[blindkid] Fwd: NY Times: Paterson's Exit Presents Worry With Each Step

Wed Dec 22 00:29:32 UTC 2010

This is a sad story.
Carol

>Subject: NY Times: Paterson's Exit Presents Worry With Each Step
>Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 14:10:50 -0500
>
>From: "Pamela Gaston" <Pamela.Gaston at dhs.state.nj.us>
>To: <Bernice.Davis at dhs.state.nj.us>,    <Pam.Ronan at dhs.state.nj.us>
>
>
>NY Times: Paterson's Exit Presents Worry With Each Step By MICHAEL
>  BARBARO He worries about how he will make a living. He wonders whether
>  people will value him once he is out of office.
>But when he thinks about the future, David A. Paterson, the legally
>  blind governor of New York, is most unsettled by something more
>  elementary: how to cross the street.
>For years, a small army of state employees has done for Mr. Paterson
>  what his predecessors did for themselves: they read him the newspaper,
>  guided him up stairs and around corners, fixed his collar when it was
>  sticking up, and even grabbed a quart of milk for him at the
>  supermarket.
>"If I go into a grocery store, the state police come in with me," he said.
>"It's kind of like, hey, Governor, just tell us what you need and
>  we'll get it for you. And, I know I have to adjust."
>Many politicians who leave office struggle to adapt to civilian life,
>  with its everyday letdowns and indignities - the sudden absence of
>  solicitous aides and gun-toting bodyguards, jam-packed schedules and
>  an ever-ringing telephone. But for Mr. Paterson, who can see nothing
>  out of his left eye and only color and large objects out of his right,
>  the transition will be extraordinary: after three decades in 
> government, he must now relearn  the basic routines and rituals of 
> living on his own.
>In a wide-ranging interview, he spoke candidly, and at times
>  emotionally, about how he was grappling with - and, in some cases,
>  dreading - that change, saying he planned to enroll at a school for
>  the blind that he last attended when he was 3 years old.
>"I know it can be done," Mr. Paterson said, "but it's just the
>  anticipation of it that gives me anxiety."
>He also admitted to some concern about money and losing the lucrative
>  perks that come with his post. He is looking for work in the business
>  and academic worlds but has no job lined up, a fact that seemed to
>  slightly nag at him.
>He has sought the advice of former President Bill Clinton and former Govs.
>George E. Pataki and Mario M. Cuomo about how to cope with the loss of
>  title and stature. Most of what they tell him boils down to this: "It
>  gets easier."
>He acknowledged previously unknown strains on his family that
>  accompanied his elevation to governor, especially on his teenage son,
>  who has hated almost every minute of his father's tenure. At one
>  point, Mr. Paterson said, he even told the boy he was sorry for
>  becoming the state's chief executive.
>He divulged the ways he had been teasing the incoming governor, Andrew M.
>Cuomo, since his victory in November. And he offered a mediocre
>  assessment of his own skills as a manager, giving himself a B-minus
>  over the last four years. He said he had been reluctant to pack up the
>  governor's mansion and his own office, once gently scolding a staff
>  member for rushing him out.
>(His last day is Dec. 31.)
>But looming over the interview was Mr. Paterson's obvious unease about
>  what awaits him. He conceded that he had put off confronting his new
>  reality:
>he has yet to schedule with his 22-year-old daughter a long-promised
>  practice run on Harlem's sidewalks, subways and streets.
>When Mr. Paterson was a boy, his parents were determined that he not
>  be treated as disabled. Defying his doctors' advice, he never learned
>  Braille, used a Seeing Eye dog or walked with a cane. Instead, he
>  adapted: he memorized the city's subway system by listening to the
>  conductors' announcements, learned to follow the lead of strangers 
> at crosswalks,
>  and developed a system for catching cabs that would keep him from
>  mistakenly boarding a passenger car.
>The system was not perfect.  He recalled an incident a few years ago 
>when, as a state senator, he  hailed what he thought was a taxi in 
>Manhattan. At the end of the
>  ride, the driver refused to take his fare. When Mr. Paterson pressed
>  him, the man explained: 'I am not driving a taxi. I just saw you 
> on the street and thought you  might need a ride.' "
>His survival skills atrophied when he became lieutenant governor in
>  2007 - and governor a year later after Eliot Spitzer resigned amid scandal.
>Suddenly, he was chief executive of the state, with a huge security
>  detail and a domestic staff at the governor's mansion.
>"The reality is that I had a pretty good sense of my own independence.
>  But over the last four years," he said, "I haven't been on the subway.
>  I haven't crossed a street by myself. Haven't gone into a restaurant
>  by myself."
