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Pat Price Receives National Media Award
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On July 6, 2003 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Vision World Wide founder, president and managing editor Pat (Patricia) Price was awarded the prestigious 2003 Vernon Henley Memorial Award for her lifelong endeavors to make a positive difference in the media -- in radio, TV, magazines, daily newspapers and Cyberspace -- which have resulted in changing public attitudes to recognize the capabilities of people who are blind.
When presenting the award, Charles S. P. Hodge, Chair of the American Council of the Blind (ACB) Board of Publications, cited the many ways in which Ms. Price has creatively and uniquely used her talents and journalistic skills to make a positive difference in the lives of those experiencing vision loss for the first time, as well as those who have been meeting the challenge of blindness for years. Mr. Hodge said, "Not only did she serve as a member of the ACB Board of Directors from 1981 to 1989 and as the ACB National Secretary from 1989 to 1995, she has also led numerous other national and international organizations in many leadership capacities. Tonight, however, she is being recognized for the role she has played in the media to present a positive image of people with visual impairment by emphasizing their capabilities and concerns rather than focusing on outdated stereotypes and misconceptions."
"Through the use of her web site, the Internet, numerous publications in print, large print, audiocassettes, computer diskettes, CDs, Braille, and electronic formats," Mr. Hodge continued, "Ms. Price has distributed information worldwide about programs, products, and services that are designed to motivate, encourage, and empower those with vision loss, including the totally blind, deaf-blind, and partially sighted, to live meaningful and productive lives."
When accepting the award, Ms. Price commented that since she has experienced perfect sight, deaf-blindness, total blindness for many years, and now severe hearing loss and low vision, she has learned first-hand that information provides hope and empowerment. For those reasons she has felt compelled to focus her attention on providing not only relevant and timely information on all aspects of life, but also providing it in all accessible formats.
She also said that because she knew Vernon Henley personally, receiving the award was most meaningful and significant because of the many ways his life had impacted her goals personally and professionally. In closing, she said, "Thank you so much ACB for this great honor. Please know that by presenting this award to me you have given me another goal for which to strive, and for that I shall be forever grateful."
The Vernon Henley Memorial Award was established in 1988 to honor a sighted individual who created and first produced ACB Reports, a radio presentation distributed to radio reading services around the country. Mr. Henley, a resident of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma until his untimely death, dedicated his life to encouraging and training visually impaired journalists.
Nolan Crabb: A Life Characterized by Change
& Love of Family
The first achiever in this issue is someone who hasn't been afraid to try new careers in new places throughout his life. But, as he says, "Careers and destinations don't mean anything unless family comes first."
Nolan Crabb was born prematurely nearly 43 years ago in a rural Utah town. There was no special equipment to keep him alive, just an incubator and a doctor with the determination to do everything in his power to save the baby. The family would not learn of Nolan's total blindness for some six months after his birth. The news was broken to his parents by an ophthalmologist who came into the waiting room filled with people and simply announced, "This kid's blind. There's nothing we can do."
But these were remarkable parents. Both had survived World War II, one as a member of the U.S. Navy's seventh fleet, the other as a young bride left behind to read the news, deal with rationing, and await the sometimes-censored letters. Calling upon the reserve of strength so characteristic of that generation, the two of them determined that day in the waiting room that if this doctor could do nothing, they certainly could.
When Nolan's four-year-old brother learned that his baby brother was blind, his only question was, "Do we have to take the TV back to the store because he can't see it?" "We can keep the TV," the boy's father assured him. "You'll just have to describe what's happening on the shows when he gets older."
The first crisis had passed; the TV could stay; and if that was so, maybe life with this new little stranger whose eyes didn't work wouldn't be so bad, the four-year-old reasoned.
Nolan's earliest years were spent on a small family farm in Utah. Those were years filled with raising animals and deliberately jumping into fence post holes where he would yell as loudly as he could just to hear how differently his voice sounded from the depths of the hole.
At age four, he left the farm forever and attended the Utah School for the Blind. His absence from the family so disrupted the critical warp and woof that keeps families together that his parents decided to sell the farm and move to the city where the school was located so their son could be home at night and on weekends. These two who already understood all too well the meaning of sacrifice were willing to do so again if it meant the entire family could be together as a unit. Like their pioneer great-grandparents, Nolan's parents sold all they had and moved to a new city where they would begin anew to carve out their own miniature empire that would include all their children.
