[Nfbf-l] Blind dispatcher retiring after 35 years of service

[Alan Dicey]

Blind dispatcher retiring after 35 years of service
by Teresa Eubanks, Journal Editor
The future couldn't have seemed very promising for a boy in Hosford who was 
blinded just two weeks before his 12th birthday.
But Junior Lolley managed to navigate around what he accepts as a minor 
inconvenience to make himself indispensable to the community as a dispatcher 
with The Liberty County Sheriff's Office.
Known for his calm demeanor in a crisis and his ability to direct deputies 
along roads he's never even seen, for 35 years he's been the first contact 
for anyone in an emergency situation.
When he calls out fire trucks he warns volunteers how close the blaze may be 
to other homes. He directs ambulances through a network of bumpy dirt roads 
leading to fish camps 20 miles out of town. He cautiously questions a 
frightened child who doesn't know her own address but does know to call 911 
when her mother suddenly falls ill.
And, more times than even he can count, he has politely explained to callers 
that 911 is not the number for directory assistance.

Just a few days ago, he stepped away from the dispatcher's desk to start his 
retirement with his wife, Linda, and their pets - a German Shepherd and 
three Chihuahuas.

Next week, Journal readers will learn more about this unique man as we will 
share some of his experiences on the job. He'll tell us about the 911 calls 
that broke his heart and those that tested his temper.
And we'll find out a few things about his early life, when he left Hosford 
to attend the Florida School for the Blind in Saint Augustine and traveled 
with the school orchestra as a guitar player.

His first job after graduation turned out to be in an Eckards photo lab in 
Orlando, not the typical position you would expect for a non-sighted person.
When he returned home and decided he wanted to work with the sheriff's 
office, he wasn't discouraged when Sheriff Harrell Wood Revell responded to 
his job request by asking, "What the hell am I going to do with a blind 
dispatcher?"
Junior showed him. And after his first year on the job, when his performance 
was being reviewed by the Agency for Blind Services out of Tallahassee the 
sheriff made it clear Junior wasn't going anywhere. "I found out I can't do 
without him," the sheriff said.

Read how Junior Lolley made himself an invaluable member of the Liberty 
County Sheriff's Office in next week's Calhoun-Liberty Journal.

junior lolleys remarkable career

After 35 years on the job as a dispatcher and later, communications director 
with the Liberty County Sheriff's Office, Junior Lolley, 60,  has officially 
put down the mic.  But just at work, of course.  He remains an avid ham 
radio operator who enjoys talking with friends all over the globe from his 
home in Bristol.
And, when he finally gets the generator he needs, he will be able to keep 
Liberty County in touch with the rest of the world in the event that cell 
towers and telephones fail.  "When everything else fails, ham radio is 
there," he likes to say and notes his fellow ham operators played an 
important role when communications were disrupted in New York during 9/11.

Friends including some of his ham operator buddies from outside the area 
gathered with his family, co-workers and two former bosses last week at 
Veterans Memorial Civic Center to celebrate his retirement from a job he was 
initially turned down for.

He recalled how he had been told a blind man couldn't handle the duties of a 
dispatcher and it made him mad.


He explained, "I'm stubborn as a Georgia mule.I made it a goal to become a 
dispatcher."  He retired with the rank of Major.

While addressing the group at the luncheon, he shared how he had reached two 
other important goals over the years finding the woman he would spend his 
life with, Linda, and getting his ham radio license.

He and Linda met when he went on a ride-along with then-deputy Tom Flowers, 
who is Linda's brother. They stopped for lunch at the old Hogly Wogly in 
Bristol where she was working and Tom introduced them.
He and Linda chatted a bit and he asked her out.
"It was about the time of the North Florida Fair in Tallahassee and I asked 
if she wanted to go."
She did.
They had a good time but Linda, who had moved to Bristol  from New Jersey 
just a couple of years earlier, had some trouble finding her way back to 
Liberty County that night.
"She got lost coming out of the fairgrounds and going around the capital," 
he said. Lolley, who lost his sight at the age of 12 and had honed his 
knowledge of the roads as a dispatcher, guided them home.

A few years later, he got serious about getting his ham operator's license.
"I studied for three months.  In July of 2000, I went to Panama City and 
took the technician test and passed it on the first go," he said.  Seven 
years later, he received his general class license that allows him to talk 
all over the globe.
"This July will be 14 years I've worked with ham radios," he said.  "I've 
enjoyed every minute of it."

