[Nfbf-l] Craig Kiser : From the Braille Monitor!

[Sherri]

Marion, I very much appreciate you posting this inspiring address. I believe 
this does show that Craig has experienced both advocating for and 
understanding about the needs of the organized blind.
Sherri
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marion & Martin" <swampfox1833 at verizon.net>
To: "NFBF List" <nfbf-l at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2009 10:26 PM
Subject: [Nfbf-l] Craig Kiser : From the Braille Monitor!


> Dear All,
>    Even though Craig has decided to not run for the NFBF Presidency, I 
> thought you would like to read his comments delivered to the general 
> assembly of the convention of the National Federation of the blind which 
> appeared in the Braille Monitor. I am still hopeful Craig will reconsider 
> his candidacy for the NFBF Presidency, knowing that there are dedicated 
> supporters who realize he is the most qualified person for the job and, as 
> such, would energize and mobilize the dedicated members who have lost 
> their enthusiasm as the result of the impotence of the status quo! Please 
> read on and see what is within our reaches!
>
> Fraternally yours,
> marion Gwizdala, President
> East hillsborough Chapter
> National Federation of the blind of Florida
>
>
> by Craig Kiser
>
>>From the Editor: Thursday morning, July 6, Craig Kiser, executive director 
>>of the Florida Division of Blind Services, presented one of the most 
>>exciting
> convention agenda items of the week. We have wished for years that Craig 
> was the director of the state agency for the blind in Florida, and now he 
> is.
> Here is the story of his first years in office:
>
> Craig KiserGood morning. As usual it's a great convention. Florida, are 
> you out there? [applause] This past May 8 my wife of thirty-seven years 
> passed away.
> She is with us here in spirit, I have no doubt. She knew and loved the NFB 
> and what it stood for and stands for today. I promised her that I would 
> include
> her favorite story in my presentation, so here it is. Three men were 
> embarked on an important mission that entailed trekking across country. 
> The first
> man reached the banks of a raging river. He looked at the river and began 
> to pray, "Please give me strength to cross this river." His prayer was 
> heard,
> and poof, he was instantly endowed with muscular arms and legs. He plunged 
> into the river, and despite nearly drowning several times, he struggled to 
> the
> opposite shore. After witnessing the first man's difficulties, the second 
> also prayed; but he prayed, "Please give me the strength and the tools to 
> cross
> this river." His prayer also was heard, and poof, a row boat appeared. He 
> got in the row boat, and after half an hour of struggling and nearly 
> capsizing
> several times, he also reached the opposite shore. The third man, after 
> witnessing the first two, also prayed. He prayed, "Please give me the 
> strength,
> the tools, and the wisdom to cross this river. His prayer was heard, and 
> poof, he was changed into a woman [applause], who promptly pulled out her 
> map,
> studied it a few minutes, turned, walked several hundred yards upstream, 
> and walked across the bridge. [applause] I think you can see why it was my 
> wife's
> favorite story.
>
> In rehabilitation of the blind we the blind have the strength. The NFB can 
> provide the tools through its training. We just need to convince agency 
> bureaucrats
> to have the wisdom to take advantage of that strength and those tools. In 
> April of 2000 I was sitting in my office as deputy controller of Florida, 
> happily
> regulating banking, financing, and securities, when several of my blind 
> friends came in. Some of them belong to the ACB affiliate, the Florida 
> Council
> of the Blind, and some of them belong to the National Federation of the 
> Blind of Florida. They told me that the division of blind services in 
> Florida was
> in dire straits, that services were appalling, and that they were trying 
> to get the then director fired. They asked, if they could get that done, 
> would
> I be willing to take the job. I told them no for three reasons. I told 
> them I loved the job I was doing. I have been involved in banking, 
> finance, and
> securities all my legal career, for almost thirty years. Second, I have no 
> background, training, or education in rehabilitation. Third, it would be a 
> demotion
> from deputy controller to a division director. So they left.
>
> About a month later they came back and again repeated their request, and I 
> again told them no for the same three reasons. That night I spent a 
> restless
> night. My conscience began to bother me, and it was as if I was once again 
> back in Dr. Jernigan's office getting a lecture, which happened quite 
> regularly
> in 1968 when I was a student at the Iowa Commission for the Blind. It was 
> as though Dr. Jernigan was saying, "Craig, think of the thousands of blind 
> people
> who have sacrificed in order for you to have had the career that you have 
> enjoyed. Maybe it's time to give back. So the next time they came to me, I 
> agreed
> to take the job. And I am so glad I did.