By age 14, Nolan had been attending public school part time and the school for the blind part time. When he was a sophomore in high school, he was attending public school full time.
He interrupted his studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in South Carolina. "I grew up more rapidly and more completely in that two-year period than at any other time before or since," he recalls. "I learned how to budget money, how to study, and above all, how to get along with others. My relationship with my wife and children is far better because of that experience than it otherwise would have been, I'm convinced."
From an early age, Nolan knew he wanted to be a reporter and writer. "A lot of sighted kids I played with had heroes like O. J. Simpson," he says. "Mine was Walter Chronkite. Some might argue that of the two, I picked the better role model."
That love of journalism was fueled by odd jobs in high school, during his mission, and at college. "I was always working for a school newspaper somewhere," he remembers. "One summer I did an internship at a local catholic hospital where I wrote for its in-house magazine. Several years later, when one of my daughters was born at the same hospital, many of the folks in the public relations office remembered me and treated her like gold."
The road to a career in journalism was far from simple. Many well-intended friends and even teachers publicly voiced their doubts. One professor assured him that he was "headed for the soup kitchen with that degree." But his parents never stopped believing in the dream, and they quietly reminded him of how much the dream meant on those days when doubt sought to vanquish hope.
But Brigham Young University insisted that every journalism student do a summer internship somewhere. School officials were unwavering in their insistence that Nolan meet the same requirements. So in the summer of 1980, when fellow classmates were off to work for the Associated Press in New York or some other place, Nolan determined to see whether his hometown newspaper would take him on as an intern. Editors at the "Ogden Standard-Examiner" knew he could write. He had written a weekly school activities piece for them for two years when he was in high school. They had no questions about whether he could write. They questioned whether he could operate the new computerized editing system they had just installed. "If you can operate the computer after two days of training," then city editor Richard Lindsley told him, "you have an internship."
"I hung up the phone and ran through the house screaming," Nolan said. "I had operated a computer at the college newspaper at BYU with the help of a piece of technology called an Optacon -- a device that allowed a blind person to run a tiny camera across a computer screen and have the letters raised and enlarged against his finger. I knew I could read that screen, and I knew I could memorize the command sequences of that computer. I knew I had that internship. No one was home when the call came in, so I had no inhibitions about running through the house screaming with something beyond sheer pleasure. The dream was about to be reality. Never mind that this city editor didn't know that. He'd know soon enough."
Two major events were the result of that summer internship. First, Nolan used the money to buy an engagement ring for his fiancee Valerie, and the newspaper offered him a full-time job upon graduation from college.
In January 1982, armed with a freshly inked degree from BYU, Nolan indeed went to work for the Standard-Examiner. A month later his oldest daughter Tricia was born. He was honored to be a reporter and even more honored to take on the role of being a dad.
In 1983, Nolan moved his young family to Chicago where he worked as editor of "Dialogue Magazine."
"That was a difficult assignment," he recalls. "The publication was always short of cash, and I was lousy at bringing in the bucks. But I had a remarkably talented staff who cared deeply about the publication and about the quality of their work. We succeeded in producing a quality product in those years, and it was because I worked with an excellent group of people."
Nolan moved to northern California in 1986 to edit a business newsletter for a small publishing company there. "That's where my love affair with the computer began." he says.
Nolan returned to Utah in 1987 where he worked as a correspondent for "The Deseret News," Salt Lake City's second-largest daily paper, and directed a newly opened independent living center.
In 1989, he got a phone call from a friend that would change his life and job once again. The American Council of the Blind was seeking an editor for its publication: "The Braille Forum." The magazine would be published in Washington, D.C., at ACB's national headquarters.
"I saw this opportunity as an investment in my future," he recalls. "That's just what it turned out to be, but in a very different way than I had anticipated. I thought I'd go from the magazine to one of the other national news magazines published there. But the siren song of the computer was ever more irresistible. I didn't know it at the time, but the job at ACB would prepare me for a total career change."
It became apparent to Nolan and others that ACB needed someone in its national office who could assist the organization's elected leaders by serving as the point of contact for the office's technology needs. "I got a rock-solid education about how to install networks and how to administer them. I learned a great deal about how to successfully manage a computer database. And with the help of a visionary colleague named Paul Schroeder, I discovered the Internet."
