[NFBNJ] #CBVIStrong2020 - George F. Meyer

Sun Sep 13 17:55:34 UTC 2020

Greetings to all!

Another pioneer that believed in persons with vision loss.
Had the same philosoby as the Federation!

Joe

From: Pamela Gaston
Subject: #CBVIStrong2020 - George F. Meyer

CBVIï¿½s second Executive Director, Dr. George F. Meyer was born in the state 
of Washington. After losing most of his eyesight to a childhood illness, he 
attend the state school for the blind. Shortly before entering the 9th grade 
at the age of 16, he read an American Association of Instructors for the 
Blind report on the success of sending older blind students to a community 
high school. Subsequently he advocated vigorously and finally received the 
reluctant permission of the school's superintendent to attend public school.

Young George memorized the long walk to the nearest city, Vancouver, 
Washington, and enrolled in the local high school. But solving the travel 
problem was only the first step. The janitor and one of the partially-seeing 
boys read assignments to him late into the evenings in a furnace room, the 
only place in the school with light that late at night. His readers took 
turns dictating the Latin textbooks letter by letter since neither had 
studied Latin. With their help, George hand-transcribed his own Braille 
books. His drive for academic excellence resulted in his being 
valedictorian of the 1914 graduating class of the Vancouver, Washington High 
School and he went on to receive his Phi Beta Kappa key at the University of 
Washington where he graduated cum laude.

Understandably, Dr. Meyer turned into a strong advocate of public school 
education for blind children. In the early Twenties he organized the first 
such classes in Minneapolis and in Seattle; returning to Minneapolis, he 
spent 15 years as supervisor of classes for the blind before moving east in 
1936 to become Executive Director of the New Jersey State Commission for the 
Blind.

He considered New Jersey the perfect place for his ideas to flourish because 
it was one of the few populous states that had not organized a residential 
school for the blind and was therefore among the pioneers in day school 
education The first public school class opened in Newark in 1911 as an 
initiative of the Commissionï¿½s first Executive Director, the energetic and 
imaginative Lydia Y. Hayes and a teacher named Janet Gilchrist Patterson.

Ms. Hayes was largely responsible for shaping the state's policy towards 
education of students who were blind. She began the practice of having the 
state pay for reader service for blind students, rallied a corps of 
volunteers to produce braille textbooks, and thriftily saw to it that when 
one student finished a textbook, it was handed on to the next. Blind 
children in rural areas, where there was not enough demand to organize 
classes, were sent to residential schools in the neighboring states of New 
York or Pennsylvania but were encouraged to return home for their high 
school work.

Soon after George Meyer took over the job after Miss Hayes' *retirement as 
the Commission's Executive Director, he launched a new service, the 
itinerant teaching program, which made it possible for blind children to 
attend local schools even in small and scattered communities. His furthered 
developed educational program started in 1943 with a single traveling 
teacher. It was so soundly conceived and developed that it became known as 
The New Jersey Plan and served as a model for other states when the day 
school movement began its spurt of nationwide growth a decade later.

During his leadership of the Commission, George Meyer actively served on 
many committees and boards including American Association of Workers for the 
Blind; The White House Committee on the Blind and Partially Sighted and the 
U.S. Advisory Board on Old Age and Survivorsï¿½ Disability Benefits. In 1959, 
his innovative leadership in the field of blindness services led to his 
being selected as the recipient of the prestigious Migel Medal by Helen 
Keller.

George Meyer, who remained in office until five years before his death in 
late 1969, was steadfast in his belief that a public school education was a 
realistic and necessary introduction to adulthood.

(*Lydia Hayes voluntarily stepped down in 1937 to supervise the Home 
Teaching Program)

Attachments:

The text of Helen Keller's letter to George Meyer and his response

Article written by George Meyer and published in the October 1940; Education 
of the Exceptional Child: The Visually Handicapped

Photos:

Photo of George Meyer on the right, standing next to then NJ Governor Robert 
Meyner in the Commissionï¿½s Board Room at 1100 Raymond Boulevard

Photo of the first page of Meyerï¿½s ï¿½Thank Youï¿½ letter to Helen Keller re: 
his having been selected to receive the Migel Medal

December 1959 Photo: Helen Keller Pays Tribute, with the caption: Highest 
award possible in work for blind was presented on Oct. 22nd to George Meyer 
(second from left) Executive Director of the NJ Commission for the Blind and 
Miss Ruth Barrett (second from right) Secretary, Work for the Blind, 
American Bible Society. The presentation of the Migel Medal was made 
simultaneously by Mrs. Robert Meyner (left) wife of the governor of NJ and 
Norman Vincent Peale (right) well known author at the offices of the 
American Foundation for the Blind, Manhattan

Photo of the Meyer Center (1960s) at 1100 Raymond Boulevard; there is a 
gentleman at a desk amidst rows of shelves that nearly reach the ceiling and 
are filled with braille books

Photo of First NJ Randolph-Sheppard blind vendor location opened at the 
Essex County Courthouse in 1937;  there is a man and woman standing by a 
display case filled with cigar boxes with a sign overhead that reads "Luxury 
Tobacco"

George Meyer's headshot portrait hanging in the CBVI Board Room; he has 
brown hair with grey sideburns, his hair is slicked back and he is wearing 
the ice glazed lens spectacles he can be seen wearing in all photos

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