Thunder Dog - Michael Hingson [51]
That all changed when I got involved with the NFB. I first became aware of the organization when I won a scholarship my senior year of high school and went to the NFB state convention in California to pick it up. Kenneth Jernigan spoke. I listened, opening up to the possibility that I could learn something from this group of people. Jernigan was an engaging, charismatic speaker who had that magical quality of being able to energize and inspire people to new ways of thinking. He was fearless and he was brilliant. His talk was an elegant argument against the status quo and a clarion call for change. (You can read the text of one of his best-known talks at the back of this book.) Jernigan wanted nothing more than a revolution, a civil rights movement for the blind. I left with my head spinning. His voice rang in my ears: “The real problem is not the blindness but the mistaken attitudes about it. These attitudes can be changed, and we are changing them.”6
Later that year, I went to a six-week college prep course by the California State Department of Rehabilitation for incoming blind college freshman. It was my first exposure to living in a community of blind people and my first time using a cane. I didn’t want to seem ignorant, though, and bought a cane from the Braille Institute a few days before so I could try it out and do some practice. I quickly got the hang of it. One night my mobility instructor issued a challenge: after dinner, we would see who could make it back to the dorm first, him or me. He would wear a secure blindfold. Game on.
The instructor and I worked our way back neck and neck until we hit a large parking lot with a lot of ins and outs. I found my way pretty quickly, drawing on my hard-earned echolocation skills. My poor instructor got lost, poking around the parking lot with his white cane for almost two hours. As you might imagine, this little exercise did nothing to throttle down my ego.
In college I was busy with academics and my radio show, but my senior year, a guy named Don Brown, president of the Orange County chapter of the NFB, called me up and talked me into joining. A couple of years later, I was nominated for president of the chapter. But I started to feel like an outsider, and it seemed as if people were a little standoffish. I called organization leader Gary Mackenstadt. He told me the truth.
“Michael, you’re arrogant. People here have a lot more experience than you, and it’s up to you to get to know them.” I felt as though I’d walked straight into a telephone pole.
“You are not the only blind person out there. There are a lot of other blind people who have worked together and shared experiences. It can’t always be your way. You have to meet people in the middle.”
Gary cared enough about me to share the truth in love, and it was a much needed wake-up call. He became a mentor to me, and I realized there was a big world out there in terms of the blind community. But in order to join it and be a contributing member, I needed to offer myself for service, not act like a know-it-all who was there to set people straight. I realized that every time one blind person takes a step forward, so does the whole community.
After that much-needed attitude adjustment, my involvement with NFB grew, and when I eventually found myself working for them on the Kurzweil Reader, I got the opportunity to meet the movers and shakers in the organization. I hit it off with Dr. Maurer. We had a lot in common: he had also been blinded as a newborn from excess oxygen, we both loved science, and we were both pretty opinionated. I participated in a number of demonstrations and walks on the Capitol and interacted with national political leaders. And I always had fun. I guess that’s the salesman in me. You’ve got to have fun.
In my early NFB days I spent some time with Hazel tenBroek, wife of NFB founder Jacobus “Chick” tenBroek. Dr. tenBroek founded the NFB in 1940 in Berkeley, where he was a professor and chair of the speech department. After his untimely death, I had the opportunity to