Latest / Podcasts By Donna Jodhan / Remarkable World Commentary Episode #108: Interview with Peggy Chong, The Blind History Lady

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Remarkable World Commentary Episode #108: Interview with Peggy Chong, The Blind History Lady · Podcasts By Donna Jodhan

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Podcast Commentator: Greetings, Donna J. Jordan, LLBAP and MBA invites you to listen to her
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biweekly podcast, Remarkable World Commentary.
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Here, Donna shares some of her innermost thoughts,
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insights, perspectives, and more with her listeners.
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Donna focuses on topics that directly affect the future of kids,
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especially kids with disabilities.
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Donna is a blind advocate, author, sight loss coach,
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dinner mystery producer, writer, entrepreneur,
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law graduate, and podcast commentator.
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She has decades of lived experiences, knowledge,
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skills, and expertise in access, technology and information.
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As someone who has been internationally recognized for her work and roles,
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she just wants to make things better than possible.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Remarkable World Commentary.
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I am Donna J. Jordan, a lifelong disability advocate and one who
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sees the world mainly through sound, through touch and stubborn optimism.
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I am a law graduate and accessibility consultant,
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an author. I am also a lifelong berry buster who also happens to be blind.
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You may know me from a few headline moments, as in November of 2010,
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I won the landmark charter case that forced the Canadian government to make its website
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accessible to every Canadian, not just to cited ones.
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And in July of 2019, I co-led the Accessible Canada Act with more than two dozen
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disability groups to turn equal access into federal law.
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And most recently, on June 23rd, 2022, I was greatly humbled by Her Late
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Majesty's Platinum Jubilee Award for her tireless commitment to removing barriers.
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When I'm not in a courtroom or in a committee room or in a pottery studio,
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you'll find me coaching kids with vision loss,
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producing audio mysteries, or helping tech companies to make their
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gadgets talk back in plain language.
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Everything I do circles one goal, and this is to turn accessibility from an
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afterthought into everyday practice.
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I invite you to think of this show as our shared workbench,
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where policy meets lived experience and lived experience sparks fresh ideas.
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Now, before we jump into today's conversation,
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let me shine a spotlight on today's guest, a change maker whose work is as every bit as
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remarkable as the world that we are trying to build.
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Peggy Chang, welcome to my remarkable world commentary.
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I am pleased and privileged to have you as my guest.
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Peggy Chong: Well, thank you very much and I'm very pleased to be here.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: No, I'm just tickled that you have accepted our invitation and let's get started.
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Okay, So. Hold on a second.
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Okay. Peggy, I'd like to begin with when your story begins.
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Back in 1979, you were helping clear out the files of a Minnesota home for the blind
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that was closing. And instead of tossing those papers in the bin,
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you stopped and read them.
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And you came across correspondence about a blind man who had served in Congress,
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someone who nobody had ever told you existed.
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Take us into that room with you.
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What did you find? Who did he turn out to be?
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And when did you realize that you were holding something that was about to redirect
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the rest of your life.
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Peggy Chong: Well, I'll tell you, I was given that job mostly because I had grown up in the blind
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community all my life.
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And the papers were files, records, stories,
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news articles, all written by all these old people.
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And they said, well, you'll you'll know who these people are and if we should keep
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anything or not. But they all have to fit into a file cabinet.
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Now there's boxes and boxes and file cabinets and file cabinets full of stuff,
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and I have to get it into one file cabinet.
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And they said, you have to keep all the records of the minutes and the financials,
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and you will reports in the newsletters.
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Now, the organization was founded in 1920.
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Started meeting in 1919.
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So I've got 60 years of records here to go through and they kept everything.
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So I'm sitting there trying to get rid of as much as I can,
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and every so often I would stop and I'd look at something,
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and I just ran across this letter when I was going through the 1920s material,
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which was the first few boxes that I went through.
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And there was a letter from one of the board members to another board member saying,
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I just met with our blind congressman and he is on board with the Robinson bill.
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And, you know, I'm I'm still young enough.
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I'm I'm in my 20s, but I'm still young enough to think that I still know everything.
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Right. And besides, I've been around forever and a day.
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Yeah. So I'm kind of shocked.
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First of all, what blank, Congressman.
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And what is the Robins bill?
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Yes, yes, yes.
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Peggy Chong: So I set that aside and thought.
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But, you know, maybe I better look a little bit more at some of this stuff before I,
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I pitch it and I started a nice little pile of,
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of these things. So I started asking, so who was the blind congressman in
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Minnesota? And everybody's going, oh, there hasn't been a blank congressman.
