January 25, 2025

From the Editor

Welcome to the first BayLines Express of 2025! We hope you had a happy, healthy, and safe new year.

On a personal note, my holidays were great. Christmas Eve is big for us. One of my uncles hosts it; he lives in the house that used to belong to my great-grandfather. There were almost forty of us in attendance, including two children under the age of three. We got there at around 5pm and had a multi-course dinner spanning several hours, did a yankee swap, had dessert, and exchanged Christmas gifts culminating in everyone leaving at around 1:30 in the morning—which is early. By extension, Christmas Day was much more lowkey, as was New Year’s. I’m not usually the one to make resolutions but this year I’d like to get back into baking. I loved it and did it a lot when I lived in Massachusetts, but have gotten away from it.

Did you attend the BSCB social gathering at Scores in Boston? How were the holidays? Do you have any new year’s resolutions? Let me know!

Don’t forget about our blog! You can read member spotlight articles and all past member-submitted articles to BayLines Express by going to https://acbofma.org/blog. Blog posts are ordered newest to oldest, and there are several of them per page. Each individual post’s title is a link that will take you to the full body of text.

As always, if you would like to contribute information or comment on ways to improve BayLines Express, please contact Dianna Leonard at dianna.l93@gmail.com. And if you have an idea for a monthly article and would like to contribute, please contact Myra Ross at myraross@comcast.net.

News from the Board

The Board last met on January 12.

No members submitted an application for a stipend to attend the ACB Legislative Seminar in March. Consequently, the Board decided to re-allocate these funds to transportation costs for members making in-person visits to their local congressional offices. This is a great opportunity to get to know local staff and promote ACB advocacy priorities. We will still attempt to organize Zoom meetings with members of our Congressional delegation, but it is hoped that in-person contact will make a more memorable impression.

Treasurer Nick Corbett reported that efforts to transfer bookkeeping responsibilities to a hired consultant are well underway. Several meetings have already been held. BSCB’s required documentation should be in good shape when tax filing time arrives in April.

The Board discussed progress in designing an online dues payment system. David Kingsbury noted that the draft form does not align with the dues system laid out in the relevant bylaw of the Constitution. It was agreed that a small ad hoc committee will be formed to review the bylaw and consider the usefulness of modifying it to make our system more logical and understandable. If modifications are deemed desirable, a proposed updated bylaw would be submitted to the membership for a vote at the Spring Convention. The online dues form would then be modified so that both are consistent and would become available next fall as an option for paying 2026 dues.

Advocacy Co-Chair Nona Haroyan pointed out that the extension of the Open Meeting Law is expiring at the end of March and that BSCB has joined a coalition of other organizations to advocate for this law becoming permanent. The requirement that public meetings be open to all in remote fashion has led to much greater stakeholder participation. For BSCB, this has especially been the case for the periodic Statutory Advisory Board and Rehabilitation Council meetings held with MCB. David Kingsbury was requested to bring this up and the importance of continuing with hybrid meetings with MCB Commissioner John Oliveira in their January 13 quarterly meeting which also includes the president of NFB of MA.

The January 18 Social Committee lunch and yankee swap at the Scores Restaurant in Boston was a great success. Good times were had by the 25-plus attendees.

Events Calendar

The next meeting of Blind and Visually Impaired User Group (VIBUG) will take place on Saturday, February 8, 2025 at 1:00pm. Further information and how to join is listed at https://vibug.org/.

The next Perkins Library Without Walls will meet on Tuesday, February 18, 2025. To RSVP or listen to the upcoming LWW schedule, call the voice mailbox system at (617) 972-7852.

There will be no Third Thursday with the BSCB in February. Please be sure to subscribe to our Announce List at bscb-announce+subscribe@acblists.org to stay up to date.

Below are landing page links for the MCB Rehabilitation Council (RC), and the MCB Statutory Advisory Board (SAB). You may want to bookmark them and check them often for time-sensitive entries. They contain details of upcoming events and meetings, recordings of recent meetings, and other relevant information.

