by Bernice Kandarian
Mack Willard Riley was born in Mississippi November 19, 1938, the youngest of 13 children. By age 19, he had a driving record which included the sideswiping of several cars. However, his visual impairment was not apparent to him. Then, without warning, his left eye perforated from glaucoma and he learned the right eye was involved too. This discovery was devastating to Mack, who was studying piano and dance and had demonstrated great talent in painting and drawing as well.
A few years later he relocated to California, renting a room in the home of Emerson Trent, a voice and piano coach in Bell Gardens. He attended California State University, Los Angeles, completing a bachelor’s degree in English.
Eventually, with his deteriorating vision and his plans to obtain additional education, Mack decided to attend the Orientation Center for the Blind in Albany, Calif. Incidentally, neither Juliet Bindt Esterly nor Patricia Burns was successful at teaching Mack Braille.
At OCB, Mack met other young people with vision impairments including Susan Phillips Breslauer, Vicky Murdoch Bishop, Tim Ford, Mike Jones and Patty Davis. He also noticed that students were recruited into the NFB alumni group as they completed their programs at the center. This “pipeline” from OCB to NFB had not gone unnoticed in the ACB of California, and as it happened, while Mack was at OCB, the president of ACBC, Catherine Skivers, spoke at OCB to present the alternative viewpoint. As Cathie tells the story, the other students asked questions, but Mack cross-examined her.
Mack called Cathie and told her that he liked her style and what she had said and that he would organize a group separate from the alumni. He called this group the California Alliance of Blind Students, which, along with the previously mentioned OCB students, included Eugene Lozano, Andy Baracco, Gina McGaughey, Danny Alvarez and others.
Meanwhile, at the 1970 ACB national convention in Oklahoma City, a resolution was drafted by two young attendees, Michael Byington and Scott Marshall, who enlisted the help of ACB board member Judge John Vanlandingham from Arizona, asking ACB to establish a student group.
Shortly after this resolution was passed, ACB National Representative Durward McDaniel attended a state convention in California and saw all these young people that Mack had assembled. This led to Mack’s being asked by the ACB President Judge Reese Robrahn to chair a steering committee to establish a national group of blind and visually impaired college students.
And, after committee meetings in Portland, Ore. in 1972 and Knoxville, Tenn. in 1973, the National Alliance of Blind Students ratified a constitution, applied for affiliation and received its charter as an ACB affiliate at the 1974 convention in Chicago.
Back in Southern California, Mack had just completed his Master of Fine Arts Degree at the University of California, Irvine, publishing a book of 49 original poems as his thesis. He had applied and was accepted to Trinity College in Ireland but was unable to arrange financial support since his only income was Aid to the Blind in California. Mack returned to California State University, Los Angeles and obtained a secondary teaching credential.
To accommodate his visual impairment, Mack replaced the six light bulbs in the fixture above his table with 100-watt bulbs and purchased a special kind of typewriter ribbon for his manual typewriter, typically used by newspaper journalists, that left an extra heavy image.
Deciding not to take a teaching position, Mack delved into his writing, preparing mailings for the California Alliance of Blind Students as well as writing letters to the editor of the Los Angeles Times on current events. His mailings to the students often concerned the passage of new laws, such as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, encouraging the students to advocate for their rights under these laws.
I met Mack Riley at the 1973 convention in Knoxville. He convinced me of the importance of the blind movement and taught me many things, from getting around Los Angeles by bus to using a cane. We worked countless hours on organization projects from conventions to recruiting to Christmas parties, not to mention fund raising spaghetti dinners or cocktail parties. I in turn taught him what I was learning as a Social Security Service Representative, which gave him more advocacy knowledge to pass on to the students.
In 1976, Mack concentrated his efforts on organizing more chapters in the Los Angeles area such as the Compton and Metropolitan Chapters. The “Metro” Chapter merged into the Greater Los Angeles Chapter as a result of the 1985 “Reunification” in California. Mack and I took responsibility for the spring 1977 state convention.
Mack arranged the program, bringing in a few “controversial” speakers and I dealt with the hotel. One of the speakers, I remember, was a lady named Kim Young from Oregon, now Kim Charlson. Together we changed the face of the convention by including a pre-registration form with the “Convention Call,” scheduling time for committees and special interest groups to meet, and adding an exhibit hall (of 11 exhibitors).
It was also during this period that Mack took part in Frank Ryan’s “Implications of Blindness” classes at Cal State LA, where he enjoyed debating ACB with Mitch Pomerantz speaking for NFB. Mack was editor of the ABC Digest which became the ACBC Digest and then served as the state president for a two-year term.
Meanwhile in his professional life, Mack took advantage of an opportunity for a part-time job in the Disabled Students Office at Los Angeles City College under the direction of Frank Booth. While there, he got his papers in order and was able to secure a part-time teaching position at LACC. These experiences led to his decision to return once again to Cal State Los Angeles, this time to obtain a VH credential, which led to employment at the Braille Institute of America. For almost 20 years, Mack’s knowledge, style, wit and charm have left their mark in one way or another on the lives of hundreds of students who passed through his classes. Again, self-advocacy was a big part of what he taught, including rights under Social Security. Mack lost the vision in his right eye in 1987.
In recent years Mack has devoted his time to parenting his son Jonathan, now age 21, researching and writing about his family history, and building his dreams with Lea in their Hancock Park home in Los Angeles and a seven-acre retirement home in Mississippi, “Dogwood Manor.” He made substantial improvements to the Mississippi property, enlarging the house, creating a pond, adding a gazebo, surrounding the property with a fence and selecting trees, plants and grass.
Mack Riley’s death occurred April 15, 2001 in Los Angeles after a brief but intense struggle with colon cancer. There was a memorial service at the Braille Institute April 25 and the cremated remains will be interred in Mississippi near the graves of his parents.
Mack’s legacy to the American Council of the Blind as well as the California Council of the Blind is evident in the course that ACB has taken. Even though membership in the National Alliance of Blind Students is notoriously transitory, causing rapid turnover of its leadership, it has survived 27 years. Furthermore, a look at the first few NABS presidents illustrates its important role in ACB as a whole: 1973 Ed Bradley, now on the ACB board; 1974 Mack Riley; 1975 Eugene Lozano, known to most as “Mr. Access”; 1976 Andrew Woods, deceased 1979; 1977 Christopher Gray, youngest person ever elected to the board of ACB; 1978 Brian Charlson, now first vice president of ACB.