For now, he's looking forward to enjoying some free time.  "Sometime we 
decide we want to go to Panama City, Dothan or Marianna and we'll just get 
out and go."

Junior's story

by Teresa Eubanks, Journal Editor

A playground accident cost him the vision in his right eye when he was just 
six years old. Just before his 12th birthday, the optic nerve in his left 
eye detached and left him blind.

His traditional education ended with his fourth grade year at Hosford 
School.

A couple of years later, he was able to get a spot as a student at the 
Florida School for the Blind in Saint Augustine.
Not only did he do well, he excelled, skipping a couple of grades while 
performing with the school's traveling orchestra.

Despite the overwhelming odds against him, Junior Lolley landed the job of 
his dreams and made himself an indispensable member of the Liberty County 
Sheriff's Office.

This is how he did it.

GOING BLIND

He was on the playground with his friends at Hosford School in 1959 when it 
happened.
"We were just playing in the school yard when I got hit with an oak limb," 
he said. "It broke the optic nerve in my right eye.
Despite six or seven surgeries, doctors were unable to restore his vision.
Then, nearly six years later, something even worse happened. He lost the 
sight in his other eye.
"It was just before my 12th birthday," Junior explained. He was in the front 
yard of his parents' home in Telogia. "I bent over to pick up some trash on 
the ground and the retina detached in my right eye, leaving me totally 
blind."

Soon afterwards, he had surgery in Gainesville and his sight in that eye was 
restored for a brief time.
"I had two weeks of vision and then it detached again," he said. "Since 
then, I've been totally absolutely dark blind."
He said his last visual memories are of the front yard and the green of the 
pine trees and the grass. "I remember the railroad crossing on Burlington 
Road, the old trestle bridge between Hosford and Telogia and Max Clark's old 
gas station at Hwy. 65 and SR 20."

He said that as a child, "I used to pay of lot of attention to roads. I 
guess I figured at some point it would come as usable information."

He acquired much of his knowledge of Liberty County's roads and landmarks 
after he went blind. He often asked family and friends to describe where new 
roads were and how the landscape was changing. "I would hold one memory 
(from his sighted days) but then kind of slide a new one next to it," he 
said, explaining how he continually created his own updated map in his head.

Although unable to attend school at home, he sought out his own education in 
an unusual way: listening to television. "I was enthused about game shows," 
he said. Jeopardy was his favorite.

He also had family members, mostly younger cousins, read to him.
His parents, Nima Lou Ellis Lolley and Houston L. Lolley, have since passed 
on. His baby sister, Donna Kroft, lives in Neal Subdivision in Bristol.
Another sister, Jeanette Embry, resides in Telogia. His brother, James, is 
just two years younger than him and also works with the sheriff's office.
Junior, now 60, is the eldest of the bunch.

SCHOOL IN ST. AUGUSTINE
He wanted to go to school and when he learned about the Florida School for 
the Blind in Saint Augustine, he applied.
He tried in 1965 and again in 1966. "Both times they were full," he said.
But then in the summer of 1967, "They called and told me to come in for 
testing." He tested so well that they decided to push him ahead a couple of 
grades, even though his schooling had been sporadic due to his many 
surgeries.
He went into the seventh grade for the 1967-68 school year. After completing 
that school term, the principal caught up with him in the hallway and pulled 
him aside. "How would you like to skip eighth grade and go to the ninth?" he 
was asked. "All I can do is try," Junior replied.

When he graduated on May 22, 1972, he had 22 credits and the equivalency of 
one year in college.
But his time at Saint Augustine wasn't all about academics. He played guitar 
with the school orchestra and traveled as they gave concerts around central 
Florida.

Once he completed his studies, he decided to live in Orlando. He got a job 
processing film at Eckerds Photo Lab.
Getting to work was harder than doing the job. He didn't have the money to 
take a cab so, armed with a cane to keep him steady, he walked to the store 
for his 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift.
It might seem odd for a blind man to work in a photo lab but it was the 
perfect job for him at that time. "It was simple. I'd go through two doors 
into a darkroom. I'd bust the end off a roll of 35 mm film, take the film 
out and put an ID sticker on it. I'd unroll the film, put it on a clip on 
the rack, put a weight on it and add an ID sticker." Then he slid it into a 
processing unit that took multiple racks. "It would go through the stages 
and come out the other end processed," he said.
"I would literally put thousands of those things through in a night," he 
said.
"I got pretty fast at it and sometimes I would get ahead of the machine."

