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 Down load the entire PDF version of the Buckeye Bulletin Spring/Summer 09

From the President’s Desk

by J. Webster Smith

I attended my first NFB convention in 1992,
and it was a life-changing event. It was held in
Charlotte, North Carolina, and it was unique
because the meeting was held in a convention
center with the housing spread among four
hotels. It was memorable for me for a number of
reasons, and in this column I want to try to convey
some of those reasons to you in an attempt
to persuade you to consider attending this year’s
NFB convention in Detroit, Michigan, from July
3 through 8.
Even though I had been a member of the
National Federation of the Blind since 1990, I
had no idea what to expect when I arrived in
Charlotte. The first thing that struck me was the
way conventioneers were responding to the fact
that we had to take shuttles to and from the convention
center and the hosting hotels. For the
vast majority it was no big deal and in fact often
seemed quite enjoyable. The next thing that
amazed me was the number of choices the convention
offered. I remember feeling, “There is
no way I could ever attend everything I want to
unless I could divide myself into three or four
people.” It seemed to me that from 7:00 a.m. to
11:00 p.m. something was always going on.
Now to most people that could be overwhelming,
but for me it was exhilarating.
I was a young professor at Indiana
University South Bend, and I had an active
lifestyle that included travel, recreation, and
many academic pursuits. So for me this convention
suited my personality and life.
I dropped in and out of many gatherings that
first year, from the blind educators meeting to
parts of the parents’ meeting. I even wandered
into a very interesting reception of businesspeople
that I later found out were merchants. I
remember returning to my room one day and
looking at the agenda and saying to myself, “I
can’t imagine that they have left anything out!”
There were social choices as well, featuring
great music, dancing, fellowship and food, and
even a Monte Carlo night. I must admit that,
when I had to call time out from exhaustion, it
nearly killed me because I did not want to miss
anything. I was like a starving man that year,
and this convention was the ultimate smorgasbord
of all things related to blindness and visual
impairment. If you are busy and active and like
to have options and choices, this is the event for
you. I can guarantee that you will find something
that interests you.
I never will forget the phone call that led to
my attending that first convention. It came about
two in the afternoon, and I remember a female
voice saying, “Please hold for Dr. Jernigan.” My
mouth fell open because I had heard his voice
on many recordings, but I had never dreamed
that I would hear it on my phone. When he
came on the line, it was instantaneous recognition.
He extended the invitation that changed my
life forever. As I walked into the convention
SPRING/SUMMER 2009 PAGE 2
center in Charlotte, I heard all those voices that I
had only read about and heard others talk about.
It was fascinating to me finally to put voices
with some of those names. I remember riding on
one of the shuttle buses and overhearing a conversation
between Allen Harris, then Peggy
Pender, and Fred Schroeder. I thought to myself,
“I’m on the bus with these guys, and the front of
the bus at that.” What a thrill.” It really didn’t
matter to me what they were talking about; just
hearing them was a powerful experience for me.
Hearing those voices compelled me to add
my own enthusiastically, so I remember voting
with the resolutions committee at the meeting,
as if I were a member. A longtime member
tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You don’t
have to do that.” I attended the public board
meeting and sat with amazement as those voices
kept talking about issues that really mattered. I
left that meeting with the realization that I had
finally met a group of competent and confident
blind people who were about the business of living
their lives and making life better for other
blind people. As I think back on it now, I was in
search of blind people who just got it and had it.
To that point I considered that I had a very productive
life, complete with a great job and family
and many friends and colleagues. But I wasn’t
really sure that there were other blind people
with similar experience. Maybe I had been reading
my press clippings too much and sort of
thought I was one of those super-blind people--
few and far between. At this meeting I met people
who were doing things I considered extraordinary,
whether they were blind or not. I also
found blind people I could learn from and who
could contribute to my growth in every respect.
I must admit that some of the people I met did
not sound anything like I thought they would
when reading their articles and other writings.
I was like a newborn child at that first meeting,
naive, innocent, and very vulnerable, but
right at home. If you are a blind person who gets
it, wants to meet others who get it as well, and,
more important, want to help others get it, you
should consider attending this year’s national
convention.
This year’s convention is in Michigan. I
know as Buckeyes we have had a longtime
competition with those guys from the state up
north, but let’s look at it this way--it’s so close!