Nolan says after several years as both the magazine's editor and the office's technology person he began to discover that the technology was growing in importance to him. "I realized one day that if I had a choice between an editorial task and a technology-related task, both of which needed doing at the same time, I'd gravitate to the technology task first. I knew what I had to do, and Rehabilitation Services for the Blind of Missouri made a career switch not only possible but genuinely exciting."
The agency had been looking for someone who could assist its staff in better utilizing the technology the agency was purchasing for in-house use. Nolan saw the opportunity to develop skills as a technical writer and trainer, something he had wanted to do for years.
"I had a three-hour-a-day commute in Washington," he explains. "I woke up one day and asked 'Do you really want to spend huge chunks of your waking life inside buses and subway cars?' The obvious answer was a resounding no."
There were the usual negotiations over salary and benefits, "but when Sally Howard, the agency's director, casually pointed out that no matter where I lived in town, I was only 15 minutes from the office at most, I fell and fell hard. That was all the convincing I needed."
For nearly two years, Nolan has worked as a computer specialist for Missouri's Rehabilitation Services for the Blind.
"It was clearly the right thing for me at the time, and still is," he says. "I was squirming under the regulations of the planned community in which I lived in the DC suburbs for a long time. Today, I have my ham radio antenna in a tree in the yard; there's a small herd of cows just over the hill -- close enough to hear them and far enough away to avoid smelling them. I've a satellite dish on the side of the house, and a deck where I can sit and read after a 15-minute commute home from work."
Nolan recently celebrated his 20th wedding anniversary. He and his wife Valerie are the parents of four daughters. "Of all the various places I've lived, and of all the things I've done, watching my kids grow up and evolve into thoughtful considerate people who will ably represent themselves and the values they've been taught is the most exciting thing of all. Someone much wiser than me speaking of his own children once said, 'It is high privilege indeed for a father when his best friends and noblest examples are his children.' I think that sums it up for me and says it far better than I could."
Pat (Patricia) Price: An Uncommon Life
(Founder, President & Editor)
If you were to define an uncommon life, where might you turn for examples? Those who know Patricia L. (Pat) Price would look no farther than her. Pat's life of ability despite disability is uncommon indeed. Those who scoff at the efforts of one individual are silenced by Pat's ongoing legacy of service to others, a basic belief in the inherent goodness of people everywhere, and an optimism that has been the driving spark of her uncommon and productive life.
Raised by a great aunt and uncle, Pat became intimately acquainted with adversity at 16. When a speck of dirt became lodged in her iris, she felt the pain of it; but, she had no idea at that moment that the pain would ultimately evolve into total blindness and deafness. The deafness would last for five years; the blindness for many more. But she never allowed her world to become one of hopeless silence and darkness. Indeed, it was during this period when she developed a keen understanding of the importance of service to others. While she was totally blind, she attended college and ultimately received a Bachelor of Education degree. She then embarked on a long and productive career in the insurance industry.
After nearly two decades of total blindness Pat began to see the first intimations of returning sight. Ultimately, with help from various types of low-vision technology, she was able to read some printed materials. Her revitalized vision expanded her career opportunities. She obtained a management position with an Indianapolis life insurance company -- a post she held for 20 years.
Today, literally thousands of blind and vision impaired people recognize Pat as a woman of integrity and competence. She reaches out on a constant basis to those who struggle with vision loss. She learned long ago that the best way to dispel the darkness of an unknown future is to provide information that can help a low-vision person cope with sight loss. To that end, she founded and currently directs Vision World Wide, Inc., an Indianapolis-based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information and outreach to men and women throughout the world who must learn to live with vision loss.
One of the vehicles Vision World Wide, Inc. uses to disseminate information is Vision Enhancement, a quarterly publication that includes announcements and articles targeted to blind and visually impaired people. The how-to and information pieces are written by men and women who have experienced sight loss firsthand, and under Pat's masterful editing, the magazine is alive with timely information designed to help its readers enhance both their remaining vision and their lives.
"I look forward to that publication," says Nolan Crabb, assistant editor at Blindskills, Inc., publisher of Dialogue Magazine. "Vision Enhancement's style is easy to read, and although it is targeted to a vision impaired audience, totally blind readers can find an impressive amount of information that will assist them as well."