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There has only been one blind.
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Us Senator. That's it.
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That's all I'm thinking.
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Okay, that can't be right.
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There's, you know, something. So I had done some job training at the Minneapolis Public
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Library for a couple of summers because I had thought about becoming a librarian.
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And I went to some of the librarians that had been mentors to me and asked,
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so who was the blank congressman from Minnesota?
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And they're like, I don't think there's ever been a congressman from Minnesota.
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However they were just as curious as I was and helped me get into some of the research
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rooms that would go through all kinds of good stuff and found Thomas David Schall,
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who was the blind congressman from Minnesota from 1914 to 1925,
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when he became the blind U.S.
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senator from Minnesota from 1925 until his death in 1935.
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And so he I call him my first blind ancestor because he was the first one I ever really
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researched and learned about.
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And we're talking, you know, this is before the internet and you have to
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do everything by hand.
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You had to go to the place where the records were kept.
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You had to go through everything paper by paper,
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by paper. And it was kind of hard to find people to come with me to do that because it
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was very tedious. And you didn't find anything.
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Many times the entire day you were there.
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But he was my first one, so I put him aside and he was my first
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research project. However, in those papers, I kept other documents
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talking about blind people they were working with in the 1920s and the 1930s from other
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states, and wondering how did they know about them?
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They didn't go to the school for the Blind in Minnesota.
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How did these guys network?
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So every time I would put together my list of questions of things to find out,
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I'd answer one question and there be ten more in its place.
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So I started with Thomas Schall, who was a very interesting man.
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He started out in a family where you can read a lot about him on the internet.
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And some of it's true, and a lot of it's not.
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And why is that? Well, that's because he reinvented himself every
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time he turned around.
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Oh, so he claimed his father died and his mother remarried.
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Actually, his father deserted him and his mother.
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And she did remarry. He sometimes dropped out of school,
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sometimes not. However, he did finish high school and he became a
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lawyer. Now, when I'm talking to kids.
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I like to tell them that he became blind because he smoked.
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And that's true. Yeah, well, it is in a sense.
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He was trying a case in Fargo, North Dakota,
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and about 1910 or so and went to this cigar stand to buy a cigar,
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and tried out the new electric cigarette lighter.
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Oh yeah. It didn't work too well.
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It gave him this terrible shock and threw him across the room,
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and he hit his head on the wall and went down.
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Now he was a little dazed.
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He got up. He went back to court after the recess and finished his trial.
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But within two weeks he was totally blind.
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And he. He spent. He had amassed quite a amount of wealth by this time,
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and he and his wife spent most of their money,
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just about all of it, trying to find a cure for his blindness.
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He hit rock bottom. They didn't have any money.
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A few of his lawyer friends threw him a divorce case here and there.
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But they started saying, well, you know, you've got this big booming
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voice. Would you come and, you know, address the the crowds at my rally
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or this political function or whatever, and he started to do that.
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Some people said, why don't you run for Congress?
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He said, well, why not?
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And he threw his hat in the ring and he won.
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That was the first office he had ever held in his life was congressman for the
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state of Minnesota.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh, God.
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Peggy Chong: No. He went to Congress.
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He had a dog that was trained at a school for dog guides in Minnesota that
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predates other dog guide schools in the country.
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It went back and forth with him to DC all the time.
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They, of course, wanted to put the dog in the baggage car.
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And Thomas David Shaw was he was a very powerful man,
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not only just in his speech, but in his demeanor.
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And he just didn't take no for an answer.
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And nobody said no to the congressman or the senator,
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depending on when he traveled and his dog was with him.
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He proposed legislation to allow dogs to accompany a blind person on public transit,
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both nationally and in Minnesota, which didn't pass,
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you know. People weren't used to seeing a blind person with a dog at that time yet.
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But he, he died in a hit and run accident just before Christmas.
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He and his chauffeur slash reader they stopped to do some shopping,
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got out of the car, and this car started up and just zoomed on and hit them both.
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Thomas was killed. Thomas died a few days later in the hospital.
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His driver recovered. But the interesting thing is that the driver stopped,
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got out of the car and yelled, he shouldn't have been in the street anyway.
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He went to court and they didn't charge him with anything because he hit a blind guy,
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you know? So the blind guy should have been watching.
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His family swears that the mafia arm of the DFL party had him assassinated.
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And looking back, they've they've got some proof of that.
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The man who hit him was unemployed.
