[Nfbmt] FW: [Nfbmd] Miss Rovig is leaving the building, or Goodbye MD, Hello MN!

[sheila]

es I know loraine and she's tirific.
On 5/6/2014 10:40 AM, Edward Robbins wrote:
> Greetings,
>
>                  If you have had any dealing with the National center in the
> past 30+ years you probly dealt with Miss Rovig.  See below.
>
> Ted
>
>   
>
> EDWARD C "TED" ROBBINS
>
> , CEO MBEI, Treasurer NFB of Montana & MANAGER MAB EQUIPMENT PROGRAM
>
> PHONE & FAX:  406 453 6678, CELL:  406 799 6268
>
> 104 RIVERVIEW 5 E
>
> GREAT FALLS  MT   59404
>
>   
>
> From: Nfbmd [mailto:nfbmd-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of David Andrews
> Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2014 9:24 AM
> To: david.andrews at nfbnet.org
> Subject: [Nfbmd] Miss Rovig is leaving the building, or Goodbye MD, Hello
> MN!
>
>   
>
> My Federation Friends,
>   
> It's time to let you in on my plan. I bought a house in southern Minnesota
> because I'm retiring from my work at the National Federation of the Blind,
> and moving my membership from Maryland to Minnesota. Not having done it yet,
> I'm not sure how living on my retirement plan is going to work out when it
> comes to the fun extras of life, so the 2014 July convention in Orlando may
> be my last national convention. Although, if the money permits, I can see me
> coming back like former students go to their high school reunion just to
> enjoy being with their old friends. My last day on the staff will be July
> 11, 2014. Now when did this all start, you may ask. After all, I'm a sighted
> guy.
>   
> Back in the summer of 1975, I had decided not to sign the contract to
> continue as the librarian at a 500-student high school in southern Wisconsin
> because I had nothing in common with anyone in that small town. So, job
> hunting are us! One fine summer day on a bulletin board in the multi-story
> library school of the University of Wisconsin Madison campus, from which I
> had received my masters in library science degree, I saw a 3 by 5 typed card
> that said, "Librarian Needed. Must have some knowledge of textbooks. Iowa
> Commission for the Blind, Des Moines, Iowa, (phone number)."  A teacher in
> the library school was passing by just as I finished reading and I asked
> her, "Have you ever heard of this library?" She said she'd heard it was the
> largest library for the blind in the country. Well! After a tiny high
> school, that sounded interesting! And Iowa being next to Wisconsin, I could
> drive back to visit my family on the holidays. That it was "for the blind"
> never really registered with me. I figured a library was a library. Oh, my!
> Little did I know how my life was changing from that very minute. So I
> called and made an appointment to interview.
>   
> As it happened (here comes Fate dropping in again), my brother was buying a
> house to be close to his new job in northwest Iowa so he and his wife and I
> rode in the same car. He dropped me off in Des Moines, where I was to
> interview for a few hours. Then I rode with them up to see their new home,
> and would come back to Des Moines to have a second interview "if" I was
> invited to do so.  During the first interview -with Head Library Florence
> Grannis, and Duane Gerstenberger, her replacement in training, it was all
> about my ability as a librarian. The Iowa Commission for the Blind had a
> large library - a point in its favor, and, when fully staffed, six
> librarians serving patrons statewide! I was interviewing to be in charge of
> obtaining textbooks from APH or our own transcribers for all (300?) of
> Iowa's K-12 and college-level blind and visually impaired students and all
> the adults who needed materials for their work, plus the Braille collection,
> the large type collection, and the small professional collections of print
> books by blind authors or about blindness and the historical collection of
> early Braille, New York Point, Moon Type, and such books. Nope, I did not
> know Braille; did not know anything about the NFB, or about how blind
> persons handle things. But I did instinctively know that "Gone with the
> Wind" is still "Gone with the Wind" whether it is in print or in Braille;
> and I passed Mrs. Grannis's several tests of my competency.  So Mr.