Having such a wonderful event in our backyard
should compel us to attend it. For some of you
reading this, the convention will be practically a
hop, skip, and a jump away, and who knows
when it will ever be this close again? Just think
about it. No long airplane flight or bus trip or
trip by automobile. At the most, the meeting will
be no more than six hours from the farthest
point in our state. With this in mind we should
try to have a large delegation of Buckeyes to
show those from that state up north that we can
compete with them even off the football field.
This is my first year as NFB-O president,
and this is a golden opportunity for us to get as
many people to the convention as we can, short
of hosting the event ourselves. If you’ve always
wanted to attend this meeting but thought that it
was too far, this is your opportunity.
In these tight economic times our hotel rates
are still fantastic, and I am committed to helping
as many blind Ohioans attend this meeting as
possible. I know what that first convention did
for me, and I want to do whatever I can to give
other people that kind of opportunity. You see, I
have not missed a convention since 1992, and I
have no plans to do so in the future. I know
many of you reading this will follow the convention
on the Internet, still others of you will
wait for the audio version of the convention to
be released, but wouldn’t it be exciting to be
there and actually meet those voices you hear?
This could be the experience that changes your
life so significantly that like me you will never
PAGE 3 BUCKEYE BULLETIN
ever forget it. As blind people we are often told
that our lives have no imagination or creativity
and that we must feel bad when we consider all
that we are missing. To this I say, just come to
Detroit and see if that is true of the majority of
people you will meet there. The energy and
excitement are electrifying, and I can only hope
that, if you choose to join us, your experience
will be half as positive and exhilarating as mine
was in 1992. By the way, I’d like to meet you as
well and put a voice with your name.
Thirty-five years ago this spring I wrote a
letter to then NFB president Kenneth
Jernigan. I had read my first Federation literature
only the preceding January. The man who
gave me the recordings of Dr. Jernigan’s
speeches had by then left the area, instructing
a handful of us to do what we could to keep
the newly reorganized At-Large Chapter of
the NFB of Ohio afloat. I wanted to be a good
soldier, but it seemed to me that we in Lorain
County needed to band together in a chapter
in order to encourage each other and to be
able to work more effectively to improve life
for the county’s blind citizens. So I wrote
with my problem to that far-away, inspiring
person, the president of the National
Federation of the Blind. I explained my conflicting
desires to follow the instructions I had
been given and to organize a chapter and
asked his advice.
Having now been a state president for
almost a quarter century, I can imagine the
joyful impact of such a letter on Dr. Jernigan
and, when he received a copy of my letter, on
my own state president, Bob Eschbach. Very
rarely indeed do people contact an NFB president
eager to establish a local chapter. I cannot
now reconstruct what I expected the
response to my letter to be. Now it seems
only reasonable to me that the national president
would have responded to my letter. After
all, I was asking for advice; what should I
have expected? I only know that I was thrilled
beyond words to get the letter that I received.
I am sorry that in the intervening years I have
lost it. He gave me wise and practical counsel
and alerted me that I would be hearing from
Bob Eschbach. Bob’s call was almost immediate,
and out of that conversation and his
subsequent visit arose the Lorain County
chapter.
But the beginning of my chapter is not
what I have been thinking about this spring.
By far, as I remember it, the larger part of Dr.
Jernigan’s letter was spent urging me to attend
the national convention in Chicago that summer.
This was probably no more than an auto-
Editor’s Musings
by Barbara Pierce
SPRING/SUMMER 2009 PAGE 4
matic invitation at the close of the letter, but
to me it was the most important part of it.
I don’t suppose I seriously considered
attending the convention that year. Our children
were almost six, three, and eleven months.
The baby was still nursing, and I certainly
would not have considered that I could travel
independently with her to a convention and
attend sessions while caring for her. I told
myself that I was needed at home and that we
certainly did not have the disposable income to
allow me to go off on such a jaunt, even if my
long-suffering husband were willing to take on
the preschoolers by himself. I know now that I
should have dared to go to that convention. It
was one of the great ones. But I sat down to
write Dr. Jernigan to explain why I could not
attend the convention and to assure him that I
would be among the first to reserve a room for
the 1975 convention. Making that promise to
attend the convention the following year was
an important step for me.
By then I had attended my first state convention
and was president of my local chapter.