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We're talking the heart of the depression.
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Yet within a few years, he bought a new house.
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He didn't have a job. His kids went to private school.
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His kids went to college.
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Where did his money come from?
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Well, I interviewed his daughter in law and his grandson.
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And to this day, they do believe that he was assassinated.
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So kind of an interesting guy.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: My God. You could call yourself a historian or an archivist,
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and plenty of people do call you both, but you prefer the word storyteller.
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And I know from my own work that the word we choose for ourselves matters enormously.
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What does storyteller give you that historian does not?
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Peggy Chong: Well, I'll tell you, I didn't like school very much and I didn't like history.
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So for me, history was very boring.
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And I find a lot of people feel that history is boring.
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So if I'm a historian, I'm already in the boring category,
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and that doesn't get you very far.
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I am an archivist in some ways because I have taken collections of material that
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I have found, I've seen to it that it is preserved.
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That means getting it scanned.
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That means getting it translated so that it can be saved for anyone else.
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And so that I, as a blind person, could access the records.
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There was a lot of selfishness in my efforts,
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but I think of myself more as a storyteller because I want these people to come alive.
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I want them to be real.
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Not just facts, not just dates.
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I want them to be somebody that a person, once they read my stories,
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read my monthly emails, say, wow, I can see where that man was.
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Really impressive. I can see how much that woman had to overcome,
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not just as a blind person, but as a woman, and how remarkable they were
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just to be able to accomplish the little bit that society probably doesn't consider them
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successful. But we should look at them as a successful person because they supported
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themselves. They gave back to the community.
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They were people who took the challenges on and overcame them.
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They didn't look at them as a problem.
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They looked at them as something to get past.
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And so when I say I'm a storyteller, I hope that people want me to come and
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address their groups And hopefully inspire others to do research on blind people.
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Hopefully that they look at blind people differently.
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They see them as potential contributors to society.
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The two that be they would be contributors to their organization,
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to the things that they're interested in as well.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I am certainly impressed by, you know, you telling about this,
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Congressman. I mean, I'm
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intrigued. Wow.
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Peggy Chong: Well, when I was reading about him at first going through some news articles and some
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family histories about him, I thought, I'm not going to like this man
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very well. And probably I wouldn't have One of the things I noticed before he became
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blind is that he was a a trial lawyer lawyer that handled like a lot of hit and run cases
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or personal injury cases.
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And it was interesting to me that the witnesses for many of the cases had the same
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name. And you gotta wonder how that how that could be.
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So I kind of wondered if he wasn't a little bit on the creative side in his
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Defending of his clients.
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But when he went blind and was elected to Congress,
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he really took things seriously and did his research,
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talked to people, he went through the communities and he went door knocking.
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He, his children acted as guides in the summer when he would travel to these
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communities, get off the trains, walk to the farmhouses,
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take a horse and buggy and later a car.
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And just sit and talk to the farmers, the blacksmiths,
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the grocers to hear their side of the story.
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He was a Republican but didn't always hold the Republican line.
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But he still used some of his creativity in his promotions of himself and the legislation
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that he had. He was interested in the blindness stuff,
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but he came at it as someone who went blind as an adult.
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How do you, as a blind adult who there's no training for you anywhere in the country.
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No, the schools for the blind won't take you.
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You're too old. And so the Robbins bill was written by a blind man who had gone blind
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in his teens. His last name was Robbins, and he wanted to start a nationwide program
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of rehabilitation for blind people.
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Now, there's always already this thrust of needing to train the blind vets who came back
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from World War One, and the Red cross had started this program in Maryland at.
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They called it evergreen and blind vets went there for about two years.
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It was closed down after about seven years, partly because they had done what they could
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for those blind vets that defined group, but it was also very expensive,
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which was one of the reasons the government didn't want to take on general population of
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blind adults. It costs too much money.
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The Robbins bill would start some specific training.
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And it's interesting to note that one of the suggestions was like newsstands or cigar
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stands, that blind people would be trained to operate.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay.
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Peggy Chong: And so in a way, that was sort of the start of the Randolph-sheppard program.
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It had to go another ten years before that would really catch on.
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But I am just amazed at how one thing ties into another when I start
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researching it. There's no linear history story here.
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It is a web of wonderful histories together that I uncover,
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and it's some of these people.
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It takes me ten, 15 years before the story comes to life where others.
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I can get a story out in six months or so because I want to check out as many possible
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ways as possible to research them, not just newspaper articles or stories in
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blindness publications, but family histories.