> Gerstenberger gave me a stack of banquet speeches that agency director
> Kenneth Jernigan had made in his other job as president of a federation for
> blind people, and I was set up for a second interview. Hello Fate.
>   
> All the long way to northeast Iowa I read the speeches. Very interesting!
> And solid philosophy! Those speeches just made sense to me. Of course blind
> Americans should not be treated that way! And I read them some more all the
> way back to Des Moines. I got my second interview, this time with Kenneth
> Jernigan.  I sat in the chair across from Dr. Jernigan at his big desk and
> his assistant, Mrs. Anderson (now Mrs. Jernigan), sat on a couch to my right
> side. As I figured out later, this was a subtle test of attitude-would I
> look and speak to the sighted person or the blind boss? Right. It just made
> sense to me to talk to the boss and, well, I got hired.
>   
> July 23, 1975, 8 a.m., I started work at the Iowa Commission for the Blind
> as one of their six librarians, and I continued working there for nearly 13
> years. I am proud to be part of "the Iowa connection." I joined the NFB at
> the July 1975 chapter meeting. As part of staff training, Dr. Jernigan had
> me reading several decades of back issues of "Braille Monitor," in class
> with Jim Omvig as our teacher for blind civil rights history, and taking
> cane travel lessons under sleepshades with Field Op counselor Dick Davis as
> my instructor. I really liked cane travel. For my graduation exercise, I
> walked a four-mile route around Des Moines. No problem. I learned how to do
> some other things under sleepshades too. All of this got me started in
> understanding how a blind guy handles whatever he or she wants to do. And in
> September1975, President Jernigan invited me to his annual Labor Day weekend
> NFB Leadership Seminar at the old Randolph Hotel, where I met Diane McGeorge
> and my first guide dog. I am a proud alumna of the Bathroom Seminar, along
> with Barbara Pierce, Barbara Beech (Walker Loos), and many other current
> leaders of the Federation (not all of them named Barbara).
>   
> I went on many weekend protests against NAC, driving for the first time ever
> a huge15-passenger van to get to that hotel near the O'Hare Airport, on the
> crazy Chicago freeways, and this was before GPS was invented. I marched on
> Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. With Tami Dodd (now Mrs. Jones), Eric Duffy,
> and Sharon (now Monthei)-those three blind and all of us wearing sleepshades
> to prove we weren't peeking-I swung my cane and marched in our NFB White
> Cane Marching Team in three town parades and at one NFB national convention.
> I drove for tons of candy sales. Thank goodness one of the blind students
> that rode to Oskaloosa knew how to change the tire on the van when it went
> flat halfway there, surrounded by cornfields. None of us in the van will
> forget the time I drove the four-hour trip to the Minnesota state convention
> and Curtis Willoughby and Bob Ray taught us songs to sing in a bar, and I
> ran out of gas on that Interstate superhighway, but coasted down the
> miraculously appearing ramp right into a gas station and next to a pump!
>   
> After a few years, a new chunk got added to my library work, I became the
> boss of Iowa's radio reading program and along with one other staff person
> would cut up the "Des Moines Register" to precisely fit our time slot before
> being one of our many readers on the air. We were proud to know our radio
> service was one of only two RRS in the country that operated on a public
> channel. Thanks to using the radio station at the Des Moines tech high
> school, we were heard as far as 50 miles out of the city! A truck driver
> told me he listened as he made deliveries to farms outside the city.
>   
> Dr. Jernigan and his extraordinary Orientation and Adjustment Center for
> blind adults went on all around us in that multi-story building at 4th and
> Keo. We'd find newly blind and scared cane travelers lost in the Talking
> Book stacks or get out of their way as after a few weeks they'd be striding
> down the city sidewalks outside on their errands. Students made wonderful
> smells (and some not so much) come out of the kitchens; students came to
> check out a first shortest book possible to practice reading Braille. They'd
> be gathered in our comfortable library reading room late into the night,
> reading and talking.  We who were there every day saw in the change in the
> students, from their first day to their graduation. We literally could see
> that the NFB method of teaching worked splendidly. We saw students learn a
> new positive attitude along with their skills, and we saw those few students
> who did not learn the NFB attitude toward blindness. They would go home with
> their skills, more or less, but sooner or later start again to be what the
> sighted folks around them thought they should be since, after all, they were
> blind. Students that joined and got involved with their support group, the
> National Federation of the Blind, were the adults that thrived.
