“Divorce Me”

by Peggy Chong

From the Editor: Peggy Chong has won the Federation’s Dr. Jacob Bolotin award twice for her extensive research and writing telling the stories of blind people. She is known to all as the Blind History Lady and is available for presentations to affiliates and chapters. Here is an article adapted from one of her newsletters:

“Divorce me,” said the blind Marine lieutenant, lying in a bed at the base hospital at Camp Lejeune.

“No,” said his young bride of eleven months.

“Divorce me! I can never be any good to you now. All I’m good for is standing on a corner with a tin cup,” Thomas Hasbrook repeated.

“No. I am not divorcing you,” Mary Jane answered—for perhaps the hundredth time.
When Mary Jane was not in the room, Tom’s thoughts returned again and again to the training exercise he had led two weeks earlier. It had gone wrong. An explosion had taken his sight. He was haunted by the knowledge that the men he had expected to ship out with that February of 1944 were overseas without him.

Neither Mary Jane nor Tom’s mother had much idea what a blind man could do. What they did know was that Tom could not remain trapped in despair. Mary Jane brought a typewriter to the hospital and taught him to type. His mother began learning Braille herself and taught Tom as she progressed. A deck of cards became an early teaching tool, helping him understand the value of learning to read and write by touch.

Within weeks, the Veterans Administration transferred Tom to its hospital in Philadelphia for further treatment and blindness rehabilitation. During one visit, Tom overheard his father-in-law speaking to Mary Jane outside his hospital room. He believed divorce would be best. Her friends, he said, would graduate from college, build careers, and raise families, while she would be burdened by marriage to a blind man. The words cut deeply, but they also hardened Tom’s resolve to prove him wrong.

Mary Jane later brought Tom a letter from Eli Lilly, his employer before the war. The company wanted him back, no matter what. She urged Tom to respond, but the letter remained untouched in a drawer.

A priest visiting the hospital listened as Tom voiced his fears: Would he always be dependent on others, even to walk from a car to a doctor’s office? The priest suggested he explore training with a guide dog. A few weeks after leaving the VA hospital, Tom was in Morristown, New Jersey, training with his first guide dog.

When the couple returned to Indianapolis, Eli Lilly made good on its promise of employment. Tom joined the public relations department as a staff writer, transcribing documents from Ediphone wax recordings. Accuracy mattered; before computers, a document riddled with errors had to be retyped in full. Tom’s precision made him an asset. On his first day back at work, Mary Jane could not drive him. Snow was falling. From the window, she watched anxiously as Tom raised his thumb and caught a ride. When he returned home safely, she began to understand that he could travel independently.

At his father’s urging, Tom visited the local Veterans Affairs office to inquire about benefits. There he encountered his first direct experience with discrimination as a blind person.

“You can’t bring that dog in here,” the security guard said. Tom explained that he needed the dog to reach the second-floor offices. The guard refused. After several futile exchanges, Tom left. Across the street stood the office of his state representative. Tom told his story. Together they walked to the state capital, where Tom addressed other legislators. That morning, a bill was drafted to guarantee access to public buildings for blind people using a cane or guide dog. It passed both chambers that afternoon and was signed into law that evening—an unprecedented legislative feat. The political spark had been lit.

Tom soon became active in the Blinded Veterans Association and was elected its national president in 1948. He traveled widely, urging blind veterans to organize, advocate, and demand meaningful employment opportunities. He pressed national leaders for stronger laws and better rehabilitation policies.

Public service followed. Tom served in the Indiana House of Representatives from 1951 to 1955, then in the Indiana Senate until 1958. In 1960 he was elected to the Indianapolis City Council. After city-county consolidation, he became council president from 1970 to 1975 and later served as deputy mayor. He led the Marion County Hospital Association and continued public service even after retiring from Eli Lilly in 1983. Years later, a county health and hospital building would bear his name.

Despite repeated encouragement from the Republican Party to run for Congress, Tom declined. Mary Jane made her position clear: she would not take her family away from Indianapolis.

Tom recognized that while politics achieved broad goals, personal service changed individual lives. He joined the Junior Chamber of Commerce and received its 1949 National Ten Outstanding Young Men Award. In the 1950s, he helped found Bosma Enterprises, creating pathways to employment for blind Hoosiers. The organization continues to honor him through the annual Thomas C. Hasbrook Award Luncheon.

Family life remained central. Tom and Mary Jane raised six children in a lively household. Tom swam each morning before work, walked daily with his guide dog, washed the family car on Saturdays, and even taught his children how to back a car out of the garage—his hand resting on the hood to gauge speed and direction.

Mary Jane read to Tom in the early years, later joined by their children. Reading together became a shared education in ideas, philosophy, and politics. As the children grew older and drove him to engagements across the city, they witnessed Tom’s commitment to listening—particularly in Black neighborhoods that other politicians ignored. He earned trust because he showed up.

Each of the Hasbrook children attended college, supported by their father. Tom liked to joke that he had “one doctor, three lawyers, and two teachers” for children—and that with six kids, he was clearly a good Catholic.

Tom and Mary Jane never divorced. Tom died exactly four months after his wife who had refused to give up on him fifty-two years earlier.