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I really enjoy talking to the descendants of these blind people and hearing their
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family stories.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You are certainly a wonderful storyteller.
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I mean, this, this interview is very, very different and I'm really enjoying it.
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And, you know, like, one of the things I admire most about your work is that you
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refuse to turn your subjects into scenes.
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You have said out loud that blind people have been senators and bankers and also crooks
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and murderers, because we are a cross section of society.
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That is a brave thing to say in a field that loves an inspiring story.
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Why is it so important to you that the ordinary lives,
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and even the unflattering ones get told right alongside the celebrated ones?
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Peggy Chong: When you look at the catalogue of books about blind people,
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a lot of those books are either sad, sappy stories Or they become almost
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saints. Angels. They can do no wrong.
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Everything they did was great.
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But life isn't that way.
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Life is full of challenges and mistakes.
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And how we learn from those mistakes makes us who we are.
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When we take a big fall, how we get up, dust ourselves off and move
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ahead is very important.
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And if you are reading these books about these blind people who a lot of
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them are religious in nature, they find God and they learn to play the
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piano and live happily ever after.
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Well, believe me, I am not musically inclined.
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I will never play an instrument.
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Well, I've had lessons.
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And my poor For instructors.
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So many of the stereotypes about blindness, I think most of us cannot really relate to
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because they're not like us.
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We need to hear the stories of people who are like us,
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who didn't have the best education, or didn't have enough money to start that
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first business, or totally failed because we had no idea what really went on in the real
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world in that profession.
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One of the interesting stories here in Colorado where I now live I found about a
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gentleman who he went blind because he was in a parade celebrating
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I believe it was an anniversary of the Civil War.
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And he was celebrating the Confederate side and side.
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Somebody threw a rock.
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Hit him in the head.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh.
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Peggy Chong: And he went blind. Now, this is in the 1870s,
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so there's nothing for him at all in Colorado except going to a poor farm or,
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you know, just packing it up and pretty much burying yourself.
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The poor farms were sometimes worse than jails,
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and people did not want to go to a poor farm.
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So what is he going to do?
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He's got to make some money.
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He's got to live. So he runs into a friend who says,
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well, you want to sell the cigars?
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Out on the street from my tobacco company.
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So he starts that. Pretty soon he's involved in the business.
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Thinks I'll start my own starts a little tobacco store,
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buys the tobacco, rolls the cigars, gets out,
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sells them on railway stops up and down the railway line that he lived on.
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Gets more confident in his travels, starts traveling the state.
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His building burns down a couple of times because they're wooden buildings in these
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small towns. You get a fire going in one building and the whole block goes down.
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He picks himself up each time, starts again.
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He is on a train about 1900, and it's late at night.
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He has bought a sleeping car ticket, climbs up the steps of the train,
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and there's supposed to be a gate on the back side.
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He Misstepped. Fell off the other side and was injured.
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So he sued the rail company for damages and they said,
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oh no, because they had a policy that blind people could ride for free if they had a
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guide with him. Well, he said, I didn't ride for free and I didn't
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have a guide. So then they said, well, he should have had a guide no matter
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what. And he won in the lower court.
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The the train railroad appealed.
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They lost again. And they had all these reasons why a blind person shouldn't travel.
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So he appeals all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court.
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It's now 1909. So this guy's got some chutzpah,
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and the railroad goes into the Supreme Court and said he,
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you know, he was riding the train for free.
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And so he accepts his responsibility and he holds up his ticket that he paid for,
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for the sleeping car. So he wins at the Supreme Court level in Colorado and gets a
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much larger judgment than the lower courts had given him.
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So he starts his own tobacco company in a larger town,
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and it grows pretty soon he's employing several salesmen who travel.
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He's now got a shop where he's hiring people to roll the cigars.
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He has a shop where he's hiring people to sell his loose leaf tobacco.
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And he's becoming, he's becoming not wealthy,
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but he's certainly one of the more wealthier people in town.
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And then comes along the late 1920s.
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He's already fought the battle for riding a train as a blind guy.
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So he's crossing the street in town and a man who's got two horses on a sleigh.
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It's a wintertime. Is trying out his sleigh.
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And they're galloping down the street.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Oh.
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Peggy Chong: And he's hit by the horses.
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And again is is injured and in the hospital.
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So he tries to get that person arrested for dangerous driving.
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And the first response is, well, you know, you should have had somebody
30:44
helping you cross the street.
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And he's thinking, now wait a minute.
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I crossed this street every day.