>   
> Dr. Jernigan did not just hang out in his fancy office. He taught you,
> whether you were student or staff, and not just about blindness. He was
> funny, wise, eccentric, surprising, demanding, giving, super-smart,
> super-educated, totally plugged in to Iowa politics, and sometimes ignorant
> of current cultural icons (like John Denver and his music!). He read 420
> words of Braille per minute-I timed him, and he was a terrifically good cane
> traveller. We were walking downhill on Keo one day at his cane-swinging,
> lickety-split speed and me in my two-inch heels nearly sprinting to keep up,
> until one of my heels broke and he hammered it back on with his cane handle.
> That man did more work in a day and night than three other people. Of course
> he had two full-time jobs-simultaneously the elected President of the
> National Federation of the Blind, building the Federation and working on
> serious issues nationwide, and the Director of the statewide vocational
> rehabilitation center for the blind, which included the training center for
> blind adults, the field services department with offices around the state
> offering home teachers and counselors, a store for products handmade by
> (agency-inherited) elderly blind women, the statewide Business Enterprise
> Program (which went from the previous popcorn and packaged candy counters to
> full-service cafeterias), the statewide regional library for the blind and
> physically handicapped, the lending office for NLS Talking Book machines,
> the textbooks for the blind program, the volunteer Braillists program
> (including for a number of years an operation in Iowa's biggest prison), the
> volunteer readers making open reel masters which became cassette books at
> our building, and the radio reading service.  We were everything for the
> blind except the school for the blind at Vinton, Iowa, and the checks from
> Social Security.
>   
> About three years after I was hired, Dr. Jernigan resigned his state job and
> moved the headquarters of the National Federation of the Blind to Baltimore,
> Maryland.  A series of blind directors followed him; none making innovations
> worth commenting on and the NFB no longer recommended to students, nor, in
> some years, even mentioned in a favorable way.  I continued to be a steady
> member of the NFB, attending local meetings, the state conventions, and the
> national conventions. One day in July 1987, I got a phone call from
> Baltimore. It was Dr. Jernigan. He said, (read this in a deep, deep voice),
> "Miss Rovig, How would you like to be director of Job Opportunities for the
> Blind?" I said, "But Dr. Jernigan, I'm not blind." And he said, "Miss Rovig,
> How would you like to be the director of Job Opportunities for the Blind?"
> Not being dumb twice, I said, "Yes sir, I would." I was the director of JOB
> for 10 years.
>   
> At various times during that decade, Dr. Jernigan also put me in charge of
> the single staff person cleaning all the bedrooms in our bedroom wing (I
> personally cleaned every toilet we owned many times), cassette production
> (which, if I remember right, was more than 60,000 copies per year); and for
> a very brief period back in 1975, I was the reader and first engineer of the
> brand new NFB studio. Larry McKeever, "the voice of the Braille Monitor,"
> designed it to be, as he told me, equal to a big-time studio in Nashville.
> He taught me how to run the giant board and all the equipment over a couple
> days. As time went on and the monthly "Presidential Release" was recorded,
> Dr. Jernigan and I discovered I was an okay reader but a poor engineer. Yes,
> I lost that piece of the job. (Whew!)
>   
> JOB was a big part of my job. The NFB's innovative program, Job
> Opportunities for the Blind, was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.
> Mary Ellen Reihing (now Mrs. Gabias) and I used the NFB studio to produce
> six cassette newsletters per year. Half of it was articles about blind
> workers (I usually did the interviews and wrote them up) plus job hunting
> advice, and half of it was reading real job listings for all kinds of jobs
> all over the country-as long as they were not specifically to hire a driver
> of a vehicle or a life guard at a swimming pool. My all-time favorite came
> from the "Baltimore Sun" and said, "Seamstress needed. Steady work.
