A Day in the Life of the Director of Community Relations of the National Federation of the Blind

by Patricia Maurer

From the Editor: Most of us who are or have been leaders know that we do not do the job alone. Often we acknowledge privately the work of spouses and other family members who give us the time and support we need to do the work of the Federation. Seldon do we acknowledge them publicly. Sometimes the people we acknowledge have commitments of their own that can be overshadowed by what we do and what they do for us. What I love about this article is it incorporates the work that Patricia did on her own and what she did as a result of being the longest-serving First Lady in the Federation. I hope she enjoys her retirement as much as I have enjoyed reading and publishing her article. Here it is:

I have been a part of the National Federation of the Blind since 1968, and I have served in many and varied capacities. For about thirty years I was the treasurer of the National Federation of the Blind Greater Baltimore Chapter. In the early 1970s I became president of the Greater Des Moines Chapter of the NFB. I have a teaching degree and have experienced teaching dozens of subjects in the classroom, having served as a substitute teacher in the Indianapolis Public School District traveling from school to school for an entire year. However, I suspect that my most memorable service in the Federation was the time that I spent as the director of community relations for the Federation, working from 1988 until 2020 at the National Center for the Blind. Although I have helped with organization in state affiliates in Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Indiana, and many other places, my work in our national headquarters probably has had as much variety as any of the other tasks I have undertaken. Even so, there were patterns to what I did. Now that retirement has come upon me, I am trying to learn that it is not really necessary to wake up at 5:00 a.m. to get ready for the activities of the day.

During much of the time that my husband Marc and I worked at our national headquarters, we would leave the house at 6:30 in the morning so that we could be available by 7:00 a.m. This was especially true during the times that we were having training programs at the Center or engaged in remodeling activities. Building contractors frequently proclaim that they start work at 7:00 a.m., and some of them do. So we needed to be on the spot in case of emergencies. When we were conducting training programs, plans involved getting people started by 7:00 or 7:30 so that the actual experience in the training programs could begin no later than 8:00. Besides, Marc likes breakfast, and he wanted us to get some before we left.

By 8:00 or a little before, I was ready for the day. I had many different responsibilities, but one among them was taking questions from anybody and everybody throughout the United States and the world. These would come by telephone or by letter. Over the decades many of the questions were repeated with variations. A great many people wanted to know how to get their sight back. Of course, they had already asked the doctor the same question, but the doctor did not have an answer. My answer depended on how the question was put. Most blind people don’t get their sight back, but they get the experience of life back, and this is the message I told. I had to reframe the question because to answer it directly would be simply discouraging. You can’t have your sight, but you can have the kind of life that sighted people have if you work to get it. In endless detail I answered this question for a third of a century. Most people who call (except Federation members, who were a substantial part of the group who asked me to find information for them) felt that they were alone. They did not know about blind people, even the ones who had met some or who had relatives who are blind. They thought the experience of becoming blind was a devastating disadvantage or something in the nature of a penal sentence. They wanted to know, “Why me? What did I do to deserve this?” Some were in sufficient despair that they wondered if it would be better just to die. It was my job to help them know that there was a community of people prepared to support them. Those who become part of the National Federation of the Blind increase their chances of success. This is partly because they meet others who have already had success, and it is partly because the Federation working as a whole can create opportunities that would not exist without the group. This is why I invited people to be a part of the organization because they would find kindred spirits who could help them know how to approach the challenges they met. If you are a blind person, can you be . . .? The answer is almost always yes. However, it may take some ingenuity. The Federation has more ingenuity than any other organization in the world, and those who embrace it also participate in this spirit. Building the Federation also assists the organization to have more capacity than it would without the members that come.

There were also hundreds of other calls, such as who is the chapter president in Anchorage, Alaska, or Tucson, Arizona? I was expected to have at my fingers’ ends answers to questions about what technology is the best for the blind, what gifts do blind people want for Christmas, where can I find a toy that blind children can use, what does the constitution of the National Federation of the Blind say, what is the address of the Federation headquarters, and many others like these.

The American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults has produced calendars in Braille that are available free of charge to the blind in the United States. For many years requests for such calendars came to me for management. A calendar may seem a small thing, but Braille calendars have been hard to get. Each year tens of thousands of them were delivered to blind people all over the country.

The American Action Fund also has created books in Braille that could be distributed to the blind. When the Braille lending library of the Action Fund closed, I took responsibility for gathering the books that it contained, sorting them, and distributing them to blind people who were looking to have Braille books of their own. Some thousands of these books have been shipped to individuals and schools.

Each year I also selected books to be produced in Braille for blind children each month. The American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults created this program and asked that the National Federation of the Blind manage the mailings for it. Since 1997 I have helped with selecting the books in the program and managing the effort to get them put into Braille and sent to more than 4,000 blind children each month. The Nancy Drew Mysteries, My Weirder School, the National Geographic Kids, and the Here’s Hank books were some of the selections prepared and delivered without cost to the homes of blind children.

One of my favorite programs was the Santa letter program. Blind kids don’t get much mail, and they almost never get Braille to read in the mail. The Santa letter program was an effort to assist Santa Claus to get Braille letters to blind kids each Christmas season. The National Federation of the Blind would announce in late fall that it would be serving as a Christmas elf for Santa Claus and that Santa had asked us to help get letters together to tell blind children about Christmas. Sometimes the letter would include a drawing project in Braille that a blind child could use to make a Christmas ornament. Sometimes the letter would contain recipes to make Christmas cookies. Sometimes included would be a tactile picture of Santa’s sleigh. Kids who requested letters from Santa would get them in early December.

These are the kinds of programs we operated every year, but there were also specialized programs. I was responsible for responding to questions about the nature of blindness and what kinds of programs were good for the blind to public entities. I spoke to classes in the education department in the University of Maryland each year for more than twenty years. Sometimes I was invited to give lectures to medical students. Sometimes I addressed gatherings of leaders from civic groups, professional organizations, or leadership entities. Occasionally I taught the skills of blindness to blind individuals who needed them or to sighted people who wanted to know how blind people get things done.

Working the telephone was often assigned to me, not just taking calls but making them as well. My husband Marc served as President of the National Federation of the Blind for more than twenty-five years, and he asked me to stay in touch with members of the Federation from throughout the country. I was the voice that invited individuals to participate in leadership seminars of the Federation. In performing this particular duty, I described the leadership seminar to those who were being invited to it, and I gave details about what would be expected of the participants. I have done this so often that I’m surprised I don’t dream about it. In conducting this work, I came to know and have great affection for hundreds of Federation leaders throughout the United States. I believe I have participated in each of the seminars that have occurred since 1988.

Then there were the entertainments. Part of the job of the First Lady of the Federation is to welcome people into the organization. For decades it was expected that I would participate in and assist with evening entertainments for people with whom the Federation was seeking to make alliances: Federation leaders, political leaders, and members of the Federation family. At least twice a week the Maurers entertained somebody, somewhere for most of the time that Marc served in the presidency. Beyond that, when I was free to do so, I participated in state conventions both in my home state and in places where Marc was serving as the national representative. Our children, David and Dianna, were born in 1984 and 1987. Consequently, I frequently had family obligations. However, the entertainments occurred at our house around the family obligations. I cooked thousands of meals and scrubbed as many plates. In the process we had the joy of meeting people from all over the world. I think of the time that I spent doing all of these things as demanding, strenuous, and joyful. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to meet so many wonderful people. New people must now meet these challenges, but I admit that I will miss them.