RC landing page: https://www.mass.gov/orgs/mcb-rehabilitation-council 

SAB landing page: https://www.mass.gov/orgs/mcb-statutory-advisory-board

News from the Web

The Dot Experience is redefining inclusivity and aiming to become the world’s most accessible museum for all visitors.

The Quest to Create the Most Accessible Museum in the World

Samsung doesn’t just make phones, they also make a lot of “smarter” home appliances! And they’re launching a QR mode to assist people with visually impairments.

Samsung Unveils ‘Home Appliance QR Mode’ for Visually impaired Users

This year is the 200th anniversary of the invention of braille. Below is a link to the first in a series of five Double Tap podcast episodes related to the topic, and focusing on more modern approaches to learning the code.

Braille at 200: The Past, Present & Future Of The Code

Braille Institute has set up a fund to help fellow blind people who have lost their homes in the wildfires. Learn more at the link below.

Braille Institute Stands with Our Community Impacted by the Wildfires

You Are Going to Have to Sell Your Home, by Peggy Chong, the Blind History Lady

Thank you to Cindy Wentz for obtaining permission from the Blind History Lady to reprint the following article.

Are you familiar with Peggy Chong, otherwise known as ’The Blind History Lady’? She has taken it upon herself to research the lives of various blind Americans from the past including elected officials, judges, business owners and more. Peggy is graciously allowing us to reprint one of her stories. If you’d like to be added to her mailing list to receive a new bio each month or so, contact her at theblindhistorylady@gmail.com.

“You are going to have to sell your home,” said the Colorado social worker. “The state will take care of you. We will find you a nice institution to live in.”

“Why?” asked Clarence Goddard, the tall, grey-haired man. “I don’t understand. This is my home.”

“But you are alone now. Your mother is dead. A deaf-blind person cannot live alone,” the social worker spelled into his hand.

“I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I cook, I care for my garden, I have friends. I am not alone.” Clarence protested that February afternoon in 1968.

“None of your family lives in Holyoke. A deaf-blind person cannot live alone. You are the responsibility of the state.”

“While my mother was ill, in the hospital last year and bed-ridden at home, I cared for her! I cared for the house and me.”

Clarence was not getting anywhere with the social worker who sat in his small, clean home in Holyoke, Colorado that . His mother passed away two weeks prior in 1968, and some well-meaning person set the state on him like they would set a pack of hunting dogs on a fox. Clarence was upset and worried what the state might do to force him into a nursing home or something worse, but he also knew he had friends and family to support him. It was time to get busy writing letters.

Clarence Goddard was born in 1909 in Champion, Nebraska, the oldest of six children.  As a farm boy, he took on chores early. He milked cows, fed the horses, and if he was really good, his father would let him drive the horses in the fields. 

His father was not a well man and soon gave up farming and took a job as a mail carrier between Lamar and Holyoke. But even that proved too much for him. 

The family troubles began in late 1918 when the entire family had the flu and smallpox. Only Clarence’s mother remained healthy until the family was well, then she became ill from exhaustion. 

On August 2, 1919, Clarence and his brother, Cleo accompanied their father to visit their grandparents while their mother attended her sister’s funeral. The three slept in a bed together that night, it was the last happy memory Clarence had of his father. The next day, on their way home, their car had a flat. Father sent the two boys to borrow tools from some campers they had seen a mile or so back. Upon their return, they helped their dad change the tire and left to return the tools. But when they got back to the car, they found their father lying on the ground. The boys screamed and caught the attention of another motorist. The man helped the boys put their father into the back seat. Cleo held his father’s head in his lap while ten-year-old Clarence drove the car home. Little did the boys know that their 37-year-old father was already dead. 

Clarence had to stay home from school to care for his four younger brothers while his pregnant mother took over the mail carrier job. They moved in with his Goddard grandparents. In February of 1920, the family came down with the flu again and passed it around for a month. But it was not the flu for Clarence.