After a year, he decided it was time to come home.

COMING HOME

There weren't a lot of job opportunities here for a blind film processor 
when Junior came home to Telogia. In fact, there wasn't even anywhere to get 
film processed unless you drove to Tallahassee.

CB radios were becoming popular. Junior chose the handle "Windmill" and 
started talking.
Hunters, truckers and old friends would tell him about the traffic and 
roads.
In those days, no one had a cell phone to call for help.
"I would monitor some of the CB channels back in 1979 in case anybody go 
into a wreck or got hurt," he said. "If there was a problem, I would call 
the sheriff's office and report it."


One day, he heard there was a job opening for a dispatcher.
When he applied for the job, Liberty County Sheriff Harrell Wood Revell 
didn't mince words. "What the hell am I going to do with a blind 
dispatcher?" he asked Junior.
It took some convincing, but after Junior contacted the Agency for Blind 
Services out of Tallahassee, they made an offer to the sheriff. They would 
pay for training and special equipment as well as Junior's salary for the 
first year.
The sheriff agreed to give him a try.
His first day at work was February 26, 1980. He was learning to operate the 
teletype and answer the phones in those pre-computer days. "I handled every 
call until it got to the point they were hanging around to see how I did 
this and that," Junior said. Sometimes his co-workers would come by and 
offer to fill out a form or write something down for him. "Other than that, 
they would leave me alone."

A year later, he was evaluated by the Blind Services agency. When they asked 
if the sheriff wanted to keep him on, Revell made it clear that he was 
staying. "I found out I can't do without you," he told Junior.
He kept his job.
After starting as a dispatcher with no guarantee of continued employment, he 
continued with the sheriff's office for 35 years before retiring as a major 
just a few weeks ago.

GUIDING DEPUTIES
Liberty County Sheriff Nick Finch was a deputy when he first worked with 
Junior. The sheriff said he's always been impressed with Junior's abilities.

"When I worked the road, he'd give detailed directions," Finch said, 
explaining that he would even point out landmarks - trees and buildings - 
that he had never even seen when sending a deputy on a call. "I wondered how 
in the world he did it," the sheriff said, adding, "I don't think he knows 
he's blind."
Junior peppered the deputies for details as they drove through the county, 
and often went on ride alongs to get his bearings. "I used reference roads 
to know where the new ones were," he explained. His mental map is made up of 
"a lot of blocks" and he got accustomed to "adding a new block" every now 
and then.


After the 911 system went into effect around 2000, suddenly there were a lot 
of new roads he had to learn as each one was named and mapped. "If we had a 
little down time, I'd ask the dispatcher on with me to go over the map to 
see if there's any roads I didn't know," he said. "I'd find out what 
direction they run, if it's a forest road or two-rut road. Other times, we'd 
zoom in on a place and look for something new."
He picked up a lot of information simply by doing his job - dispatching. The 
deputies knew to fill him in along the way. When he sent them to an address, 
they would often note if there was a new fence going up or perhaps a large 
tree that had been removed. He added and removed blocks as need to his 
mental grid.

HANDLING CALLS
But directing a deputy down a long stretch of road you've never seen was 
minor compared to handling the range of 911 calls that came in to his 
office.
Some were silly, others frightening, and a few were tragic.
"One of the scariest was when a man called me and said he was having chest 
pains. He told me, 'It's like an elephant sitting on my chest. They're 
getting worse.'"
After dispatching an ambulance, Junior stayed on the phone and told him, 
"Buddy, today is not the day. You're not going to die on my shift!"
As he remained on the line, the man said he was about to pass out.
Other employees at the sheriff's office ran in to check on Junior, thinking 
he was calling for help. He wasn't. He was trying to keep the man on the 
other end of the phone conscious.
"You better come back to me," he yelled. When he got no response, he relayed 
to the ambulance crew that the man had passed out.
The man came to, spoke again, and then passed out once more. Junior kept 
yelling.
The caller rallied a third time, speaking briefly before passing out once 
more.
At that moment, "I heard the paramedics come in," Junior said. "One of them 
picked up the phone and said 'We got him.'"
He lived.
Two weeks later, the man called Junior and told him, "I don't think I'd have 
ever made it without you pushing me."
"It's my job," Junior replied.
"No, it's not," the man said, crediting him with going above and beyond by 
willing him to hang on as he waited for the ambulance.

