[Blindtlk] Tribute: Richard J. Edlund (obituary)

[Rovig, Lorraine]

Kansas City Star: online:
http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/979882.html

Posted on Tue, Jan. 13, 2009 10:15 PM


Tribute: Richard J. Edlund


By DONALD BRADLEY


The Kansas City Star


Richard Edlund never complained about his lost eyesight and became an
advocate for blind people. 


Who: Richard J. Edlund, 84, of Kansas City, Kan.

When and how he died: Jan. 6, of natural causes.

No brooms, but hand me a wrench: Years ago, a man came into Edlund's
Hardware and attempted to talk Dick Edlund, who was blind, into going
somewhere to learn how to make brooms.

Edlund, in his mid-30s, was taking the carburetor off a Lawn Boy mower
and replacing the float.

"The poor guy must not have been paying attention, or he would have seen
that my dad wasn't going to be making brooms," Edlund's son, Richard
Edlund Jr., said with a chuckle.

Dick Edlund lost his vision when he was a teenager. He and some buddies
were playing with dynamite caps. When one didn't go off, Edlund went to
check why.

And then it did. The blast blew one eyeball completely out of his head
and damaged the other.

But folks who knew him say that while Edlund lost his eyes that day, he
never lost his vision for a full and uncompromised life.

Nuts and bolts: Edlund's Hardware, in the old Muncie area of what is now
Kansas City, Kan., opened in 1947. New customers were surprised how
Edlund knew where everything was.

Made sense, though. Edlund had laid out the store, including the bins
for nails and screws.

"He knew to go up three and over four," Richard Edlund said of his
father. "He had a map in his head of that whole store. He didn't think
it was any big deal, but it surprised a lot of people.

"And dad cut most of the glass."

Saw things clearly: Edlund served several terms as a state lawmaker.

When Melvin Minor arrived at the Kansas House of Representatives in the
early 1990s, it didn't take him long to figure out that Edlund, with
whom he shared an office, knew his way around the building and politics.

"He could see things better than a lot of people with 20/20 vision,"
Minor remembered. "He was very perceptive about issues. You might think
he looked like he wasn't paying attention, but then he'd ask a question
that let you know he'd heard every word."

Edlund had a warmth that endeared him to colleagues and visitors. And he
never used blindness as a crutch.

"I never heard him complain about being blind," Minor said.

Working for justice: Don Morris of the National Federation of the Blind
said he met Edlund in 1968. "We were old friends immediately," said
Morris. "He had a way of making everybody he met comfortable."

Edlund, serving as a volunteer, traveled the country fighting on behalf
of blind people who were having difficulty with legal issues.

In one case, Morris said, a judge in a divorce case was convinced that a
blind mother couldn't properly care for her child, so he was awarding
custody to the husband. Edlund not only convinced the judge that
blindness was no barrier to good parenting, he convinced the judge that
the husband was a bit of a scoundrel.

"He brought attention to a lot of cases like that," Morris said. "He was
a crusader."

Survivors include: A companion, a son and daughter-in-law, two
grandchildren and three stepsons.

The last word: Minor said he once asked Edlund whether he would prefer
to be deaf or blind. "Blind," Edlund answered quickly, "If I were deaf,
we couldn't be having this conversation."