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

[Gary Wunder]

Wow, thanks. This is good.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rovig, Lorraine" <LRovig at nfb.org>
To: "NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>; "NFBnet Blind 
Talk Mailing List" <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 5:24 PM
Subject: [Blindtlk] Tribute: Richard J. Edlund (obituary)


> 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."
>
>
>
>
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