[Iabs-talk] FW: Article from Braille Monitor Articles Section 2019 03 01

[davant1958 at gmail.com]

Denise R. Avant, Esq.

President,

National Federation of the Blind of Illinois

773-991-8050

Live the life you want.

 

For more information about NFBI,

Go to www.nfbofillinois.org

 

From: NFB-NEWSLINE Online <publications at nfbnewsline.net> 
Sent: Saturday, March 2, 2019 6:14 AM
To: Denise Avant <davant1958 at gmail.com>
Subject: Article from Braille Monitor Articles Section 2019 03 01

 

The Fifty-Year Perspective: An Interview with Ramona Walhof From the Editor:
Some anniversaries are special. Fifty is one of these, and it is a real
pleasure when one of our affiliates can celebrate half a century of progress
and even more rare when we can have people who were at the original founding
to relate what was done and what it was like to be a part of it. This
article is taken from the Illinois Independent , the newsletter of the
National Federation of the Blind of Illinois. Here is the article: On the
morning of Friday, October 26, 2018, NFB of Illinois board member Cathy
Randall interviewed Ramona Walhof, one of our special guests at this year's
convention, the fiftieth held by the NFB of Illinois. Cathy Randall: I'm
talking to Ramona Walhof about the beginning of the National Federation of
the Blind of Illinois fifty years ago. Ramona Walhof: The National
Federation of the Blind organized a student division in 1967 in Los Angeles.
Jim Gashel was the president, and I was the secretary. My future husband was
second vice president. After the convention we were invited to go to
Montreal and organize students in Canada. Jim Gashel and I did that, and we
succeeded in organizing a group up there. There was a lady named Lucy
Sienkowicz who wanted it to happen. If you come across Paul Gabias, he will
tell you he was at that meeting. He's active in the Canadian Federation of
the Blind, and so is his wife, Mary Ellen. Somewhere during the winter
between the 1967 and the 1968 national convention, I met Rami Rabby in Des
Moines. Dr. Jernigan invited him to come to Des Moines to visit. I was
working there for awhile, so I met Rami. We didn't talk about Illinois when
I met him, but he was interested in the student division. He was working on
a graduate degree at that time. After the 1968 convention, which was held in
Des Moines, Dr. Jernigan planned that we would go to Illinois and organize
an affiliate. We students had no clue how to do that, but he got six of us
together, and he said, "I want you to go to Illinois. He said we would go
one Saturday and organize an affiliate the next Saturday. We said, "How will
we do that? He said, "We've got a list of people. I don't know where that
list came from, but they did indeed have a list of people, and Dr. Jernigan
gave the names to us. Rami knew a few people also. By that time he'd been in
Illinois for a few months. So we drove into Chicago and met with Rami and
Mrs. Hastalis, Steve's mother. We might have met Steve that first day, but
we didn't see much of him until the next week. Cathy Randall: So you spent
the week calling people? Ramona Walhof: First we would call, and we would
ask people if we could go and visit them. We spent a lot of money on cabs.
We took cabs all over Chicago! I took a train down to Galesburg, Illinois,
and met with a woman who had adopted three children. She was blind, and it
was rare in 1968 for a blind person to be an adoptive parent. Gwendolyn
Williams, who was a very dedicated volunteer, drove us some places, but of
course she couldn't drive us to all of the places we needed to go. We went
two by two into people's homes. We would talk about why we had joined the
Federation and what we thought the Federation could do for them personally.
We'd talk a little bit about legislation and making better vending programs
and better rehab. At that time the programs in Iowa were unique in the
country. We learned to travel independently. We were not afraid to travel in
Chicago by ourselves. We had enough training that we knew how to do that,
and we felt comfortable. We would talk about how we got that training and
how we wanted other people to get it too. We would talk about what we did in
college and what our majors were. We'd talk about the people we met at
convention. I met a man named Gaspardus Belhuysen from Wisconsin. I met him
at the Washington, DC, convention in 1965. He said, "Ken Jernigan always
wants me to go down to Des Moines and get some training, and I'd love to do
it, but I can afford to get what I need. I thought that was the craziest
thing I'd ever heard! I asked one of the people I knew in the Federation
what he knew about Belhuysen, and he said, "Oh yeah! He's a millionaire! He
was not in the vending program, but on his own he had gone out and found
places where he could put machines, and he hired a full-time driver to help
him. I had never met a blind millionaire before, and I was impressed. That's
one of the reasons I joined the Federation-because I heard about what
Belhuysen and other blind people were doing. We told people about Belhuysen
and other people we had met. Dr. tenBroek was a lawyer, and there were a
whole bunch of blind lawyers in California. There were a whole bunch of
blind chiropractors in Iowa. We talked about our experiences, but we also
listened to what the blind people wanted. We would say to them, "If you had
your choice about what kind of service you could have, what would it be?
Then we'd try to help them figure out how an organization of blind people,
locally and statewide, could address something like that. We'd stay for
about an hour talking. We spent about five days, maybe six, and we talked to
a lot of people. A lot of them said, "I just can't do anything, and you
can't do it for me. I don't want to help. But we found some who were
responsive. Jim Gashel went into Steve Benson's home and met him. I think
Steve went to the organizing meeting. On Friday evening Dr. Jernigan came,
and we met all together. All six of us who had been pounding the pavements
met with Dr. Jernigan. He said, "Who have you met who has leadership
capacity? There was no trouble with the presidency; we thought Rami Rabby
should be president, and he was willing. (Dr. Jernigan probably would have
twisted his arm if he wasn't!) I don't remember who the other board members
were. We may have elected Steve Benson to an office. Steve Hastalis still
had a year of high school to finish. He was very young. His mother was the
spokesperson at the time. Steve was kind of quiet, but he was there. Anyway,
that Friday night we planned what we were going to do about leadership. The
next day Dr. Jernigan introduced himself. He explained what the Federation
is. There were a few hostile people in the audience, and he said, "If you
pay your dues, you can vote. If you don't want the Federation, you should
leave the room. A couple of people did. Dr. Jernigan presided at the
meeting. After he answered questions he said, "We need to adopt a
constitution before we elect officers. He had a model constitution, and he
read it article by article. A few changes were made. I believe that at first
the affiliate was called the Illinois Congress of the Blind. Rami was very
interested in politics, and since this was America, he thought we should
have the Illinois Congress of the Blind, so we did. After that meeting
everyone dispersed, and it was up to Rami to keep it going. I'm sure he was
in telephone contact with Dr. Jernigan every day. I went off to Idaho
because I was engaged to a man from there. I actually delayed my move from
Des Moines to Boise to come to Illinois and organize. When I came to
Illinois, we still had fewer than forty affiliates. When Dr. Jernigan was
elected president in 1968, he set the goal that we would have affiliates in
all fifty states. By about 1974 we did. We organized very vigorously. I went
ahead and organized in Kansas, Oregon, Washington, Tennessee, and Michigan,
and a little bit in North Carolina. Other people did other states. We
organized Nebraska and several of the southern states and the smaller
states. We still have to reorganize from time to time, but we've had
affiliates in all of the states for about forty years now. I remember one
person who said, "I'm in college, and I'm working for the summer. I can't
afford to take a week off work to go organize. Dr. Jernigan said, "We'll
take care of that. We need you, so we'll take care of your salary for the
week. We didn't have very many people available, and Dr. Jernigan knew that
if we sold the Federation for a week to as many people as we could, we would
become stronger Federationists ourselves. He was absolutely right! 

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