Members of the Blinded Veterans Association

MEMBERS OF THE BLINDED VETERANS ASSOCIATION[1],

THEIR WIVES, THEIR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN,

THEIR FRIENDS, THEIR SWEETHEARS AND THEIR HONORED

GUESTS.

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In last Sunday's New York Times, Dr. Howard Rusk wrote an excellent column on Veterans Administration medicine and the progress that has been made. In the course of it, he pointed out that the average age of the World War II veteran is 41.

I don't know what the average age of the Korean veteran is. But I can tell that the average age of an Ofch is too close to 51 for comfort. (Or maybe that is when the comfortable years begin.)

I was reminded of all this by the newspaper reports this week referring to this convention as a fifteenth birthday celebration. Thus, while some of you men (omitting any mention of your child brides) are entering into the fat -- and often foolish -- forties, your organization is a teenager, and a teenager at one of the most difficult stages of teenage life.

Now the world has many experts (self-appointed and otherwise) on the problems of the teen years. There are more than enough adults around who can talk about juvenile delinquency and the problems of the teen years at the drop of a hat -- or, for want of a hat, at the drop of an eyelid. I have no intention of getting into that field today.

However, I cannot pass over the fact that this is your 15th birthday (with a nod of due recognition to General Maas and any other veterans of the Indian Wars who may be present). You are fifteen. You are in the teen years. And, taking advantage of the title "father", I think that perhaps I might talk to you today about a few of the facts of life -- and give you a few warnings about the big bad world into which you are moving at the age of fifteen.

From somewhere out of the classical past comes the expression: "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes". Actually it is from Virgil's Aeneid; it refers to the action of the Greeks in bringing the wooden horse filled with soldiers in to breech the walls of Troy. "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" -- it is translated "I fear the Greeks even when they are bringing gifts".

But that is not the slogan that I would give to you in the midst of your teen years -- on this, your fifteenth birthday. Instead it is something close to it, which I would give to you almost as a new motto for your organization -- at least as you move forward through the rest of your teens.

At St. Paul's -- our rehabilitation center -- we have a physician, Dr. Leo Riley, who in addition to his many other accomplishments has a great knack for summarizing in a short phrase or sentence. Last winter at the end of a discussion, he gave us a phrase which I think should become classical: “Timeo Typhlophiles et dona ferentes”. Happily, though the sentence itself is in Latin, the word which he has changed and coined is a Greek derivative, "Typhlophiles".

The "Typhlophiles" of his expression are the "typhlophiles" -- the "lovers of the blind". You will find an English word "typhlophile" in your large Merriam Webster, defined as "one benevolent to the blind". But the typhlophiles of Dr. Riley's phrase are the well-intentioned, the do-gooders, the hand-you-downers, the pitiers -- and all of those who out of their inner need, or their ignorance of and abhorrence for blindness, would make you inferior and dependent while thinking that they were being kind to you.

This then is the motto that I give to you of the BVA as you reach the ripe old age of fifteen. I would guard you with my fear and I bequeath to you my anxiety. "Timeo typhlophiles et dona ferentes", and I hope that you will fear them, too.

Who are the typhlophiles? They are the patrons of special privilege and of special handling. They are the backers of all the movements, which would set you apart from society in one way or another by a special interest treatment, a special interest which flows from their own utter devastation in the face of your blindness. If they believe in rehabilitation at all, it is with a restricted belief. In these days when rehabilitation is a popular word, and an accepted concept, they may use the word and in fact think that they believe in it -- but again and again their action will belie their beliefs.

The "special privilege" may be only the getting up and giving you a seat on the bus or subway (and I must admit that as I look around at some of you teenagers now, you might well deserve one not for your blindness, but for your advancing years).

It may be the person who gets you the job you don't deserve and can't possibly fill to advantage. It may be the person who places you before you are rehabilitated. It may be the person who calls on you to talk to the local service club about "My adjustment to Blindness", when it is neither the time nor the place for you to speak, and when your own doubts about your adjustment cannot help but communicate themselves to your audience.

They are the people who go out to get free fishing licenses for you -- as if there were one among you who couldn't afford a fishing license for himself if he had that much time to fish. I know that there are some blind persons who like to fish, and I know a few of them can't afford a license. But my suggestion is that if the person can't afford it you quietly slip him a fin (no pun intended) -- and that otherwise, you bend your efforts to keeping blind persons so busy that they can't possibly find time to fish. (You ask what harm these people do who get free fishing licenses for those who are blind. I need only remind you again that perhaps your greatest problem is to convince the public of your ability, your normalcy, your worth. And the free fishing license, instead reinforces the stereotype of your inability -- except perhaps to sit on a riverbank and fish.

The typhlophiles are the persons who back the monstrous fragrance gardens for the blind -- the stink gardens which you roundly condemned in your New York convention. Incidentally, these particular typhlophiles are still at work --with the latest report of one of these gardens coming from Miami. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, so is it the price of your independence and your dignity. For the typhlophiles we have always with us -- especially when it comes to something as sentimental as fragrance gardens.

