By Tom Scanlan

The National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota convention on the weekend of November 2, 2007 marked an historic point in our organization’s 87-year history.  Joyce Scanlan has been elected president every two years for 34 of those 87 years.  This year, she chose not to run again. 

Under her leadership, the NFB of Minnesota grew from a mostly-elderly membership focused on an out-dated housing program for a few blind people to a diverse organization focused on security, equality, and opportunity for all blind people.  Most of the people who helped early in that transition, such as Jim Schleppegrell, Rosemary Varey, Clarence Johnson, and Marie Whitteker are now gone.   Others, such as Tom Scanlan, Steve and Nadine Jacobson, Andy Virden, Tim Aune, RoseAnn Faber, and Jan Bailey are still with us.  Still others, such as Mary Hartle-Smith, Stewart Prost, Curt and Peggy Chong, and Eric Smith, are now living elsewhere and active in their respective NFB affiliates.  However, they were all bound together by a common vision led and nurtured by Joyce.

She also led the organization from a Minneapolis/St. Paul focus with only two meetings a year to a statewide organization with monthly chapter meetings and two statewide conventions.  

Other organizations were affected too.  The Minneapolis Society for the Blind (MSB) was widely regarded as the leading blindness-related organization in 1973 when she was first elected president.  After she led the challenge to MSB on its treatment of blind people, it had lost so much public esteem that it tried to hide its past by changing its name.  MSB was eventually taken over by the St. Paul Society for the Blind and was renamed Vision Loss Resources.

State Services for the Blind (SSB) was an unofficial division of the Department of Public Welfare (DPW), reflecting an attitude that blind people were more interested in receiving a public dole.  Although many of the SSB staff thought otherwise, they were hampered by the focus of the department.  In 1985, she led negotiations with the legislature, DPW, and the Department of Economic Security (DES) to move SSB to DES and make it a legal division.  That move had two extremely significant effects: it moved SSB from a welfare-oriented department to one focused on employment and it gave legislative protection to separate programs for the blind by requiring that SSB be a separate division with its own budget. 

And then there is Blindness: Learning in New Dimensions (BLIND), Inc.  Joyce was the driving force behind the founding of BLIND in 1986, and the beginning of operation in 1988.  She served as its first executive director from 1987 to her retirement in 2003. 

In recognition of these accomplishments, at the convention banquet Joyce was presented with an award consisting of a crystal gavel and an engraved base.   The base reads:

JOYCE SCANLAN

NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND OF MINNESOTA

PRESIDENT, 1973 – 2007

YOU HAVE CHANGED WHAT IT MEANS TO BE BLIND

She is pictured here with that award.  

Steve Jacobson, Jennifer Dunnam, and Tim Aune produced an audio tribute consisting of snippets of some of Joyce’s speeches and articles beginning with a 1972 report on picketing the Minneapolis Society for the Blind that she gave as secretary of the student division and ending with the grand opening of the current NFB of Minnesota and BLIND, Inc building.  The parts are introduced by Steve Jacobson, Shawn Mayo, Jim Sarbacker, Jan Bailey, Dick Davis, RoseAnn Faber, Judy Sanders, Nadine Jacobson, Tim Aune, and Jennifer Dunnam.

To hear the entire 24-minute tribute, including Joyce’s response, visit our website at www.nfbmn.org/joyce.

Now the time has come to pass the gavel to a new generation.  Jennifer Dunnam has been vice-president and has worked very closely with Joyce.  The members elected Jennifer as the new president.  However, Joyce is not going away.  The members also wanted to keep her experience and ability and elected her to a position on the board of directors.

 

At the end of the final session of the convention, President Joyce Scanlan presented the official NFB of Minnesota gavel to President-elect Jennifer Dunnam.

Jennifer’s first official act as president was to adjourn the convention.

May our new president serve as fruitfully and well as our past president.  We are sure she will.