But many calls did not end that well.
"It's hard to pick out the worst," Junior said. "Even today, there are a lot 
of voices I remember that won't ever go away."
He said many times, his has been the last voice someone hears. He takes some 
consolation in the fact that he talks to many soon to be moms just moments 
before they give birth. Some days, he said, "It's like one left the world 
and one came in the world."

More than once he's warned paramedics to hurry after hearing a mother-to-be 
say, "I feel the baby coming." That's when he tells EMS to get a move on 
because, "I'm fixing to have a little dispatcher born if you don't get there 
quick!"

Most of the emergency calls he handled were from people he knew. Some were 
personal friends; others he said he knew because "they came to visit us in 
jail," referring to previous inmates.
It's a special challenge when a loved one is seriously ill. "I've had to 
dispatch EMS to my mother and my grandmother before," he said. Aunts, uncles 
and cousins have also been on the other end of a call for help.
"You've got to get the information out as clearly and quickly as you can.
You've got to the get the right medical information so the ambulance crew 
can pull out the right equipment when they arrive on scene," he said, 
"You've got to stay calm."
And, as important as it is to do the job right, it's critical to know how 
handle the stress. "You can kick the wall and hit it with your fist.but 
you've got to let it go or it will kill you," he said. "The average burnout 
rate for a dispatcher is three to five years. I went way past that."

How did he do it?
After a bad day, he would go home, sit at the computer, put on his headset 
and blast through hundreds of 1960s and 70s songs that fill up his external 
hard drive. After a few minutes with Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC 
and Creedence Clearwater Revival, he said, "It's gone."
" One tune that always makes him feel better is "I Heard It Through The 
Grapevine." He said, "I'll hit that song, crank up the volume and immerse 
myself.and a lot of the tension of the day is gone."

There are a few 911 calls he can laugh about, though, including one from a 
man who sounded just a little too intoxicated to go pick up his own lunch. 
It was in the very early days of the 911 system and perhaps everyone hadn't 
quite caught on that it was an emergency-only phone line.
"This one fella called and asked if I had a deputy close by," Junior said.
"I asked what he needed." The caller replied, "Can your deputy go down to 
the Hogly Wogly and get me a box of chicken, 'tater logs and a two-liter 
Coke?
I'll pay him."
"That ain't gonna happen," Junior replied. "Thank you and have a good day."

Another time, a woman called 911 because she was worried about her dog. She 
asked Junior, "Does a Chihuahua have fur balls like a cat?"
He advised her to call a veterinarian and pointed out, "That's not a 911 
problem."

There have been a few heartwarming calls over the years from children 
seeking help for a sick parent. Those calls can be challenging for 
dispatcher who has to cautiously elicit information from the child without 
upsetting them even more.
Most of the time, the 911 address will pop up on the screen - and in 
Junior's case, the computer would give it to him audibly - but there are 
times when people have moved and failed to update their address.

"Then I have to ask the child where they live and they can't tell me." He 
goes through a series of basic questions trying to determine where they are, 
asking the child what they can see from their front door and the color of 
their house.
Sometimes afterward a crisis, he would get a call back from a youngster who 
would tell him, "Thank you for helping my mama."

RETIREMENT
Junior and his wife, Linda, are already enjoying retirement. He said he 
won't miss having to listen to all the phones and radios like he has at the 
office for years. "I can just walk outside anytime now, just me and my 
German Shepherd," he said.

His longevity in the job is remarkable given the rapid shifts politics can 
take in small community. He has enjoyed a unique position, having worked 
under several sheriffs along with many deputies and co-workers.

How did he stay above the fray?
"By minding my own business," he said bluntly.

While he and his wife are looking forward to plenty of day trips around the 
area, one thing won't change - He'll still be looking out for the folks of 
Liberty County by monitoring his ham radio. He talks to many Florida ham 
operators as well as radio buffs around the world every day, and is proud 
that should all other communications fail in a disaster, ham operators like 
himself can provide a backup emergency communications system.

Even in retirement, this blind man is still looking out for Liberty County.
- - -

Junior Lolley kg4itd
Liberty County Emergency Coordinator.
'People will forget what you said...
People will forget what you did....
But people will NEVER forget how you made them feel.'