I understood how important to my own development
as an independent blind woman NFB
conventions could be. Besides, Bob had promised
to go with me to the convention, and we
spent the intervening year scrimping to save
the funds for the convention and the sitter for
the kids. This was long before NFB Camp for
Federation children. I was still very far from
having the courage to set out for a national
convention alone. I hope I would have had the
nerve to do it if Bob had insisted on staying
home to save money by minding the children
while I went alone, but I am not certain how it
would have come out. I will always be grateful
to him for being willing to go. His willingness
has made all the difference.
I don’t have the words to describe the
impact of that 1975 convention on me. I
arrived carrying a fifty-four-inch folding cane,
using it only when I had no reliable arm to
cling to. As soon as the exhibit hall opened, I
bought a fifty-seven-inch straight fiberglass
cane. The minute I tried it, I told Bob that it
was as if I had been playing a piano with mittens
on and now I had taken them off. When
we went to dinner with two other couples in
which one spouse was sighted and one was
blind, I noticed that the other blind people
were walking with their spouses but using
their canes. I was the only one without a cane.
That was just about the last time I ever
walked anywhere outside my home, except to
the altar in church, without using a cane.
I was not a rapid Braille reader, but I was
given a Braille convention agenda that
allowed me to decode my choices for meetings
to attend. Bob was not much of a meeting
attender, so he would go off to the art
museum or other place of interest, leaving
me to dip into convention activities on my
own. I had never been in the Palmer House
before, and I had no idea where anything
was, but the place was filled with blind people
figuring out where they wanted to go,
and I decided that I would not look or feel
out of place asking my way around the hotel.
I discovered that I was pretty good at getting
where I wanted to go, and the liberation I
experienced was intoxicating.
I have never missed another convention,
though for many years I went on my own
because Bob had to stay home with the brood.
I can only imagine the impact that this year’s
convention will have on first-time attendees.
The program is vastly more complex and
compelling than it was back then. For families
with blind children, nothing can compare with
the impact of a week of intensive parent programming
and contact with competent, welladjusted
blind adults to shape parents’ and
PAGE 5 BUCKEYE BULLETIN
blind kids’ conceptions of what blind people
can become. We now have many vocational
and avocational divisions bringing people
together with similar interests and needs.
Access technology vendors and organizations
assisting blind people in various ways are represented
in the exhibit hall. NFB committees
and departments at our headquarters at the
National Center for the Blind schedule workshops
and seminars to jump-start affiliate and
local chapter activities. Above all, because
thousands of blind people now attend our conventions,
the opportunities to network with
others who face the same challenges we do in
our daily lives are much greater than they
used to me. And I have to say that the networking
I did at my first convention led me to
deep friendships that continue to nurture and
encourage me all these years later.
If you are considering attending this year’s
convention July 3 through 8 in Detroit, I urge
you to make up your mind in favor of doing
so. Ohio has a bus traveling from Cincinnati,
through Dayton and Toledo to Detroit. It costs
$20 to reserve a seat, but that money is
returned when you actually climb on the bus.
So the price is right for getting to and from
the convention. To reserve your seat on the
bus, contact Crystal McClain, (937) 935-
6188; email < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >. You
can make a room reservation by calling (800)
266-9432. Room rates are $62 a night for
doubles, $66 for triples, and $68 for quads.
The Detroit Marriott is an elegant hotel, so
these rates are spectacularly good. Before
June 1 you can register for the convention
online or by using the form that appears at the
end of this newsletter. Doing so will save you
$5 for the registration and another $5 for the
banquet, which you do not want to miss. But
if you decide to attend the convention after
May 31, you will have to wait to register till
you arrive at convention, and it will cost $10
more.
The Ohio affiliate is warm and friendly,
and its members are happy to show new-comers
the ropes. If you are a parent of a blind
child, contact Cindy Conley, president of the
parents division. Her email address is
< This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >. She can connect you
with other parents. If you are a student, you
will want to contact the National Association
of Blind Students when you arrive. Robby
Spangler is president of the Ohio division,
which is still struggling to get off the ground.
Robby will be glad to hear from you. His
email address is
< This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >. If you are a
senior, Barbara Fohl is your Ohio contact. She
is president of our Ohio Organization of Blind
Seniors. Her phone number is (440) 964-
7824; her email is < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >.
I could list lots of other people whom you
could contact, and I will be happy to mention
names and contact information if you get in
touch with me. But I suggest that you make
plans to come to the convention this summer,
where you can meet people yourself. The
experience will change your life.
The NFB of Ohio has been a member of the
Better Business Bureau since 2000.