Then there is the special housing gimmick. You first fought it when the splinter group proposed its special projects for blind veterans. And I don't think that there is real fear that it will ever arise in that particular segregated form again. But since that time, now and again some do-gooder thinks up the idea of special houses for individual blind persons. (I talked to you about this one in my telephone talk to your Seattle convention -- but since the connection wasn't overclear, I remind you of it again. At that time, I was rooming with quadriplegics and paraplegics in a rehabilitation center -- and despite the minor nature of my own ailment, I had been spending a good amount of time in a wheelchair. I remind you of what I reminded you before. There is every reason in the world why the paraplegic veteran who is in a wheelchair and the quadriplegic scarcely able to move his arms needs special housing, needs ramps, special bathroom facilities, wider doors, and all the rest. But if there is anything in blindness which calls for special housing, then all of us in rehabilitation should stop wasting our time. And if a particular blinded veteran is afraid of bumping a half open door -- then, sighted though I am, I dare to suggest that he return to Hines or Avon to complete his rehabilitation).

But the typhlophiles would spare you all the difficulties of the sighted world and of living in it. Perhaps there are some among you who would also have it this way. But, at least on your fifteenth birthday, I can claim the privilege of an elder citizen, if not an elder statesman. Or at least, I can claim the privilege of your national chaplain, in warning you not to let yourselves or your organization fall into their hands, not to let yourselves be led down the path of special privilege.

As for special handling, I don't know that it is so much different; but here the typhlophiles would move especially to separate the blind persons, from society.

Beware of them in their fundraising activities on behalf of blind persons. Here especially they can separate you from the rest of society, by arousing a pity for you, which is involved in the purse strings. Again, it is the down-reaching thing -- the giving from a superior level --the giving from the motives of pity and of guilt. The typhlophiles arouse these feelings and help to keep them alive -- and if you have one spark of belief in the reality of your dignity as human beings in the normal rights of blind persons to be considered as a part of the community, you will fight them and fight them with your last breath.

They will seek to set you aside in housing -- special homes for the blind; in recreation -- special parties and camps for the blind; in employment -- special shops and trade schools or special jobs for the blind.

Such is the work of the typhlophiles. And I can only re- mind you again that they are well intentioned, well meaning. But, I say to you that this is perhaps the greatest and most insidious danger. And I fear the typhlophiles even when they are bringing gifts -- in fact, I fear them most in their gift bringing.

I have talked much to you today about your being fifteen -- making a play on the teenage aspect. But it appears to me that you --you the organized BVA --have been mature even from your birth. I have seen you recognize and surmount the difficulties that I have outlined today -- seen you surmount them again and again.

But now I do carry with me the fear -- for I carry it because I know how easily human nature weakens -- I know how strong the temptation becomes as the years of your blindness go on, and brave young ideals become jaded in the face of a sighted and often ignorant world -- I know how strong the forces can be both from outside and from within which could cause you to give up on your ideals and your high goals.

My fear is in part of the outer forces -- those outside of your organization who are satisfying their own needs or allaying their own guilt in working for those who they somehow feel are less than themselves (or by a strange perversion of thought - those they think of as better than themselves in some strange mysterious way.

But even more, I fear the inner forces. I fear the psychological forces at work within you now -- not fifteen years old, but too often fifteen years blind. I spoke to you before of the word ambivalence --that factor within us that makes us wish and wish-not at the same time, which makes us love and hate the same object simultaneously, which urges both dependence and independence, which both at the same time seeks and runs away from. Without your even being aware of it, in each of you, or at least in many of you -- in the face of all your nice words about the equality and dignity of blind people -- there may be also a strong force at work which seeks that you set yourselves apart from a world which obviously will not, cannot understand.

I fear the inner forces in the organization, which also can work into the hands of the typhlophiles. I fear the weakness of the insecure, and the resentful, who may seek to get their strength (or even their revenge) from society by seeking from society special privileges. Frankly as well I fear the insecurity, which, could so easily make of regional groups segregated areas in which misery either loves company, or seeks to forget its misery in the misery of others. I repeat what I have often said before, that the only thing in blindness, which has a tendency to mobilize paranoia, is the separation of blind people from their fellows in society. And I say to you that there is, and can be, no excuse for the segregation of the blind, unless it be for purposes of therapy, or for limited periods of training -- when training can be gotten in no other way.

I will go further; I say that I fear the forces within the organization, which can play into the hands of the typhlophiles from a point of view that I dare call that of the vested interest. Now that is a harsh phrase. I use it in order to awake in you some of the fear, which I feel, but I do not intend to use it harshly.

What I am saying is there are those of you whose lives are bound up in the BVA. You believe in it so strongly, you want so much to keep it alive, all of us do, that the very strength of your belief could lead you to try to "sell" the BVA to non-members by arranging for them special privileges, and special handling by obtaining for them what I have referred to as "special handling". I suggest to you -- my teenagers -- that you yourselves could become the typhlophiles.

And if you find this happening, then I say examine yourselves and reexamine yourselves. See if you are really working for your blinded fellows -- or if within yourselves you are working to satisfy your own needs, neurotic needs, needs for feelings of superiority, needs to overcome your own insecurity and perhaps even your own problems with blindness.

Timeo typhlophides et dona ferentes! I fear the typhlophiles even when they are bringing gifts.

I have spoken to you of my fears. Let me tell you of my hopes. I hope that the Blinded Veterans Association will continue its rehabilitation outlook. I hope that you will continue to make the distinction between veterans rights and special privileges to be accorded for a handicap; I hope that you will always fight for the right of every veteran, while shunning like the plague all of those things which would mark you as a group apart to be separated from society and to be pitied by it. I hope you will continue to fight for the order and rights and the welfare of the civilian blind, I hope that you will continue your long-since stated battle -- to take your rightful place in the ranks of your fellow citizens and work with them for the creation of a peaceful world.