Hastings resident Don Pohlmann has a piano in his home that is rarely in tune.
"I'm like the shoemaker who has no shoes," the blind piano tuner/repairman says with a laugh. "It only gets tuned every few years when a close friend of my wife's - a gifted pianist - visits. Otherwise, I tell everybody I don't have any time to tune my own piano."
Pohlmann, whose 58-year career in piano tuning and repair includes lengthy contracts with Hastings Public Schools, Hastings College and Concordia University, is retiring from the profession July 1. He and his wife, Vivian, who also is blind, will celebrate the occasion with an open house at Peace Lutheran Church 6-8 p.m. May 12.
Don and Vivian met through a pen pal column and were married on July 9, 1967. They relocated to Hastings four days later and have lived here since. They adopted and raised two sighted sons, Roger, 31, and Larry, 29. Both are graduates of Hastings Senior High School.
Pohlmann, who lost his sight to glaucoma at age 9, said he is grateful to have had the opportunity to forge a career in a field that has enabled him to foster his love for music.
Raised in Deshler, his interest in music intensified during his years at the Nebraska School for the Blind in Nebraska City.
"At school, I sang in our school choir and played some violin and clarinet in our orchestra," he said. "It was a small school, so you didn't have to be very good to
make the choir or the orchestra."
He even tried piano for a bit, just long enough to realize it wasn't for him.
His musicianship may have been wanting, but his ear for it was perfect.
When one of his favorite instructors, E.G. Nielsen, offered a course in piano tuning his freshman year, he decided to give it a whirl, never thinking it would amount to anything more than a few class credits.
"For lack of anything else to do, I went out and took a couple of hours of piano tuning the last four years I was in school," he said. "It was kind of interesting." Because Nielsen had a tuning contract at Peru State College, Pohlmann and other students spent many a weekend polishing their skills there.
Prior to graduating, he had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tune a piano for legendary Guy Lombardo's orchestra prior to a concert at the City Auditorium in Hastings. Suddenly, tuning sounded like a pretty good gig to pursue.
"I honestly don't know what else I would have done," he said. "As a freshman at high school that was really my only goal or option. I might have tried to get into radio work. One of the boys I went to school with at Nebraska City, Mel Sauer, did color commentary for the basketball and football games for a radio station at Scottsbluff."
Always a "rabid" sports fan himself, Pohlmann still follows Hastings College, Hastings High and Deshler High sports teams yearround with great interest.
As a profession, though, piano tuning just seemed the surer bet of the two options at the time.
"It was one of the major professions that blind people went into," he said. "A lot of blind people were either piano tuners, made brooms or weaved chairs. Those type of things were quite common."
Upon graduation in 1948, Pohlmann wasted little time finding work. Most of his early jobs consisted of tuning and repairing pianos for residents in the Deshler area.
In 1955, he learned that a blind piano tuner at Hastings College, Melvin Carter, would be retiring soon because of heart problems. Pohlmann visited the college and was hired by Hayes Fuhr, head of the HC music department, to "tune a few pianos." He stayed on and eventually replaced Carter as the school's piano tuner and repairman.
Though securing work was never a problem, getting to work proved a constant challenge, he said.
"My father, Otto, provided a lot of transportation for me in my early years," he said. "Of course, coming here to Hastings College, we had to work that out."
His eventual solution from Deshler took a few connections to pull off. One of them involved the Hastings Tribune bus, which used to deliver newspapers and passengers from Hastings to Harvard, Clay Center, Fairfield, Angus and Nelson.
"I took a mail truck from Deshler to Nelson, then took the Hastings Tribune bus from Nelson into Hastings," he said. "I usually stayed on campus or at the Carter Hotel (which has since been razed) and used taxi cabs a great deal to get from the hotel to the college."
These days, he depends largely on the Handibus and generosity of clients to get from point A to point B.
"People have been very nice and given me lots of rides," he said.
Another obstacle he has faced because of his blindness has been acclimating himself to new surroundings.
"Whether it be on college campuses or at Hastings Public Schools, I've had to learn the layout so I could get to the school," he said.
"Learning my surroundings has been something I've had to do."
Aided solely by a white cane on his frequent sojourns, Pohlmann sees nothing extraordinary about himself or his career. He considers himself fortunate to have landed a position at Hastings College, especially in light of the alarming 70 percent unemployment rate that exists among the visually impaired today.
"I'm just an ordinary piano tuner," he said. "I'm very grateful for 58 years of being able to service pianos. I think that's a real credit to Hastings College that they have employed a blind person in this position all these years. They're part of the cure, not part of the problem."