Clarence described the weeks to come in an article from the Nebraska School for the Blind’s 1925 newsletter:

“One evening toward the end of March, after returning from school, I asked mother to get my little brother ready and let me take him uptown. She did so, little thinking it would be the last time I would make such a request and that, in the days to come, it would be the small brother who would guide me.

As we were returning from our stroll about town, we were joined by one of my playmates. Catching sight of a stray pony in a neighboring lot, we went over to see it, and so, attracted by one thing and another, we roamed about as boys will until we found ourselves at some little distance from home. Suddenly, feeling strangely sick, I started back toward town. Whether it was growing dark or I was too ill to see I do not know. 

When I awoke the next morning, I saw one of mother’s cousins sitting in the kitchen. Seeing that I was awake, he said, “Hello.” That is the last word I have any recollection of hearing, and our cousin is the last person I recall seeing. From that time until several weeks later I was conscious of little that went on around me. I seem to remember something of going on the train with grandpa. I know now that it was he who took me to the Methodist hospital in Omaha, that my terrible illness was spinal meningitis, and that within seven days it had robbed me of sight and hearing.

As I began to grow better, I realized that I was blind. I could not believe that I must be so always. Again and again I would ask the nurses if I would ever see. If they told me “no,” I cried, so they usually said “yes.” I would not believe that I was deaf. I kept asking the nurses why they would not talk to me. They would touch my ears, but in my unwillingness to be convinced, I would say, “”I am not deaf.””

One day someone brought me the letters of the alphabet carved from wood. At first it was very hard for me to tell one from the other, but after a time I could recognize them quickly. In this way people began to talk to me, spelling out each word by handing me one letter at a time.”

The doctors told Clarence’s family he should go to the school for the deaf or the blind, but it was another 18 months before his mother finally enrolled him in the Nebraska School for the Blind.  His family took him to several alternative healers, Chiropractors, Osteopaths, and one trip to Denver, where they prayed and performed several healing ceremonies over Clarence.

Clarence was homesick at first. He was not used to being with people, partly because he chose to withdraw from the world. 

Miss Jennie Johnson, a blind teacher at the school, was assigned to teach him, one-on-one. She introduced him to Braille, but he did not want to learn. Jennie was patient, but insistent. Clarence already had people spell in his very large hand, so she convinced him that Braille was the way to get back in touch with the world. He could read books and magazines if he just tried. His attitude improved when other boys walked with him and talked with him through Braille.

Clarence’s family wanted him to continue talking to communicate with hearing people. He learned sign language. His family gave him a whistle to blow if he was ever alone, needed help, or lost. 

In 1925, Helen Keller made a trip to Omaha. Miss Jennie and Clarence traveled to meet her. Through sign language, they communicated for an hour, sharing ideas, and telling each other about the books they read. 

Jennie Johnson had done all she could for Clarence. The school recommended and helped Clarence enter the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts in late 1925. He studied academic subjects and received his eighth-grade diploma in June of 1928. Much of his class time was manual work. In the weaving department, Clarence made a waste basket, a woven tray, a sewing basket, and several plant baskets. In shop class he built a book rack, cutlery box, tray, fern stand and a shelf for a bathroom. 

Perkins worked with Harvard University to provide higher education classes for teachers of the blind. Clarence was part of the Harvard students’ case studies. One of the Harvard student teachers, Charles Innis, worked with him on math and speech. Many words were new to Clarence, and he was unsure how to pronounce them. Charles spelled the words to Clarence correctly and then phonetically to ensure Clarence said the word verbally, as it should be said. Clarence should have offered to type the reports on him for his student teachers as Clarence’s typing was clean and accurate and needed no pencil editing, unlike his teachers. 

After the four years at Perkins, Clarence went back home, wondering what he could do to help support his widowed mother. He wrote articles for magazines, and a few were published. But he never held a job.