> Baltimore Casket Company."
>   
> I got calls from all over the US-blind job seekers asking advice and,
> occasionally, an employer worried about the new ADA. What helped folks the
> most was our rock solid belief in their goal, and introducing a blind job
> hunter to someone who was blind and already at work in that same field or
> one with similar requirements. Networking built that essential positive
> attitude and provided the practical advice that one who is in a field knows.
> Once a year I wrote a four-page "Employer's Bulletin" like the one in 1995
> called, "Employer Nightmares about Hiring Blind Employees." It started like
> this, "This bulletin is for employers who have hidden worries about hiring a
> blind person."  Some bulletins are still posted on the NFB website, but they
> surely need updating.
>   
> Then we had the three-hours long JOB Seminars at national conventions for a
> live audience of two to three hundred NFB members.  I was the MC for our
> lineup of blind speakers. I'll never forget the presentations by John Fritz
> on doctoring his Wisconsin dairy herd; Doug Lane of Nebraska, a professional
> baker for a large hotel; Joe Urbanek, owner of a B&B for newlyweds; Lloyd
> Watts, house parent in a group home for adult men with low IQs; Carla
> McQuillan on childcare in the home (before she started her Montessori
> school); Allen Schaefer of Illinois, a public high school music director and
> teacher (whose students went all the way to state several times), so many
> others. But, golly, my number one favorite was Robert Munz of Long Island,
> New York, telling us about his interview and his job working the Price Club
> fast food counter. He got the job of defrosting the pizzas and warming the
> big dough pretzels when he told the sighted HR lady that he cooked a meal
> for 40 as part of his training at the Louisiana Center for the Blind, and
> she said, "I couldn't do that!" and Bob said, "You could if you tried."
>   
> I am proud to say I started the JOB convention breakfast meetings targeted
> to different professions. Out of that networking, people found each other
> and they grew our NFB divisions for science and engineering, for voc rehab
> workers, and for medical fields, among others.
>   
> One day, Dr. Jernigan asked me, "Miss Rovig, would you like to go to the
> United Nations?" The NFB was invited to run an information table in the
> lobby of the UN in New York City alongside other self-help groups because it
> was The Year of the Disabled.
>   
> And one very memorable day, Dr. Jernigan asked me, "Miss Rovig, how would
> you like to go to Japan?" Of course, I said, "Yes sir, I would."  The
> Japanese government office that ran training centers to train blind persons
> for employment asked for a keynote speaker to come to their convention to
> explain how the NFB worked on employment issues. Their chief push was to
> teach the use of the Opticon. Unfortunately that was the last year the
> machine was manufactured. Anyway, what a wonderful trip and what an honor to
> be chosen. I heard later from our contact, Chuji san, that my speech had
> been translated and published in the main Tokyo daily newspaper with my
> photo.
>   
> Well, after I'd done this job for ten years, DOL decided we'd been funded
> way longer than they normally would fund any program (normally only two or
> three years!) and ended our funding, so Dr. Jernigan switched me to being
> the writing-driving-reading assistant to our staff in the IBTC, the
> International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind. Working this job
> for two years, I learned a lot about modern equipment for blind persons.  I
> loved the time Robert Jaquiss and I drove to several high tech companies and
> saw the amazing, new, 3D printing machines.
>   
> After a while my several layers of bosses and I discovered I was an editor
> and proofreader.  My job changed to working in our Advocacy and Protection
> Department, mostly proofreading print documents that leave our
> building-letters, emails, petitions, invoices, language in new legislative
> bills, posters, website pages, fact sheets, and official reports. I helped
> proof the opus, "Walking Alone and Marching Together"-all thousand-plus
> pages of it. I wrote the wording for the Bolotin Award online under Jim
> Gashel's direction. I began to proofread the "Braille Monitor" and "Future
> Reflections." This is what I've done for the last decade.