>Mr. Paterson, 56, said he planned to attend classes at Helen Keller
>  Services for the Blind and, if finances permitted it, hire a full-time
>  aide to help guide him for the first year, in part to deal with
>  strangers he expects will still approach him.
>"It would probably be good for me to travel with somebody, because,
>  who knows, I may have more pardon requests," he said mischievously.
>Though he did not rule out running for office again someday, 
>Mr.  Paterson, who has earned $179,000 a year as governor, said he was
>  eager to earn a bigger salary in the private sector. That would allow
>  him to put his son through college and to replicate, at least in some
>  ways, the comfortable life he has grown accustomed to.
>"You have a false income when you're governor, because you live in the
>  executive mansion," he said, ticking off the perks: free meals, free
>  transportation, free staff. "And, so, if you computed that out to a
>  salary, it's probably twice the governor's salary."
>He confirmed that he had met with administrators at New York
>  University and Touro College to discuss taking teaching positions. He
>  has spoken with executives at a local talk radio station, WOR, about
>  becoming a substitute host. So far, though, he has not hammered out
>  any contracts. In the meantime, he has filled out paperwork to begin
>  collecting a state pension.  (With 27 years, he can collect about 
> $80,000 annually.)
>"I am worried about money, because I am not a billionaire, in case you
>  hadn't heard," he said.
>His advisers - old friends, current aides and former chief executives
>  - have encouraged him to think big. Mr. Clinton, for instance, asked
>  him to consider running a foundation in Harlem that would employ
>  youngsters and cut energy costs by painting the roofs of buildings
>  white to reflect sunlight.
>"You want me to make all the roofs in Harlem white?" Mr. Paterson
>  recalled asking Mr. Clinton inside the former president's office 
> on 125th Street.
>Mr. Clinton nodded. "Don't you think Harlem has become white enough?" Mr.
>Paterson asked him.
>Over the last few weeks, he has conducted a distinctly Paterson-esque
>  farewell tour across the state, much of it over local AM radio,
>  dispensing frank and funny observations about himself and his
>  colleagues. He has compared the news media in New York to the
>  corruption-riddled Tammany Hall, and declared that the quality of
>  lawmakers in Albany has plunged over the last two decades. "I am sorry
>  to say this," he added, impishly.
>He even made light of his own multiple run-ins with state prosecutors
>  and ethics investigators, telling the audience at a Bronx school the
>  other night that when he saw all the people in their seats, he figured
>  he had walked into a grand jury room.
>He had only good things to say about his predecessor and his successor.
>Asked how he planned to welcome Mr. Cuomo, he has said he had already
>  swept one big obstacle out of the governor-elect's path: he made sure
>  the faulty outlet above the sink in the master bedroom of the
>  governor's mansion got fixed.
>"I said, 'This is important stuff, Andrew,' " he recalled. "'You don't
>  know what it's like when you need to plug something in, like an
>  electric razor, and you can't.' "
>He even weighed in on Mr. Spitzer's show on CNN, which has suffered in
>  the ratings and has led to a debate about whether his co-host,
>  Kathleen Parker, has been unduly sidelined by the ex-governor. If
>  anything, Mr. Paterson opined, the show needs to revolve more around
>  Mr. Spitzer to showcase his brilliance.
>He said he was looking forward to having a more normal family life,
>  recounting the difficulties his wife and his son faced once he became
>  governor.
>"I don't think anything about me being governor ever looked like it
>  made him happy," he said about the boy, Alex, now 16. Asked how it
>  made him feel as a father, he responded: "Very guilty."
>He and his wife, Michelle, grew so frustrated by tabloid photographers'
>trying to shoot pictures of them as they vacationed poolside at a
>  friend's house in the Hamptons that they grabbed the family camera and
>  took pictures of the paparazzi, who they said were trespassing.
>"While we found that funny, and it's a great story to tell," he said,
>  "the reality is it was very hard to sit back and say, 'So how have 
> you been?'
>Because you are both under this constant pressure."
>Reflecting on his tenure, he paused for several seconds.
>
>"Some things went well, some things went not so well," he said. "It
>  was a privilege. It was an honor. I would serve. I would do it again."
>Still, he could not resist a joke, cheekily recalling the suddenness
>  with which he landed in the governor's office.
>"I would like two weeks' notice next time," he said.
>
>
>
>
>----------
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Carol Castellano
National Organization of Parents of Blind Children
973-377-0976
carol_castellano at verizon.net
www.nopbc.org  