>
> If I had known the true nature and status of the division at that time, I 
> don't know that I would have said yes even with Dr. Jernigan pushing me. 
> The division
> was in trouble with the Rehabilitation Services Administration. They had 
> been taking a million and a half dollars of federal VR money and misusing 
> it.
> They were at odds with the private providers in the state to the extent 
> that the private providers actually have legislation before the 
> Legislature to
> dismantle the division and privatize services completely in Florida. And 
> they were at odds with the organized blind. My predecessor, the former 
> director,
> had steadfastly refused to attend the state conventions of the organized 
> blind. A group had actually gone to the governor and forced him to attend 
> a state
> convention. He stood up in front of the organized blind and told them that 
> he knew nothing about blindness issues, nor did he care. He was only 
> interested
> in keeping his job. He gave about a ten-minute prepared talk, refused to 
> take any questions, and left.
>
> The private providers in Florida had gotten the Legislature to create a 
> new program for blind babies, an early-intervention program for blind 
> infants from
> birth through age five. They had gotten it funded up to a million dollars 
> over the objections of the director. He didn't believe in the program, and 
> he
> didn't believe in it so much that the program was eligible to begin on 
> July 1 of 2000. I was appointed director in February of 2001, and at that 
> point
> he had allowed only 59,000 dollars out of one million to be spent. It was 
> pretty bad. Fortunately I had the support of the organized blind. When I 
> started
> making changes, the inevitable letters and calls to the governor and to 
> the commissioner of education, my direct boss, came in. The organized 
> blind, the
> NFB of Florida, was there to tell the governor, "No, you don't have a 
> lunatic running wild; he is really going about making changes that make 
> sense."
>
> So we worked together for three years making changes in the overall 
> Division of Blind Services in how direct services were provided to 
> clients, trying to
> get counselors to view clients as whole people and to recognize that what 
> they are doing impacts people's lives. They need to talk to clients and 
> find
> out who those clients are, what they want, where they're going, and then 
> try to help them achieve that goal. I am very taken with the motto of Home 
> Depot.
> I've tried several times to see if I could steal it from them. It's, "You 
> can do it; we can help." Isn't that what we do? We can't do it for 
> anybody.
>
> After making some changes in those first three years to the overall 
> program, I turned my attention to the residential rehabilitation center in 
> Daytona Beach.
> One of my difficulties is that I am located in headquarters in 
> Tallahassee, and the residential rehabilitation center is 250 miles away 
> in Daytona Beach.
> So I removed the director of the orientation center and replaced him with 
> Ed Hudson, a man who, like me, has no training in rehabilitation but who 
> has
> a great attitude and philosophy about the blind and blindness. And he is a 
> known quantity; he has been working for the Braille and Talking Book 
> Library
> in Florida for fifteen or twenty years, so he was well known among the 
> blind, and they supported his appointment. Because of the distance 
> involved, I told
> Ed what I wanted him to do and then went back to Tallahassee and expected 
> him to do it. He kept calling me: "Craig, it's tough down here. You know 
> I'm
> kind of all alone. I have a staff meeting and tell them what to do, and 
> they walk out laughing and then go do what they have always done."
>
> What they had always done was really bad. The residential rehabilitation 
> center wasn't really in the business of rehabilitation. It had become a 
> vocational
> training center. That may have been good because the little rehabilitation 
> they tried to do was just holding hands and catering to all the wants, 
> needs,
> and desires of the students there. They had a cafeteria that provided 
> three square meals seven days a week. Staff would take the tray for the 
> student,
> get the food for them, bring it to the table, and then take the dishes 
> away after the meal. If the students needed anything off-campus at a 
> grocery store
> or drug store, they would give a list to staff, and the staff would go and 
> get it. There was a policy that students could not leave campus until they 
> got
> a clearance from a mobility instructor. Now these are adults, not 
> children. I could go on and on about the things going on there.
>
> Well, Ed finally convinced me that he needed help, that he couldn't do it 
> alone. It was impossible to do it alone. So I called an old friend of 
> mine, Dr.
> Joanne Wilson. She told me that the NFB was just starting a program 
> through the Jernigan Institute to provide training in how to run an 
> orientation center.
> So we agreed to meet at last year's convention in Louisville, and we did. 