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So he ends up suing, going to court, demonstrating that the sleigh the man was
31:00
riding, no matter if you were standing in the seat,
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you couldn't see over the head of the horses.
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So he shouldn't have been driving it in the street and he finally wins.
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He doesn't get much money out of it, which really wasn't his point.
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What he really wanted was to make sure that there was some protection for any pedestrian
31:24
in the street, that drivers of sleighs, horse and buggies,
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and the new automobile that he didn't like at all that they had protection and a right to
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cross the street and that the drivers had a responsibility to look.
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And that was some of the beginnings of some of the white cane laws.
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At least here in Colorado they date back earlier in some other states,
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but here in Colorado, that was sort of the beginning of the white
31:59
cane laws because white canes weren't very prevalent.
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Most men used a walking stick like sighted men used.
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They weren't white. They were fashionable canes.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay.
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Peggy Chong: Women didn't use them because they were a man's walking stick.
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And in the 19 early 1900s, 1800s, women didn't go out alone anyway.
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Because that would mark you as a loose woman.
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Prone for gossip. So, yeah, sighted women always went in twos.
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So blind women went with sighted women as travel companions.
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And to the market and to the dress shop, just like the sighted women did.
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But blind men did travel alone, and they found a walking cane to be very
32:55
helpful in that as well, which, you know, we're talking in the 1880s,
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1890s, there's many blind men who are noted as tapping along with their cane.
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And I find that fascinating because we often think of the white cane as an invention in
33:15
the 1920s and 30s when it.
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The white part was. But the cane part wasn't.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Are you there?
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Peggy Chong: Yes. I'm here.
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Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay. This is truly a lesson in history.
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And you know what? It.
33:40
I hope our listeners are agreeing with me that this interview,
33:46
you know, depicts a blind person in so many different ways,
33:50
not just the stereotype blind
33:53
person. Right?
33:55
Peggy Chong: Correct. And one of the things that I often ask myself when I'm researching,
34:03
because I want to be able to tell my my readers of my monthly emails how they did
34:11
their tasks. What techniques did they use as a blind person?
34:16
What? What did they adapt?
34:17
How did they adapt it?
34:19
And to do that, I often have to interview a lot of people to find out what they did.
34:30
And I find it interesting when I can get family who have memorabilia of that person
34:37
and they'll say, oh, my grandfather read in Braille,
34:40
or my great uncle read Braille, and I have his his slate,
34:46
and they'll send me the slate and the or they'll send me a picture of it.
34:51
And the picture is of two cells high and four across,
34:57
and that tells me it was New York point, not Braille,
35:01
because for some of the people I'm researching.
35:05
Braille wasn't introduced in this country until 1860.
35:09
And so if a specially an adult was blinded in the 1870s,
35:17
1880s, the chances of them learning Braille was almost slim to none.
35:25
Because it was New York point was what was being taught.
35:29
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay.
35:30
Peggy Chong: And so it's, it's fun for me to find those little artifacts.
35:34
We look at Braille now.
35:36
The word Braille as sort of the all encompassing of the reading methods of blind
35:42
people. When Braille to many of these people meant reading in moon type.
35:51
If they wrote it was either in New York Point or it was in Braille.
36:00
But I've also found many examples of blind people who hand wrote their letters,
36:07
their correspondence, their bills, because the Ohio School for the
36:13
blind, the first state school for the blind for decades.
36:19
You know, Braille wasn't invented, wasn't here in the United States yet.
36:23
And New York Point wasn't really used either in Ohio.
36:29
They said that print. And we're talking handwriting was the business language of the
36:38
country. And if you want to be a business person,
36:42
you have to learn the business language of the country.
36:45
And they would spend hours every day, the students learning to write in script or
36:50
learning to write their print letters.
36:53
And so you have this had spread where then blind people who went blind.
37:01
People who went blind in their 30s and 40s print was the only thing they knew.
37:07
So they continued that.
37:09
And they continued to practice writing every day so that they wouldn't lose that skill.
37:17
The typewriter that when it came to this country,
37:20
came as the the school to the schools for the blind as a literacy tool for blind people.
37:28
It was the blind people use of the typewriter that introduced it into the business
37:34
community and took off like a shot, which always makes me laugh a lot when
37:43
I see these new inventions, these keyboards for the blind to help you
37:48
learn to type. Because typing is so hard to learn as a blind person.
37:53
Yes. When actually the typewriter was an invention for blind people.