While Pat's many achievements are impressive indeed, she would be the last to suggest she has accomplished all she has single handedly. Her husband Marvin has been a tremendous support to her for more than 40 years. The two met when he was assigned to help Pat solve some on-the-job logistical and technical problems. He was her rehabilitation counselor at the time. As Pat recalls, "He solved my typing problems in short order. That was the end of it for several years. Then, when I was President of the Indiana Association of Workers for the Blind, I appointed Marvin as one of the Committee Chairs. The rest is history."
Pat succeeds in marriage the way she has succeeded in her life of tremendous service -- by paying attention to the details. "During our years of marriage, we celebrate every month in a special way. Sometimes it is small gifts, a nice dinner out, etc. When we were first married, it often was a hot dog and pork and beans by candlelight. It's been a great 43 years, believe me!"
While Vision World Wide consumes much of her time these days, service to blind and visually impaired people has always been a vital part of Pat's life. She currently serves as the web master and treasurer of Library Users of America, an affiliate of the American Council of the Blind. She and her husband founded the American Council of the Blind of Indiana and Pat has served in a variety of positions with the group. She served as the executive director of the Council of Citizens with Low Vision International, and was vice president of the National Accreditation Council of Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped. In the early '90s, Pat completed three terms as national secretary of the American Council of the Blind headquartered in Washington, D.C.
Pat has been a part of the Lighthouse International Advisory Committee and chaired a governor-appointed advisory committee at the Indiana School for the Blind. She has co-founded and served in a variety of capacities with numerous special interest groups of the American Council of the Blind.
While her service to organizations representing visually impaired people is significant, it is just part of who this dynamic woman is.
She currently serves as a Virginia M. Woolf Foundation board member. She's been the membership chair and treasurer of the Indiana Policyholders Service Association, and she was president of the Indianapolis Insurance Women's Association.
She continues to edit a variety of newsletters and magazines in addition to her work as managing editor of Vision Enhancement. She has also done some columns editing for the Indianapolis Star News.
Pat was the first recipient of the Patricia L. Price Distinguished Service Award, an honor given her by the American Council of the Blind of Indiana. The award was created in her name and honors "blind and visually impaired people who have contributed to the improvement of life for their peers." She has also been named Business Woman of the Year, and is a recipient of the Jefferson Award. She received the prestigious George Card Award from the American Council of the Blind for her international outreach efforts. Additionally, she is the recipient of three Sertoma Service to Mankind Awards.
Kim Charlson: Achiever Extraordinaire
Kim Charlson of Watertown, Massachusetts has achieved national and international recognition for outstanding leadership in a number of areas affecting the lives of thousands of blind and visually impaired individuals.
Ms. Charlson, herself totally blind, has consistently displayed outstanding leadership capabilities. In pursuing her own education, she became one of the few blind people in the United States to earn a master's degree in library and information science. Then, when appointed earlier this year as Director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped network library in Watertown, Massachusetts, she became one of two blind librarians in the system and the only library director on the East Coast who is blind.
Recapping her career provides just a mini view of a person willing to give of herself for others while at the same time advancing her personal career goals.
She is a recognized national and international expert on library services for people with disabilities, braille literacy, adaptive technology and information access. She serves on a number of committees for the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped and serves as a national member of the Braille Authority of North America, which is the standard-setting body for braille.
She is chair of the Massachusetts Braille Literacy Advisory Council, treasurer of the International Council on English Braille and is an appointed member of the Governor's Advisory Council on Disability Policy. She is also active in a wide range of consumer advocacy arenas, including arts access and audio description, braille literacy, adaptive technology, civil rights, guide dog access issues and special education.
She serves as editor of Pawtracks, a national magazine for Guide Dog Users Inc. with a circulation of over 1000 readers. In the area of education, she serves as the chair of the Department of Education's Braille Literacy Advisory Council. In advocacy and civil rights efforts, she serves as the lead consumer advocate in the Fleet Bank settlement agreement effort, and was a class plaintiff in the ground-breaking ADA case against the state of Hawaii regarding access for guide dog users. She has served as president of both the Oregon Council of the Blind and the Bay State Council of the Blind, state affiliates of the American Council of the Blind (ACB). She has served as president of two national organizations -- Guide Dog Users Inc. and the Braille Revival League.
Ms. Charlson has been a leading consumer advocate for audio description and arts access in Massachusetts. She is currently serving on the access advisory committees for the Wang Center for the Performing Arts, the Wheelock Family Theatre, the Huntington Theater and the Women on Top Theater Festival. She also works as a blindness access consultant assisting with accessibility planning and evaluation, audience development, staff awareness training and production of accessible format materials and programs. She has worked with Vsarts Massachusetts as an ADA mini-grant reviewer and served as the project coordinator for the Bay State Council of the Blind (BSCB) audio description training grant funded through Vsarts Massachusetts in 2000.