>   
>   
>   
>   
> Dr. Jernigan had a dream of a national headquarters for the National
> Federation of the Blind, one that would work on all the different issues,
> with room for things like a library to educate the researchers and a
> research institute run our way, an educational center figuring out best
> practices, and lots of room for offices and meeting rooms to cover all the
> different jobs the NFB is doing and will want to do in the unknown future.
> This is not a school, but a think-tank at work to innovate ideas and train
> the trainers. We had 18 million dollars to raise so I helped build it. I had
> NFB accounting take a small portion of my paycheck every month to give
> $5,000 to the building of our National Center for the Blind, 200 East Wells
> Street at Jernigan Place, Baltimore, Maryland 21230. Yup, my name is on the
> wall in the Wells Street lobby.
>   
> Five years ago, President Maurer changed my job again by appointing me to
> assist Anil Lewis, NFB state president in Georgia, with all the paperwork
> for our national scholarship program. Under Anil's direction, I wrote the
> information on our scholarship website; answered half a zillion phone calls
> and emails, printed and filed the 500 to 700 or so scholarship applications
> we get each year, and handled lots of other time-consuming details. After a
> couple years, Anil accepted a staff position here in NFB's home office and
> Patti Chang, Esquire, a full-time lawyer in Chicago and president of the NFB
> of Illinois, became my boss for this part of my job.  It is so very strange
> to think this is my last year working on this fun, important, expensive
> program.  I so enjoy meeting our thirty winners at convention and helping
> them find out that what the National Federation of the Blind offers to them
> goes way beyond a one-time check and a week in a big hotel.
>   
> I have been to every NFB national convention since 1976. This convention
> will be number 39. It's the most fun you can have in a week and still be
> legal. I've been to every NFB state convention in the state in which I lived
> (Iowa or Maryland) plus some extra state conventions just for fun:
> Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, and
> Washington, DC.  All were so different and yet all were totally NFB.
>   
> There's never been a national convention that I didn't have several jobs. I
> met and got to know hundreds and hundreds of our members when I had the job
> for many years of training and supervising volunteers for the NFB Store.
> Remember the time we had no customers at all, so joking around we got Ellen
> Ringlein to do an advertisement and demonstration for her table of Braille
> tools in German and got Fatos Floyd to advertise her Braille equipment in
> Turkish? Many of our volunteers had a first Braille lesson, many learned how
> to use the click rule and the abacus, and many strangers became friends as
> they sat beside each other.
>   
> So many good times!
>   
> Looks like I'm writing a book here, and not a goodbye! It somehow doesn't
> seem proper to say only, "So long, and thanks for all the fish."  Fellow
> members and friends, if you read between the lines, you know I will always
> treasure these things-getting to know the most extraordinary man I've ever
> met-Dr. Jernigan; having the chance to work, protest, and laugh with the
> many wonderful, hard-working members I've met since 1975; and, yes, I very
> much treasure the fact that, using such gifts as I have, I have helped the
> movement of all blind Americans toward full equality.  The conclusion I
> reached in a car crossing the hot summer landscape of Iowa in 1975 hasn't
> changed-equality for the blind just makes sense.  So see you in Orlando! If
> you come to Minnesota's NFB events, look for me there, or find me on NFB
> listservs.
>   
> With appreciation for the past and anticipation of the future,
>   
> Lorraine (also known as, Miss Rovig)
>
>
>
>
> Lorraine Rovig
> Assistant to Chairperson Patti Chang, Esq.
>   
> Scholarship Program
> NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
> 200 East Wells Street at Jernigan Place
> Baltimore, MD 21230
> Office: (410) 659-9314, x2415;
> Email: scholarships at nfb.org
> Website: www.nfb.org/scholarships
>   
> The National Federation of the Blind knows that blindness is not the
> characteristic that defines you or your future. Every day we raise the
> expectations of blind people, because low expectations create obstacles
> between blind people and our dreams. You can live the life you want;
> blindness is not what holds you back.
>   
> To make a donation to the National Federation of the Blind Imagination Fund
> campaign, please visit https://nfb.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1
> <https://nfb.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=5> &id=5.
>   
>
>   
>
>
>
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