38:00
And so the material and the artifacts and the photographs that people send to me of their
38:08
ancestors when I'm looking at those photographs,
38:12
I'm looking at what's around them, the different typewriters,
38:16
the different Braille apparatuses.
38:20
What, what's on the shelves behind them?
38:26
Did they have Braille rulers?
38:31
There was a story that I had about a blind man from Iowa who had no idea what he could
38:40
do, but he found an ad in the newspapers.
38:44
This was the depression time for selling men's suits door to door.
38:51
And he thought, well, I can't, I, you know, what have I got to
38:54
lose? So his mother was a seamstress.
38:58
And so he said to his mom, I have to sell suits.
39:03
I have to take measurements.
39:04
How am I going to do this?
39:05
So his mom took one of her tape measures, and she made stitches in it.
39:13
Several stitches for one inch at the inch mark,
39:16
a few stitches for half and a quarter and an eighth.
39:21
And so he took that along with him.
39:26
And knowing very little about men's suits, he presented himself as an expert and took
39:34
the measurements. And he actually won awards from the company because fewer of his suits
39:43
went back for alterations.
39:45
Wow. Because he had measured so well.
39:48
Now, one of the techniques that he used for measuring was telling people,
39:56
oh, did you hear that out the window?
39:59
And they would turn and their bodies would relax better.
40:02
And so he would get a more accurate measurement from the shoulder down.
40:10
And he had some other little.
40:15
Tricks that he used for measuring as well.
40:19
Or he would sometimes take a string and cut it and then recheck it.
40:23
And that was his measurement. Then he would put it on the measuring tape.
40:30
He actually made enough money where he could support his mother and own a home and
40:37
everything. During the depression, when other blind people were having a lot
40:41
more difficulty and he did this selling men's suits.
40:44
Now, he didn't continue to do that, but it was how he got started.
40:48
And it boosts his confidence so much that he was able to move on to other things,
40:54
And I find those kinds of stories fascinating because here's this man who's he's desperate
41:01
for a job. Nobody will hire him and he takes on a job.
41:05
He has no idea how he's going to do the job, the techniques that he's going to do.
41:12
He makes it up as he goes along and becomes an expert at it,
41:16
better than the sighted men and women doing it in the county at the same time.
41:22
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: So what you are storytelling to our listeners is that blindness does not hold people back.
41:29
If they want to do something and they find what I call workarounds to do
41:35
it. Is that right?
41:36
Peggy Chong: That is correct. Yeah.
41:38
When it comes down to, you know, like when I first started doing
41:42
this, some of the questions I wanted to answer for myself was what makes a successful
41:47
blind person? I'm still working on that question because it changes all the time.
41:54
But what amount of schooling did they have to have?
41:58
What amount of blindness training did they have to have money?
42:03
And sometimes what I am finding with some of these blind people is that they had to hit
42:09
rock bottom first and have no way out.
42:13
It's either try this or go to the poor farm, try this or go to jail.
42:20
And jail was a refuge for a lot of beggars.
42:24
They went especially on a long weekend.
42:27
They'd try to get arrested Friday night because they knew the judge wouldn't be in
42:30
town till Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday.
42:33
So they were guaranteed several nights in a warm bed and meals.
42:39
Which I don't recommend, but they, you know,
42:43
if the, you didn't want to have a criminal record,
42:46
you would try anything, whether it be driving a horse and buggy.
42:50
How are you going to do it? I don't know, pray the horse knows where he's going.
42:54
And in some cases they trained horses to be like their dog guide.
43:02
There was a blind milkman in Minnesota who delivered the milk from his family's farm,
43:09
and he used his horse and buggy to do it.
43:14
The family said, why not?
43:17
I mean, he's blind. It's dark.
43:19
And if he can do it without using the extra oil for the lamp,
43:24
that just means we have more oil for the rest of the farm usage.
43:29
So they sent out a set him out on the the road and he got to listening for groves of
43:38
trees or the change in the wind to let him know he should turn here.
43:44
And he delivered the milk for a few years for his family farm in Minnesota in the 1870s,
43:51
when there's no corner light, no farm light the only thing you would have
43:56
would be a gas lantern or a kerosene lantern on your on your buggy or wagon or whatever.
44:05
And so he figured, you know, it's dark anyway.
44:09
Everybody else is doing it in the dark.
44:11
I can too. He went on to be a piano tuner.
44:15
He rode bicycles to his jobs.
44:18
He was totally blind. How did he do that?
44:22
He taught other blind pianists to do the to ride their bicycles as well.
