by Charles H. Crawford
One of the privileges of being ACB’s executive director that I appreciate most is having an opportunity to visit with thousands of our members while I travel around the country on ACB business. There are always great people to meet and experiences to share. On my latest trip, I met up with a number of sighted travelers who helped me to understand just how close we all are to each other as human beings. I realized once again that blindness presents no impediment to human community, for blindness presents no barriers to the human spirit. Here’s what happened.
First, I sat next to a woman from the midwest who told me how her father had been interned in a detention camp in the United States because he was of Japanese descent. As she continued her story, she explained that she hadn’t found out until she was 30 years old about her entire half family on the west coast about whom nobody had ever spoken. As we talked, she unraveled a life story that had given her great joy and pain and how she was trying to reconcile all the things that had happened. When that leg of the trip was over and she went off for a connecting flight, I could not help but think how good a person she was and how grateful I am to ACB for having had all the experiences I have had that allowed me to connect with her in a way that really helped.
Later, on the way home, I met a man who was traveling with his sons. They were going off to the wilderness of New Mexico to re-create the journey of his grandfather, who had staked a claim to four gold mines before New Mexico had even become a state. While I wished him and his sons well in their great adventure and shared their hope of finding gold, we all acknowledged that the gold of a family history re-lived was the most enriching treasure of all. The utter joy and anticipation in their voices was proof positive of the truly once-in-a-lifetime experience they were excited to share.
Last, among other folks I had the pleasure of meeting on this trip, there was the woman who was about to celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary. She told me about her children and the places their family had been. She also shared her sad story about a son who had passed away after sight loss. He had not adjusted to blindness, she said, as well as I must have. She said he had taken an experimental treatment that had not worked. I knew what she meant and shared the space she needed to let it be. At the end of that leg of the trip, the would-be family gold miners and the woman and her husband whose son had passed away all bid me farewell as friends who had shared a short but meaningful time together. It struck me how many lives we just fly over on those planes and though we travel many paths, we are so closely knit as people.
I write this because all of us in ACB can give back to our larger community because we have had the opportunities to share so much with each other. Yes, our strengthening together is a well from which refreshing waters flow for each other and for a world so much in need of our shared wisdom. In the end, is it not our willingness to build futures together in ACB that is the foundation of building real integration in our society?
Thank you, ACB, for having a philosophy that reaches out from our organizational strength to build a better world for everyone, and thanks to all of you for giving me the chance to represent such a fine way of viewing America, whether on the ground or 30,000 feet up in the air.