She has just completed a two-year term as chair of the ACB Board of Publications. Her other writing activities include: editing the BRL Memorandum, magazine of the Braille Revival League; contributor of the chapter on "Braille Library Services" in the Library of Congress book entitled "Braille: Into the Next Millennium", September, 2000; author of "Establishing a Braille Literacy Program in your Community: A Handbook for Libraries and Other Community Organizations", May, 1996; contributing author to "Making Theater Accessible: A Guide to Audio Description in the Performing Arts", published by Northeastern University Press, June, 2001; and co-author of a chapter on audio description in the book "Video Collection Management and Development: Perspectives for Multiple Types of Libraries", 2nd edition, published by Greenwood Publishing Group in early 2002.
In spite of their busy lives, Kim and her husband, Brian, who is employed as vice president of training at The Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts, still find time to enjoy frequent get-togethers with family and friends and travel with their two dog guides to many domestic and foreign points of interest.
Hillary Bates Achieves Independence In Spite of Being Deaf-Blind
At age fifteen, Hillary Bates, deaf since birth, began experiencing gradual vision loss. The loss continued to deteriorate until one morning when she awakened she could see nothing. Three subsequent surgeries to repair detached retinas were unsuccessful. Hillary faced the devastating realization that she was now both deaf and totally blind.
Through the encouragement of her mother, Hillary began to believe that she could and would maintain an independent lifestyle. She learned Braille, developed excellent computer skills, and learned to sign by touch. She and her roommate share an apartment in Indiana. She enjoys cooking, cleaning, reading, writing and visiting with family and friends. Through the use of her computer, she can communicate with others around the world. She also uses a Telebraille, a device that lets her communicate by typing messages that are relayed to the recipient by a phone operator.
Now at the age of 25, she and her mother have launched a very successful greeting card business appropriately named "My Mind's Eyes." All blind people "see" the world in which they live through mental pictures they form from descriptions of people, objects, and scenery they receive from others.
Hillary uses her computer to create and package the cards, which are designed for both blind and sighted persons. Among the tactile images displayed on the front of the cards are apples, flowers, hearts, and birthday cakes. The messages printed inside are usually quotations from famous authors. Hillary's mother produces and distributes catalogs and helps create pictures for the cards.
While "My Mind's Eyes" has been in business for less than a year, it has already gained recognition throughout the state and has earned Hillary an achievement award from the Business and Professional Women's Association of Indiana for attitude and for maximizing her abilities by using strength of character, mental fortitude, confidence, and self-determination.
To request a catalog, write to: My Mind's Eyes, Inc., PO Box 42, Crawfordsville, IN 47933.
Sailor Learns To Navigate Through Vision
Loss
After 30 years in the Navy, retired Captain Harold "Jeep" Streeper has spent a great deal of time on boats, both large and small. As a matter of fact, he even lives on one near Anacortes, Washington. Consequently, although he is now 79 and has developed macular degeneration, he still spends some of his time navigating the waters of the beautiful San Juan Islands along the northwest coast of Washington state.
Anxious to continue life as usual, immediately after being diagnosed with macular degeneration, Jeep enrolled in the Community Services for the Blind and Partially Sighted (CSBPS) low vision clinic rehabilitation program and soon discovered the devices necessary to help him read the instruments and chartwork in the pilot house and on his boat. He found four devices particularly useful: A Magni-Cam, an electronic magnification system to project instrument readings on a 21" television screen, special lighting, a stand magnifier and a pocket magnifier. These, together with tech tools such as a 20/20 pen, Jeep continues to do what he loves best.
Low Vision Specialists at the Center comment: "He doesn't let his vision loss dock him, but he is sensible about the adjustments he knows he must make. With his navigation background and experience, he's long understood the power of careful planning and preparation, and he's willing to prepare differently now. He's also practical and recognizes that there are some things he can no longer safely manage, such as sailing at night. But with his low vision devices, a lot remains possible."
Jeep is willing to talk about his vision situation to encourage others with low vision. "Losing my sight was frustrating at first," he explains, "but I never give up. I'm still running my boat. It's not the easiest thing to do but I must go on."
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