By Tom Scanlan

(Editor’s Note:  This is the winner of the 2006 Metro Chapter essay contest.  Tom Scanlan has been a member of the NFB of Minnesota since 1970, treasurer since 1974, and editor of this publication since 1995.)

Many people are lucky enough to have a turning point in their lives that puts them on a path to more happiness and success than they would have otherwise had.  That point for me was the convention of the National Federation of the Blind held in Minneapolis in 1970.  I can easily divide my life into two parts: before and after that convention.

By all appearances, before the convention I was successful.  I grew up an only child on a farm near Rochester.  My parents soon discovered that my vision was not good, and did what all good parents do to fix the problem by taking me to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and doctors in Minneapolis.  No one could explain what was wrong, and finally my doctor at the Mayo Clinic said there was nothing that they could do, and I should be sent to the Minnesota Braille and Sight Saving School (now the Academy for the Blind) in Faribault.  My father resisted the idea, but the doctor and my mother convinced him that I would someday go away to college and this was just an early start.  So off I went to Faribault, and I did get a good education including academics, music, drama, athletics, and social activities.  However, the summers were not good being a blind child on a farm.  My mother even took me out of summer Bible school because I was taunted by sighted kids as a near-sighted “Mr. Magoo.”

Life went on, and I graduated from the Braille and Sight Saving School and was admitted to the University of St. Thomas.  There had never been any question by my parents that I would go to college, so I had grown up with the idea that I was as capable as anyone else.  However, I had to overcome new problems such as not being able to read the blackboard (some colleges rejected me because I couldn’t).  I solved the problems and graduated in the top 10% of my class with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration.

Then the real trouble started.  It was during the economic boom of the mid-60s and if you had a warm body you could get a job, especially with a degree from a top college such as St. Thomas.  That is, unless you were “not normal” such as being blind.  The St. Thomas placement director said he had never seen anything like it.  I was told by several companies that they didn’t hire the handicapped.  I was hired by one major corporation for their accounting department and sent for a pre-employment physical exam.  The nurse giving the exam panicked, saying “You’re blind.  Why don’t they tell me these things?”   She sent me off to lunch, and when I returned I could hear arguing in the office.  The man who wanted to hire me was saying “But he’s the best qualified candidate for the job,” and someone else was saying “It doesn’t matter.  We don’t hire blind people.”  So I was un-hired before I even started.

When I told my counselor at State Services for the Blind about it and said that we should do something, he just told me to let it go.  I didn’t think that was right, but I had no power to do anything about it.  Instead, my counselor arranged for me to take the various tests for state-government employment.  I passed the exams with high scores and was placed on lists for several positions.

Then my luck got better.  I was interviewed for a research analyst position in the state highway department by a woman who knew all about discrimination.  She was Jewish and had fled Austria when the Nazis took over.  She thought I was well qualified for the job and hired me.  She still had to fight management above her to keep me, but she prevailed. 

A large part of my job involved dealing with computer programs and the people who wrote them.  The man assigned to us gave me a book on programming and let me write a program to process some data we dealt with.  He brought the output of the program back to me and said “You’re either very good or very lucky,” since the program had been perfect.  He got me transferred to the computer department, and we worked together for 35 years.  Early in that job, he told the head of the department that I studied all the computer documentation and understood the computer system better than anyone else.  To which the big boss replied, “He’s blind.  What else does he have to do?”

On the surface I was very successful, with a good job and the respect of my co-workers.  But underneath I was not happy.  I did not want to be blind, even “legally.”  I was “near sighted,” had “low vision,” or “didn’t see well.”  But I was not “blind” and wanted to have little to do with blind people, because I wasn’t like them.  Still, I didn’t really believe I could do as good a job as my co-workers and was afraid they would agree with me.  Anytime anyone would say or do something that indicated they knew I was blind, I was mortified.

Then the National Federation of the Blind convention came to town.  A friend called and asked me to come and have some fun.  I had never heard of the organization, but had nothing better to do.  So I left work on Friday saying, “I’ll going to this convention of blind people and see if they run into each other, I’ll probably be back on Monday, but here’s my vacation slip just in case.”  I did not come back on Monday.  I stayed at the convention until it finished on Tuesday.

What I found at the convention were blind people who did not feel sorry for themselves, were confident in their abilities, and above all believed it was respectable to be blind.  And there were lots of them.  They filled the largest hotel in the state.  This was no little group of pitiable blind people; there were lawyers, teachers, merchants, factory workers, and even computer programmers like me.  I came to party and found the parties, but also something else.  I sat in the hotel lobby reading literature that described the NFB’s philosophy and programs.  I was hooked.

