[Colorado-Talk] News clipping from Englewood Herald yesterday

[Amy Sabo]

hello peggy and all,
thanks for posting this awesome article of our blind history here to
the list. as a matter of fact it was also featured in the castle rock
newspaper too which is a partt of douglass county too. my dad read it
and, was very interested in this article and, asked me many questions
on this as well too! he is vblind at heart as you all know! and, shows
a great interest in the nfb since it's a part of my and my sister's
life too!

i hope that many people who read this article through the suburbs
papers will contribute to this matter and, also know of this project
and, the nfb too!


sincerely,
amy sabo
On 9/16/20, Peggy Chong via Colorado-Talk <colorado-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Hello All:
>
>
>
> You may have not run across this article yet about our Preservation
> project,
> so I thought I would post it here.  It is from the Englewood Herald. Sept
> 14, 2020
>
>
>
> Peggy Chong,
>
>
>
> Englewood Herald
>
> Preserving blind Coloradans' history
>
> Records going back more than a century are being digitized
>
>
> <https://englewoodherald.net/uploads/original/20200914-190026-a6cbbfa18a.jpg
>>
>
> Julie Deden is the director of the Colorado Center for the Blind.
>
> FILE PHOTO BY DAVID GILBERT
>
> *
>
> *
>
> *
>
> Posted Monday, September 14, 2020 7:54 pm
>
> Jessica Gibbs
> jgibbs at coloradocommunitymedia.com
>
> More than a century's worth of records now packed into boxes and storage
> containers in the basement of the Colorado Center for the Blind will soon
> be
> transformed into a comprehensive, digital history and made available to the
> public.
>
> Members of the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado are in year two
> of a five-year project to digitally preserve records of the state's blind
> community - before the documents deteriorate or are lost.
>
> Most importantly, project leaders said, the history will finally be
> accessible to the very community it's written about.
>
> "This is a really big project, and this is important because blind people's
> history is not being told," said Peggy Chong, who is leading the archival
> effort. "By and large, we don't learn about our own history."
>
> Both the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado and the Colorado
> Center for the Blind are based in Littleton.
>
> Chong, an Aurora resident, has been a member of the national organization
> for 50 years, joining at age 14 because her mother and three sisters were
> blind, she said.
>
> She moved to Colorado two years ago and quickly set to work learning the
> local organization's history, cataloging artifacts and taking on the
> archival project.
>
> There are a variety of documents and artifacts waiting to be digitized,
> Chong said.
>
> Meeting minutes dating back to the early 1900s are hand-written. Documents
> exist in several versions of braille and need transcribing. Old newspaper
> clips are fading. Some records were damaged by a basement flood at the
> center, or simply old age.
>
> Chong's main goal is to make this history available to the blind community
> in Colorado, she said, but she also aims to better inform the community at
> large. The organization will make the digital archive available to
> libraries
> and universities once it's complete.
>
> Then maybe, Chong said, creators in entertainment like screenwriters or
> playwrights will be inspired by characters that don't fit tropes about the
> blind. She envisions stories about the blind legislators making a
> difference
> in their states, or blind entrepreneurs opening their own businesses.
>
> Scott LaBarre, president of National Federation of the Blind of Colorado
> since 2005, said Colorado is lucky to have Chong.
>
> She has become known as "the blind history lady" for her efforts preserving
> history about the blind, said LaBarre, who is blind and lives in
> Centennial.
>
> "I think it's critical that we understand where we came from as a
> population, as a community," LaBarre said. "It gives us a lot of
> information
> about how much we've accomplished and how much more we have yet to
> accomplish. So, I think it's a very important project."
>
> LaBarre said he's most eager to see the early part of his organization's
> history clearly laid out, which he described as the dawn of a "growing
> movement of blind people taking matters into their own hands."
>
> LaBarre, a lawyer who runs his own Denver law firm, said the public can
> learn about the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado's roots, how
> they organized and advocated for blind residents in the state.
>
> "For a long time and all throughout our country's history and much of the
> world's history, there have always been organizations for the blind," he
> said. "But they weren't the blind representing themselves and determining
> for themselves what the future would be."
>
> Julie Deden, director of the Colorado Center for the Blind, said the
> finished digital archive will show how far blind Coloradans have come.
> Deden
> grew up in modern day Centennial and was born blind. She has served as the
> center's director for 22 years.
>
> "When we have access to our own history, it gives us the opportunity and I
> guess the impetus to look at, where do we come from, and where do we want
> to
> go from here," she said.
>
> Having history available to them also gives blind community members "a
> newfound reverence" for the pioneers who helped create organizations like
> the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado, she said, or advocate for
> the community's needs.
>
> The project's next step will be finding dozens of volunteers to help
> transcribe documents that do not scan well, she said.
>
> Time is ticking. Chong said records about the blind are disappearing across
> the country.
>
> As schools for the blind have closed in various states, the facilities'
> records were often discarded or lost. When blind individuals pass on, their
> families sometimes toss items like diaries or records written in braille,
> because no one can read them.
>
> In Colorado, Chong wants to stop that from happening.
>
> "Our history is not important enough for storage. It's not important enough
> to spend precious archiving money on. It's up to us to do that," Chong
> said.
> "It's important that we preserve it and we do it before it's destroyed or
> lost to the wind."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>