of the National Federation of the
Blind, no one had the experience or knowledge to say how I could
expect to measure up alongside the sighted. The NFB was the first
place where I didn't get a round of applause for performing the
routine activities of life. If I wanted my Federation colleagues'
recognition and admiration, I had to merit this attention. It
sounds contradictory, but while I was learning that I wouldn't be
applauded for insignificant accomplishments, I was also learning
that I didn't have to possess special compensatory senses or
talents to make my way in the world. When you think that your
only opportunity for success lies in being a musician, when you
know that your only musical talent is in listening, and when you
suddenly find that you are capable of doing the average job in
the average place of business, your sense of freedom, hope, and
possibility know no bounds."

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