After the convention, I got involved in the state organization.  They were glad to have me, and I helped with whatever I could such as legislation and public relations. 

Part of the legislation I helped with was an amendment to add “disability” to the Minnesota Human Rights Act (Minnesota Statute 363A).  That meant that the flagrant discrimination I had experienced when employers outright refused to hire me because I was blind could not happen anymore.  Employers can find more subtle ways, but there is less discrimination because of the NFB of Minnesota’s legislative success.

I helped form a student division and served two terms as its president.  Then I was elected treasurer of the NFB of Minnesota, and continue to serve in that position.

One of the issues that emerged about then was the lack of blind people in the management of the Minneapolis Society for the Blind, now known as Vision Loss Resources (VLR).  Some of us tried to participate in the annual meeting of VLR to elect blind people to the board of directors.  We were cast off by the sighted management of VLR as “not able to contribute.”  We sought relief in court, and the judge ruled that VLR had “rejected those who had shown the most ability in overcoming their handicap,” and ordered a new board election.  I and seven other NFB members were elected to the VLR board.  But it soon was apparent that they had learned nothing from the experience, and they continued to refer to blind people as patients.  The eight of us agreed that a different course was needed, and we resigned from the board at the end of our term.

That different course was the founding of Blindness: Learning in New Dimensions (BLIND) to provide a new training program for blind people that would teach positive attitudes and build self-confidence.  Instead of teaching blind people how limited they are and what they couldn’t do, it would teach by example that blind people could lead full, successful lives.  A key feature was to be management and staffing by blind people; truly of the blind, by the blind, and for the blind.  My role in the formation of BLIND was as a volunteer management consultant, applying the knowledge of computers and management I had gained on my job.

Meanwhile, back on my job, I continued to advance through promotions to have more responsibility.  But now it was different than my pre-NFB days.  I was confident in my ability to do the work as a blind person, and I no longer feared that someone would think less of me because I didn’t see as well as they did.  A co-worker told me, “When I came here, I wondered what you were doing here and how you could do anything since you are blind.  But now I know you are one of the best people here and I’m glad to work with you.”  That was the best confirmation I could have that my NFB-bred positive attitude toward blindness and the resultant self-confidence were paying off.  No one ever said to me that “you do so well for a blind person,” or “you do so well I forget you’re blind.”

But not everyone was willing to treat blind people as competent equals.  The airlines were treating us as children that could not take care of ourselves or help others.  For me it began with a flight from Minneapolis to Baltimore with a change of planes in Cleveland.  I was part of a group of Minnesotans on our way to the NFB national convention, and when we had to change planes in Cleveland the trouble began.  A gate agent collected our tickets, supposedly to check us in for the Baltimore flight.  But then he refused to give them back or let us board until we gave up our white canes.  He would put them ‘in a safe place” and would come to get us “if anything happens.”  In other words, we were to place ourselves completely at the mercy of the airline crew and wait to be the last in case of an emergency.  We could not accept that.  He would not relent and we would not place ourselves in such a demeaning and dangerous position, so we completed our trip by bus.

The airline troubles escalated with battles over white canes and seating in exit rows.  The airlines took the position that any sighted person was better than any blind person in an exit row.  That attitude culminated in the arrest of Steve and Nadine Jacobson when they refused to be humiliated by airline personnel removing them from an exit row in which the airline had seated them.  Since I and other Minnesotans were on that flight returning from the NFB convention in Louisville, I was privileged to be a witness at their trial.  We prevailed, they were found not guilty, the airlines’ attitudes began to change, and the Federal Aviation Administration began to adopt rules to govern the situation.

Anyone flying today will notice two things:  blind people keep their canes with them, and seating in exit rows is based on the capability to perform the functions and not simplistically on a person’s eyesight.  Yes indeed, the familiar announcement about anyone sitting in an exit row being willing and able to perform the functions is a result of our victory in what is sometimes known within the NFB as the “Airline Wars.”  I am proud to have been part of that successful struggle to protect the dignity of blind people and further positive attitudes toward the capabilities of blind people.

In my work life, I had been promoted to management and was responsible for a $5 million budget and key staff and components of the State of Minnesota main computer center.  Of course I had to have the ability to carry out the required duties, but I also had the self-confidence to do so.  I firmly believe I would not have had that confidence without my involvement in the National Federation of the Blind.

I have had many lucky breaks in my life, from my parents sending me to the Braille and Sight Saving School, to admittance to St. Thomas, to the woman who hired me, and to the man who got me into computer work.  But the luckiest break of all, and the one that made the others pay off, was that NFB convention in Minneapolis.  I have attended every state and national convention since, served as a state officer, worked nights and weekends on NFB activities, and I have never regretted a moment of it.