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"Memorial Fund Donations--The Alumni Association of the New York Institute for Special Education has started a fund in memory of Robert W. Gunderson, who taught amateur radio and electronics at the school for many years, and died in 1987. The fund will be used by the alumni at each June graduation to award a small scholarship to either a visually impaired or deaf-blind student most deserving scholastically. The amount awarded will depend on the level of donations to the fund. You may donate by sending checks or money orders to the Robert W. Gunderson Memorial Fund, c/o the Alumni Association of the New York Institute for Special Education, Att: Joseph Bruno, Treasurer, 420 West 261st St., Bronx, NY 10473.
"Please make checks payable to: The Robert W. Gunderson Memorial Fund, and in your check memo, please put c/o The Alumni Association Fund, N.Y.I."
Thank you, Alumni. The sentiment is proper and the goal is laudable. He loved the New York Institute, and he would do anything to help young folks along.
I owe that fine fellow my career. It is nicer today; with all the disability awareness that is now commonplace, it shocks me to think of the isolation that was the backdrop behind disabled people choosing unusual careers in the 1950s. Robert Gunderson brought us together on the air, in his "brain trust" of alumni, and through the distribution of the only hard reading you could get back then, The Braille Technical Press.
When other disability groups were forming in the early 1970s, I would hear people talk of "role models" as if they were a new thing. I always had them, and it was not because I was somehow blessed. The image of my success was handed to me in a packet of Braille that arrived every month.
Well then, here's a chance to ante up, and I'm glad of it. I sent a chunk of money, and I'd like to encourage you to do the same, please. Thanks.
Margaret Hoshor and Helen Siefert, deaf-blind instructor
In August, 1934, native-born Margaret
Hoshor's lifestyle changed dramatically when she accepted a
challenge to train and teach seven year old deaf-blind Helen
Siefert of Bridgeport, Nebraska. Encouraged by Omaha
World-Herald subscribers and staff, funds were raised to
send the two to Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown,
Massachusetts for two years. Then Nebraska Legislative funds
sent them to the Nebraska City School for the Blind for one
year, and to the New York Institute for the Education of the
Blind until Helen reached the age of twenty-one. Both stayed
on there, where Margaret continued supervising Helen and did
full-time teaching of other deaf-blind students until her
retirement in 1972, and where she was supervisor of that
school's Deaf-Blind Department for sixteen years. During her
years at the New York Institute, Margaret worked with at Margaret likens Helen's early training and
development to that of Helen Keller, in that the problems
and behavior of both students were so similar. In later
development, Helen Keller excelled in literary development,
whereas Helen Siefert has excelled in creative achievement
and general interests and knowledge.
The Omaha World-Herald and other Nebraska
newspapers have continued to show interest in Helen's
accomplishments and many people marvel at her love of life
and her everlasting understanding and interest in everything
about her, including theater, travel, geography, human
problems and conditions, and her specific interest in
Bellwood activities and friends.
Margaret has received the Ak-Sar-Ben Good
Neighbor Award, The Sertoma Award for Service to Mankind,
and various other citations.
Cited from rootsweb.com
Mercy Griffin - 1953 (from Blind Citizen News, February 2001)
In 'As I've Seen It' Mercy Dickinson covers the 80 years from her birth in 1919 to her widowhood and old age, dealing with her loss of sight in early childhood, her struggle to get an education and her work for blind people, particularly in Queensland. Mercy tells her story simply, without posturing or bitterness. One reader who knows her well commented, "You can almost hear her saying it".
She was born Mercy Griffin, the second child of a close-knit working class Catholic family of Irish origin, in Rockhampton where her father was a boilermaker with the Queensland Railways. In November 1926, not long after her seventh birthday, she lost her sight through meningitis. Eight months later her parents enrolled her at the Queensland School for the Blind in Brisbane.
By today's standards, living conditions were primitive and teaching was very basic. Although education was free and compulsory, her parents were obliged to pay for her board. Mercy sorely missed her family in Rockhampton, but was a bright pupil and keen to learn. When she won an essay competition conducted as part of a local eisteddfod, the Principal of the School for the Blind "impulsively" entered her for the Queensland Scholarship Examination which at that time marked the end of primary schooling. Mercy passed, gaining a place at Brisbane State High School where she studied while continuing to board at the School for the Blind.
Like all blind students, she had the problem of getting study materials in Braille when required. The Queensland Braille Writing Association helped as much as it could, and two teachers at the high school learned Braille to transcribe her books.
After matriculating in Arts at the Senior Examination (the first blind person to do so), Mercy entered the University of Queensland from which, despite a continuing shortage of material in Braille, she graduated Bachelor of Arts, again the first blind person to do so. For the next few years Mercy tutored in English, French and Latin at the tutorial classes attached to the Teachers' College. The Department of Public Instruction (now the Department of Education) conducted these classes for its Teachers' College students who wished to matriculate and enter the University of Queensland. In addition to this part-time work, Mercy tutored at a Catholic girls' school. Eventually, the Department of Public Instruction appointed her to her first full-time position as a teacher at the Queensland School for the Blind.
In 1953 Mercy was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind. Her special interest was the education of blind children with additional disabilities, and she gained a Master of Science degree from Hunter College, New York. Following her American study, she spent three months at Condover Hall, the Royal National Institute for the Blind's School for Multi-Handicapped Children.
Religion plays an important part in Mercy's life. She frequently refers to it throughout her autobiography, without being either polemical or preachy. For instance, she considers reading at the outdoor Mass in Brisbane during Pope John Paul II's Australian visit in 1986 to be one of the high points of her later life.
Following her marriage in middle life to Harold Dickinson, a blind man heavily involved in the welfare of blind people in Queensland, she was obliged to resign from the Department of Public Instruction. Mercy spent the next few years assisting Harold who was Director of the Queensland Braille Writing Association's Training and Placement Centre. She was also the President of the Australian Braille Authority and worked for some local organizations of blind people as they evolved through various name changes. She writes with poignancy about her support for Harold during his long illness, culminating in his death in the mid-1980s.
Greater recognition came to her in later years. In 1994 the Queensland Institute of Technology conferred an honorary Doctorate on her. She had been awarded an AM a year or so earlier. Also in the 1990's, Blind Citizens Australia conferred on her its greatest honour, the David Blyth Award.
Many people helped Mercy in countless ways, both large and small, and they receive due recognition. But what of the people whose negative attitudes and put-downs, well-meant or otherwise, constantly batter the self-esteem of blind people? Surely Mercy did not escape them, though they hardly rate a mention? Did this omission stem from a desire not to hurt anyone, a concern for the defamation laws, or (dare I say it?) a spirit of forgiveness?
Obvious throughout this simple narrative are the faith and courage that have been features of one woman's long and active life. As a person who normally approaches autobiographies of high-achieving blind people with a kind of morbid curiosity rather than the hope of enjoyment or inspiration, I found 'As I've Seen It' an excellent read.
Mercy Dickinson, 'As I've Seen It. An Autobiography.' Debut Publishing, Queensland. Braille edition: Queensland Braille Writing Association.
Cited from a Book Review by Pat Downie of 'As I've Seen It' by Mercy Dickinson