[NFBOH-Cleveland] "Trying to make a difference" by Barbara Pierce in the 2019 Braille Monitor

Sun Apr 28 21:50:07 UTC 2019

Braille Monitor                          April 2019

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Trying to Make a Difference

by Barbara Pierce

>From the Editor: I am always uplifted when I get an article from Barbara
Pierce. I know from long experience that I will be inspired and educated. I
also know from experience that what she sends will be a piece I can drop in
without worrying much about editing. No article I write ever frees me from
wondering, "What will Barbara think of this? What mistake would I not have
made were I still reviewing every article with her?" Maybe this is always
the way it is between teacher and student, but here are Barbara's thoughts
on becoming a member:

I was twenty-nine before I was exposed to the philosophy of blindness
developed by the National Federation of the Blind. Until then I had had
virtually no contact with other blind people, and I am ashamed to say that
that suited me quite well. I was then called and handed a stack of
recordings of banquet speeches delivered by a man named Kenneth Jernigan. It
was a formidable stack of recorded disks, and I simply dumped them in a
corner and forgot about them. I forgot them until a January weekend when my
husband was out of town, and I was stranded at home with three small
children, including an infant with a cold, and no Talking Books to help me
keep my sanity. 

In desperation I remembered the speeches and decided that reading them while
I walked the baby in a steamy kitchen would be more interesting than
listening to the radio. I don't recall which speech I read first. It doesn't
matter. It was like eating potato chips. As soon as I finished one, I was
reaching for the next record. The ideas I discovered that weekend have now
become so familiar to me that I can hardly separate them to remember my
first reactions. I can remember the staggering shock it was to have Dr.
Jernigan point out the magnitude of the discrimination that blind people,
even me, were still facing. This was 1974. Cities were burning, and Jim Crow
was not yet dead. Suddenly I was discovering that blind people were being
denied second-floor rentals because of the danger that they would be trapped
in a fire. They were having to bring a sighted person along to travel with
them when they wanted to buy a bus or train ticket. 

Needless to say, these ideas turned my world upside down. I organized a
chapter in my county and became its president. I found and became friends
with blind people who lived near me. I naturally became active in the Ohio
affiliate. I went to my first national convention in 1975, and I met amazing
blind people from across the country. I observed truly effective cane travel
for the first time, and-more important-I observed what personal confidence
in managing the business of living looked like. My cane began to grow as I
abandoned the folding cane and found out how responsive and light a straight
fiberglass cane could be. I noticed that people with sighted spouses
continued to use their canes when they were walking together. My husband and
I tried it and discovered that we could safely walk side-by-side because I
was taking responsibility for finding curbs, rough places in the sidewalk,
and staircases. I realize now that word about me was spreading through the
convention, and people would stop by my chair to meet me during hospitality
in the evening-yes, back then convention evenings were open enough that we
had hospitality with a cash bar each evening. I began meeting Federation
leaders and talking about philosophy and NFB activities. I returned home
after that convention feeling that I had made blind friends all across the
country, people that I could turn to and get advice from at any time, and I
discovered that I had absorbed an entirely new set of attitudes about
blindness and what constituted independence. These friends were not
apologetic about blindness. They went where they wanted to and did what they
needed to, asking for information when they needed it but completely
comfortable with the accommodations they used to get things done.

I read the Braille Monitor as soon as it came out each month. I was soon
elected to the governing body of the affiliate and was elected first vice
president a couple of years after that. I learned to write press releases
and do interviews for newspapers and radio and TV. And all the time I was
growing. I noticed that blind people whom I knew traveled independently and
retrieved their own suitcases from the luggage carousel. I asked people how
they did it, and I then tried it myself. To my delight it was as easy as
they told me it would be. 

By 1981 I was ready to go back to work. My youngest child was eight, and I
thought that I might be ready to put all this Federation philosophy to work
for myself. I returned home from the 1981 National Convention to be met in
the jetway of my plane by my two girls shouting that I had been offered a
job at the college. That is when the panic set in. I had been fearlessly
saying that the average blind person could do the average job in the average
place of work and do it as well as his sighted neighbor. I even believed
it-until I had to think about juggling three children, a thirteen-room
house, entertaining students for my husband, and holding down a fulltime job
in the college Alumni Office. Could I really do it all? I turned to my
Federation friends. They were mostly working, and they seemed to be
convinced that I could do it. I took a deep breath and, trusting the members
of the NFB, accepted the job. 

Within three years I was president of the affiliate, and then I really was
busy. But I had discovered that my blind friends had been right. There were
enough hours in a day for me to get everything done. As president I did not
travel around the state as much as I should have done, but I found lots of
hours for NFB work. By 1988 Dr. Jernigan was urging me to leave Oberlin
College and come to work for him, learning to edit the Braille Monitor. By
this time my son was in college and the girls were in high school. Those
next twenty years flew by because I was so busy. I pretty much dedicated all
of my free time to Federation work, what with acting as national rep at
other state conventions and trying to take a stand for good rehabilitation
here in Ohio. 

Before I quite knew where I was, I was facing retirement from the Monitor,
and I had put in twenty-four years as president of the Ohio affiliate. That
also seemed long enough, so I began seeking successors for these two jobs
and looking around for other work to do in the organization. 

I served for a couple of terms as president of the Ohio Association to
Promote the Use of Braille, but it became clear that the Ohio Senior
Division needed leadership. So I have stepped in to see what I can do to
meet this need. I now live in a retirement community, so I see firsthand the
growing population of seniors losing vision. This is a hard group to serve
because these people don't want to learn new techniques for doing the things
they always did using vision. Rehabilitation funding is scarce for teaching
them to travel using the long white cane, and they are terrified to go out
into the community trusting that insubstantial wand to tell them where they
are going. But the need for information and friendship is acute. I talk on
the phone to seniors and their family members about ways of coping with
vision loss. The division now conducts monthly calls for anyone losing
vision regardless of age. I am trying to work with Departments on Aging to
teach their staffs to work constructively with blind seniors. It is slow
going, but it is very necessary work.

I urge all chapters to reach out to seniors losing vision. These people can
benefit from getting to know their blind neighbors and other blind seniors.
We have much work to do with seniors losing vision. I am not worried that I
will run out of things to do to keep myself busy. 

Suzanne Hartfield-Turner, President

NFBOH-Cleveland Chapter

C: (216) 990-6199

P: (641) 715-3900

Ex: 582705

A: PO Box 141077

Cleveland, Ohio 44114

E: President.NFB.ClevelandOhio at Gmail.com
<mailto:President.NFB.ClevelandOhio at Gmail.com> 

Please visit and take a moment to like our Facebook Page!

https://m.facebook.com/NationalFederationOfTheBlindOfOhioClevelandChapter/ 

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.

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