44:26
Because you're talking pre paved roads.
44:30
And so he would get his bicycle in the track of a wagon.
44:35
And he would count when you kind of like railroad tracks when you get to a corner.
44:40
Now the buggy tracks are going different directions.
44:42
So it's like bumpety bumpety bump.
44:44
Okay. That must be Marquette Street.
44:46
And the next one is Saint Paul Street and blah,
44:49
blah, blah. And so he could judge by the bumpity bumps in the road as well as the
44:54
sounds, the smells as to where he was in the in the streets of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
45:05
He could carry his £67 piano tuning kit on the back of his bicycle and go much farther
45:13
than having to walk that or hire somebody to drive him there with either a horse and
45:20
buggy. So he used the techniques that other people were using,
45:28
but he found as a blind person, different ways to interpret how he was
45:34
getting there. Like the bumps in the road, the smells,
45:38
the sounds. And, you know, getting to know a lot of people along the
45:43
street so he could say hi to the policeman on the corner and say,
45:48
this is so and so street, right?
45:50
Yeah. Oh, have you seen so and so lately?
45:53
Yeah. So they're over at such and so cafe.
45:56
Great. I'm looking for them.
45:59
Or he would hear the school bells and he would have people who would be willing to
46:07
help him when he would get to a residential community for finding the houses.
46:12
And he was a very talkative gentleman, so he'd walk up to the door.
46:18
Hi. I'm tuning pianos in your neighborhood, and I'm going to be tuning for the such and
46:25
so house. That's just a couple doors down from you,
46:27
right? They say, oh no, it's actually on the next block.
46:30
Well, you know, if you're interested in tuning your piano, I would be glad to tune it
46:34
for you. Here's my card.
46:36
So while he was trying to find his way to his location,
46:40
he was also picking up business.
46:43
As as he went along the streets.
46:49
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: You know, this interview, listening to you as a great storyteller is
46:58
you've given us several stories of inspiration that,
47:03
yes, you are blind, but you know what?
47:06
There are ways to get around it.
47:07
There are ways to use your other senses to do what you want to do.
47:13
Don't just sink into the doldrums.
47:17
That's not a reason. That's not an excuse.
47:20
You can do it. So with the clock ticking down in just a few more minutes,
47:24
I wanted to ask you this final question.
47:29
What message of inspiration would you have for anyone who says,
47:34
well, I'm blind, I can't do anything while I'm blind.
47:37
I, I, I, I, I give up hope.
47:40
Give our listeners A few words of inspiration based on the stories that you have shared
47:48
with us today.
47:51
Peggy Chong: You know, I've had that conversation with many people and it kind of depends.
47:58
I often ask them, well, how do you want your children to remember you
48:02
by? Do you want to be remembered as the grumpy old blind man in the chair or the
48:09
grandma who, who just sits around on the rocker?
48:16
But then I asked them about what their dreams were and bring up a story,
48:24
because there's a blind man who's done almost,
48:28
or a blind person who has done almost everything.
48:32
Or I'll say, well, you know, you can sit here all you want,
48:37
but it certainly isn't going to make life very happy.
48:40
And I can if I had took on that attitude, I'd be living in public housing and on
48:47
welfare, and my credit card just cannot tolerate that type of a lifestyle,
48:52
and I want you to feel that way as well.
48:56
I will tell them about things that I've just done.
49:00
I will tell them, well, you know, you could sit there and,
49:05
and feel sorry for yourself or you could have been with me.
49:08
And for example, I just came back from a US Canada cruise sailing the Great Lakes.
49:16
And we had a great time.
49:17
And yes, it was about bird watching.
49:20
Yes, it was about watching the hot air balloon that went up the for the NOAA weather
49:27
stations. Yes. It was about watching the videos of what was happening under the water
49:34
when the boat dropped the basket that had the fish bait in it and the video cameras to
49:42
monitor what the fish were doing.
49:44
But you know what? It was also about, especially for my husband going on the bird
49:51
watching small boat tour because he wanted to ride that boat that bumped all over the water
49:56
and could go 40 miles hitting all those waves on the Great Lakes.
50:00
But it was also about learning new things and meeting new people.
50:06
We went to the lectures and learned about the interesting birds along the Canadian border
50:12
and the US border. We learned about the lock systems and how locks all worked.
50:19
We learned about, especially along the Great Lakes,
50:22
all the shipwrecks that took place, the conditions that the ships sank in,
50:30
and how that water is so cold today that you can look down and see those boats intact.
