[NFBOH-Cleveland] "Well Digger's Wisdom" by Ryan Strunk in the Braille Monitor of March 2018

[Suzanne Turner]

Braille Monitor                                    March 2018

 


Well Digger’s Wisdom


by Ryan Strunk

>From the Editor: Ryan Strunk is the newly-elected president of the National
Federation of the Blind of Minnesota. He is bright, energetic, and
insightful. He is also painfully honest, especially when it comes to
self-reflection. What follows is a speech he gave to the National Federation
of the Blind of Minnesota before he was elected: 

 

I attended my first NFB convention in 1990, my second in 1991. And I was
really proud of this fact. Never mind that my third was in 2001. It was a
real badge of honor for me.

So in 2002, when I was introducing myself at the secret scholarship meeting,
I took that badge and pinned it right up on my chest to score points with
the committee. “I’ve been a member of the Federation for a long time,” I
told that committee—and just as important—my fellow scholarship winners. “I
drank Federation juice and ate Federation crunch for breakfast.” I look back
on that now, and I hate how arrogant and hollow and, well, silly that
sounded.

Because first, let’s be real. It’s not a good joke. And Federation Crunch
would not be a good cereal. I mean, I could handle the white cane
marshmallows, and I could even eat Whozit, but I draw the line at biting
into a guide dog corn puff.

Second, though, and way more important, who did I think I was? I was born in
1983. Do the math. In 1990, while Dr. Jernigan was delivering “The
Federation at Fifty,” I was in child care. In 1991, while Dr. Maurer was
“Reflecting the Flame,” I was eating crab corn chowder at the chocoholic bar
at the top of the Hyatt Regency.

I was listening to an interview with Cory Booker recently. You might have
heard of him. He’s a senator from New Jersey. And in it he talked about how
he grew up a solidly middle-class black kid in the 1960s. He said he had all
these privileges that others at the time didn’t, and it kind of went to his
head. So he’s walking around one day all puffed up, and his dad said
something to him that struck a chord with me—this Chinese proverb that’s
been rattling around in my head ever since I heard it. He said to Cory,
“Son, never forget. You are drinking from a well your ancestors dug.”

My parents figured out I was blind when I was six months old, and since they
didn’t really have any idea of what to do, they threw themselves on the
mercy of Kim Bosshart, this pretty new teacher of blind students with some
pretty revolutionary ideas about how to teach blind kids: things like put a
cane in their hand when they’re old enough to walk, teach them slate and
stylus before the Braille writer, teach them Braille even if they have some
residual vision.

Incidentally, at the same time, the eye doctor I had as a kid was telling my
parents I could read two-inch tall print 
 with a magnifying glass. Kim,
thankfully, knew better.

She had me baking cookies at six years old, walking around the block under
sleepshades at seven, finding random addresses by knocking on complete
strangers’ doors and asking for directions at eight. By junior high I was
ordering my own books and introducing myself to my teachers as “blind.” By
the way, it was Kim who made me say “blind,” even though I wanted to use
“visually impaired.”

We gave Kim Bosshart, now Kim Adams, the Distinguished Educator of Blind
Children Award in 1989, and for good reason. She was, and still is, an
amazing person.

And I never really got that back then. I took for granted how hard she
worked, how all those evenings and weekends that I complained about having
to give up were evenings and weekends she voluntarily gave up. I figured
that my success was because of my hard work and my amazing brain. But they
wouldn’t have meant a thing without someone to push me to work and to fill
up that brain with radical new ideas.

You are drinking from a well your ancestors dug.

Summers, when Kim wasn’t around, I went to lots of summer camps. There was
SKIP, the Summer Kids Independence Program; there was PI, Project
Independence; and when I got older, there was Winner Fest, which was a
perfect time to hang out with girlfriends—I mean do awesome seminars on
blindness. All these programs were put on by the Nebraska Commission for the
Blind, but a whole bunch of the staff there were NFB members, blind role
models who reinforced all those same ideas I was learning from Kim.

When we took a walk down the gravel lane at 5:00 in the morning to
experience the sunrise in the middle of the forest, it was blind people who
led the way. When we made foil pack dinners around the campfire, blind
people built and tended that campfire. When I got caught sneaking out to
spend time with my girlfriend, it was—no that didn’t happen. No really. It
didn’t.