> Ed Hudson, Fred Schroeder, Joanne Wilson, and I met in Joanne's room, and 
> we
> agreed to a plan and contracted with the Jernigan Institute.
>
> Bureaucracy being what it is, it took from July to January to get the 
> contract approved. But we got it approved, and then in February Joanne and 
> her team
> came down to Daytona Beach, and I met them there and participated in the 
> first day's meetings. It appeared to be going very well, so I left and 
> went back
> to Tallahassee. The next day all hell broke loose. During a meeting with 
> staff and students some of the staff got up and walked out. Some of the 
> staff
> verbally attacked and abused Fred Schroeder. The students we found out had 
> been lectured at lunch by some of the dissident staff and told that what 
> we
> were doing was wrong and dangerous and that we were trying to destroy 
> their lives. So we had to meet again and retool and make some different 
> plans. So
> that's what we did. Joanne and her team have been coming down every month 
> for the last six months, and things are turning around. It's kind of like 
> turning
> an aircraft carrier around. Yeah, you can do it, but you're not going to 
> do it very quickly, and you will need a lot of room. But it's getting 
> done.
>
> When Joanne and her team came down, I was immediately accused of trying to 
> turn Florida into an NFB state. My response was a simple one. I told them, 
> "As
> you knew when you hired me, I don't have training or education or 
> experience in rehabilitation. So the only experience I can draw upon is 
> that which I
> learned at the feet of Kenneth Jernigan in 1968, and it works." I told 
> them I'm less interested in the messenger than I am in the message. We've 
> lost some
> staff along the way. We need to lose a few more. We have one O&M 
> instructor who absolutely refused to train students with sleepshades, so 
> much so that
> I had a student not too many months ago call me up to say that he had been 
> to the NFB convention last year in Louisville and had gone to the Colorado 
> Center
> for the Blind reception, where he had learned about training under 
> sleepshades. He asked to be trained under sleepshades. This O&M instructor 
> told him,
> "No, I won't do it, because you have so much residual sight that when you 
> take the sleepshades off, you will forget everything that you learned. 
> What you
> need to do is train without sleepshades; then, when you lose more sight, 
> come on back. He said, "Mr. Kiser, do I really have to interrupt my life 
> twice
> to go through training?"
>
> I said "No" and sent him to Louisiana.
>
> Most of us have heard it as a joke. I saw it as a fact; it really 
> happened. I was at a public meeting where a blind woman stood up and, 
> intending to praise
> blind services, said, "You know that residential rehabilitation services 
> center is just wonderful; I've enjoyed it every time I've been there." I 
> thought,
> why would anyone have to go through it more than once? If it's done right, 
> you don't. It's been difficult. The challenges are great. The abuse is 
> great,
> and I really admire what Joanne and her team have been doing. They've been 
> talking one-on-one with staff and students, and the situation is turning 
> around.
> It just takes a lot of work and thick skin.
>
> It's kind of like this farmer who had this old donkey. One day the poor 
> donkey fell into an abandoned well, and the donkey was crying pitifully 
> while the
> farmer was trying to figure out how to get him out of that well. The 
> farmer finally concluded that the donkey was really old and the well 
> needed to be
> filled anyway. So he called upon his neighbors to come help fill in the 
> well. As they began shoveling dirt in, the donkey realized what was going 
> on and
> cried even louder, but after a few minutes there was silence. They 
> continued shoveling, and after a while the farmer decided to look in the 
> well to see
> how it was progressing. What he saw was an amazing sight. As each 
> shovelful of dirt landed on the donkey's back, the donkey would shake it 
> off and step
> up on the dirt, thereby elevating himself by a few inches each time. As 
> they continued shoveling, to their astonishment the donkey finally stepped 
> out
> of the well and trotted off. The moral of the story is that life is going 
> to throw a lot of dirt at you. To be successful you have to shake it off 
> and
> step up. There is a little more to the story. It seems that later the 
> donkey returned and kicked the stuffing out of that farmer for trying to 
> bury him
> alive. The moral of that part of the story is, if you try to cover your 
> ass, it will probably come back to get you.
>
> Thank you all for what you do. It is difficult to impart to you just how 
> much the organized blind means. I could not do the things I do without the 
> support
> of the blind. It would have been impossible. So stay with us and keep at 
> it.
> _______________________________________________
> Nfbf-l mailing list
> Nfbf-l at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbf-l_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
> Nfbf-l:
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbf-l_nfbnet.org/flmom2006%40gmail.com
>