50:36
And there was so much to learn.
50:38
And we had a great time meeting new people.
50:40
We had a great time eating new foods.
50:43
We had a great time listening to music.
50:48
And if you're going to feel sorry for yourself,
50:51
you're going to miss all that.
50:54
So you have a choice. And it is your choice because all the people that I have
51:00
researched, there is no one set of.
51:08
Criteria or. Need or amount of schooling or amount of money.
51:17
There's no characteristic.
51:19
One characteristic that stands out that made the people that I consider successful,
51:25
successful. What does make them successful is that they said,
51:33
I will try, I will do it.
51:37
And if I fail, I'll get up and do it again, or I'll try something else.
51:43
And it's up to us. It's what's inside us that makes us who we are,
51:49
that makes us successful, that makes us happy.
51:54
That makes us feel fulfilled.
51:56
And just because you don't think you can go back and do the job you did as a sighted
52:02
person, doesn't mean that what you learned as a sighted person isn't beneficial.
52:08
You can go back and use those same skills and knowledge in different parts of your
52:14
profession, whether it be a teacher, whether it be a trainer,
52:20
whether it be a coordinating volunteers in that profession,
52:26
whether it be volunteering yourself, whether it be writing up manuals there's so
52:33
many different options that you can choose.
52:36
But you have to choose them, and you have to find your way to fit in.
52:40
And you may have some false starts.
52:43
You're going to have to learn to do things differently.
52:46
But isn't life all about learning new things?
52:50
Haven't many people said that you have to learn something new every day?
52:56
And I think that's what we have to remember, is that now,
53:00
as blind people, we still have to learn something new every day.
53:03
It's just different than what we would have learned as a sighted person or what our
53:08
families are learning.
53:09
And we can do that and we can be successful.
53:13
There are blind people who have become fast Braille readers learning Braille when they
53:19
were in their 70s. Because they chose to do it,
53:23
they chose to learn it.
53:27
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: This has been an interview of pure inspiration and motivation,
53:31
and I want to thank you for having taken the time to come out and share your perspective
53:37
with listeners. It is refreshing and it is something I hope our listeners would take
53:42
heed of. And, you know, any time they say to themselves,
53:46
well, I can't do it. Listen to what Peggy has said.
53:49
And so I want to thank you for
53:51
having come. Well.
53:52
Peggy Chong: Thank you very much. And anyone who wants to receive one of my monthly emails,
53:57
I send them out once a month.
53:59
They can just send me an email to the blind history lady@gmail.com.
54:05
That's the blind history lady, all one word@gmail.com.
54:10
And I'll be glad to add you to my list.
54:13
And you'll hear these stories about people, the trials,
54:17
the triumphs, the successes that they had.
54:21
And once in a while, a murderer who was shot by the police.
54:26
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Please add me. Add me to your distribution list.
54:30
Peggy Chong: I will be glad to.
54:31
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: I'm. Especially the one.
54:33
The one who was caught for murdering somebody.
54:36
Peggy Chong: Oh my goodness. That was the 1980s in Minneapolis.
54:39
And the police shot him because he was in jail for murdering his fiancee.
54:47
And that was the second time he'd murdered his fiancee.
54:50
And not the same woman.
54:51
Different one. And while he was in jail, he had this girlfriend where he,
54:58
when she escaped from jail, he went to her house and he assaulted her,
55:03
kidnapped her kids, and were holding him hostage.
55:05
So his wife. Now, you've got to understand, he got married while he was in jail after
55:10
this woman married him after murdering the fiance.
55:14
She's on the screen pleading a blind person.
55:16
He's blind. He couldn't hurt anybody.
55:19
And she wanted all these blind organizations to step in and get the police to not shoot
55:24
him. Not a blind organization would do that.
55:28
The cops didn't see him as a blind man.
55:31
They saw him as a man twice convicted of murder,
55:35
who was holding two children hostage by knife at their throat,
55:40
and they shot him in the head.
55:43
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Thank you very, very much for this very inspiring and insightful interview.
55:50
Thank you. And please, please add me to your.
55:54
Peggy Chong: I will do that.
55:55
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: And we will stay in touch.
55:57
Peggy Chong: Thank you very much. This has been fun.
56:00
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Okay. Thanks, Peggy. You take care
56:01
now. Bye bye.
56:03
Peggy Chong: Bye bye.
56:04
Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Bye.
56:09
Podcast Commentator: Donna wants to hear from you and invites you to write to her at donnajodhan@gmail.com.
56:15
Until next time.