Anyway.

I imagine Amy Buresh can tell you some stories. But that’s the point. Right?
She was there, along with so many others, sharing her time and her
experience with me to shape me into a more confident, independent blind
person. Thanks, Amy, and please give my love to Shane, too.

You are drinking from a well your ancestors dug.

Mom. Of course mom did her part too. She was an active member of the
Nebraska Parents of Blind Children and the Lioness Club. She helped put on
golf tournaments and craft shows to raise money so that Nebraska blind kids
could have scholarships and get good technology. She drove me to those
summer camps, to the white cane banquets, and she held me accountable to
those same high standards that Kim and my blind role models had for me.

And in 2002, when I won that scholarship, she called me in my room at the
Galt House Hotel in Louisville to tell me that she was downstairs in the
lobby, that she had come all the way to Kentucky because she was proud of me
and she wanted to support me.

You are drinking from a well your ancestors dug.

There comes a point, and it’s one of my favorite things about our
organization, that someone comes up to you and hands you a shovel, and they
suggest that maybe you’d like to dig for a little while. For me, that first
opportunity came from Carlos Serván, he was the Nebraska affiliate president
at the time, and he suggested that I should run for president of the
Nebraska Association of Blind Students, even though I had no leadership
experience.

And then it was Jason Ewell, calling me in 2002 to invite me to take part in
NFB Corps, where they dropped me in the middle of Seattle and Knoxville and
Burlington and Pensacola to build new chapters of the NFB. It was Angela
Wolf, inviting me in 2003 to serve as treasurer of the National Association
of Blind Students, and then calling me again in 2005 to tell me I should run
for president. It was Fred Schroeder in 2006, suggesting that he could get
me a sweet gig teaching Braille. All I had to do was pick up everything I
owned and move to Hawaii. No big deal, right? And all that time I was
learning and growing, starting to find my feet, those leaders were right
there. Encouraging me and offering me their wisdom.

You are drinking from a well your ancestors dug.

I learned something, in NFB Corps, in NABS, in Hawaii and Texas and
Minnesota. I learned just how incredibly lucky I had been. Because I met
people who didn’t have the same opportunities I had.

There was the forty-three-year-old woman in Hawaii who still lived at home
with her parents because they didn’t believe she could ever live on her own.
She worked hard and she learned Braille, and after she graduated, she worked
in a sheltered shop.

There was the senior support group in Florida, some twenty-odd people who
sat in a conference room every month and listened to magazine articles on
tape telling them that a cure was just around the corner. When Rachel
Olivero and I went to one of their meetings, we had the privilege of hearing
their president dole out this sage advice: “Men, let me tell you. When you
go over to somebody else’s house, and you have to pee, sit down!” And being
green and wet behind the ears and drunk on independence, I actually argued
with the guy.

There was the dad who lost his sight a year ago and wondered if he could
ever provide for his family again. There was the guy who went blind when he
was hit by a drunk driver who just wanted a job, the kid who graduated
valedictorian and never learned to tie his shoes or sign his name, the
college student full of promise who was too afraid to walk to class—you know
these stories! Maybe you even are one. And if you are, God am I glad you’re
here.

Stephen Jay Gould once wrote, “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight
and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people
of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

I don’t want to lose any more Einsteins. I don’t want to lose any more
tenBroeks or Jernigans or Maurers or Riccobonos or Scanlans or Dunnams or
Jacobsens or Sanders or Baileys or Wenzels or Aunes or Heberts or anyone
else in this room because we weren’t there.

So here I am, and here is my promise to you. When you need my time or my
energy, you will have it. When you need my nights and my weekends, I will
give them and gladly, and if we ever have to fight because someone wants to
hold us back, bring it on.

I have drunk from the well my ancestors dug, and I will never forget that. I
stand here with you now, shoulder to shoulder, digging the well that blind
children and blind seniors and all those who come after us will drink from.
My brothers, my sisters, let’s work together to create a better tomorrow.
Let’s go build the National Federation of the Blind.

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