By 1940, his siblings were married, and many had moved to California. He and his mother found a home in Holyoke, Colorado. They had a garden in the back yard that Clarence tended. He learned to can vegetables for the winter as well as cook meals for the two of them. He helped his mother keep house. He loved to make pies and did so for everyday meals, not just for company.

Friends came to visit. Clarence was fast at reading words and sentences spelled into his hand and even up his arm when the writer got involved in their story and couldn’t stop. Clarence became a neat freak about his personal appearance, wearing clean clothes and washing frequently, since so much of his communication with others relied on them needing to touch him.

He signed up for every Braille magazine he could find. Another blind lady in Colorado started a Braille magazine just for him with news of Colorado. For years, he was her only subscriber. He obtained a Braille Bible that was the mainstay of his small Braille library. By 1965, Clarence had read almost every Braille book in the Colorado and Utah state libraries for the blind. 

Clarence typed much of his communication with others. Although he would Braille to others, especially if they were deaf-blind, much of his correspondence was with people who did not read Braille. Sighted friends who received his typewritten letters, asked to see his Braille typewriter, and were surprised to find it was just like their own typewriter.

In the 1950s Clarence met a Red Cross Braille Transcriber from Denver through the mail. Kay Haraway offered to transcribe his personal mail that came in print. Over the years, his correspondence had grown, and he did not want to take all his mother’s time to read to him. Kay would receive a large packet in the mail of Clarence’s letters. She would Braille them up and send them back to him rolled up in paper towel tubes, so the Braille dots remained crisp. She sent the print letters back in a separate envelope. Clarence loved to be able to truly read his own mail. 

Every year he visited his siblings in California. Clarence would catch a bus from Holyoke to Denver. He arranged ahead of time for a friend, or agent to meet him at the bus and help him find a cab to the airport. Sometimes, he met friends for a visit if there was plenty of time. No one remembers him using a white cane, but many remembered that when he traveled, he wore a button on his shirt or jacket that said “Deaf-Blind.” He was not afraid to travel on his own. 

When Clarence’s mother died, he felt a great loss. She was his close companion for the more than 40 years since he had lost his hearing and sight. Now to have the state try to force him to sell his house and become a ward of the state, it was too much. As he learned through the loss of his senses, things only get worse if you don’t take action. 

He wrote to family and friends about his situation and asked them to contact the social worker and tell the state how as a deaf-blind man, he could continue to care for himself. Clarence gathered up all the papers and forms left by the social worker and mailed them off to Kay, telling her this was an urgent transcription job. Unlike almost all the sighted people handed such forms, Clarence actually read them. He also gave a list of names and their contact information to the state, asking them to contact his family and friends to vouch for his abilities. Many did reach out to the state, and the state did communicate with a few of his contacts who wrote to Social Services. The state wanted more data about Clarence’s personality and habits.

Everyone informed the Social Services’ staff that more harm would be done to Clarence by removing him from his home and community where he knew everyone and where everything was. No Colorado institution for adults specialized in deaf-blind residents. Clarence would have no one to communicate with about his concerns. Who would take the time to show and explain his new surroundings?

The family explained that they were in touch with Clarence on a regular basis through the mail and came to visit him once a year. If Clarence needed help, he had only to ask. 

The state social worker and supervisors came to Clarence’s home several more times. Three months later, Clarence received a letter in the mail, telling him that the state would not require him, at this time, to move, but he must sign up for an assistance program available to him. He also had to sign a paper releasing the state from their “responsibilities” for him. After carefully reading the papers, Clarence signed and returned them to the state with great speed.

For the next 16 years, he remained in his home. Clarence left the door unlocked and when guests came, they stomped their feet so Clarence could feel the vibrations and come to the door. He visited with family and friends, attended weddings, funerals, and celebrations. He passed away quietly in 1984 in Holyoke.

Peggy Chong is the 2023 Jacob Bolotin Award Winner.

BSCB Contact Information

Phone: (773) 572-6312

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Twitter: @ACBofMA