The Russian Translator from Montana

by Peggy Chong

From the Editor: In 1975 many of us were intrigued when Dr. Kenneth Jernigan wrote “Blindness: Is History Against Us.” We knew that for many blind people history had consigned them to lives of boredom and dependence, just the kind of lives we were fighting collectively to see that we did not experience. But what that speech revealed was that there were a number of blind people who distinguished themselves in ways we had not imagined. Peggy Chong has gone beyond that work and revealed that not only does history hold the stories of those who had dramatically flourished in their time, but also what Peggy Chong has done is reveal that not only were there spectacular blind people in history but that many others achieved much more than was expected or thought possible in their time. In many respects they were average persons doing average jobs, but they were managing to do them without sight.

I find these stories both inspiring and humbling. They inspire me because they show that our belief in blind people has been justified over and over again, even without the programs that make it possible for so many of us to achieve what we do in today’s world. I find these accounts humbling because we so often think of ourselves as pioneers—people who are breaking the mold—when the reality is that we stand on the shoulders of people who’ve already made their way in the world. Our task is not so much to be pioneers but to be adaptive enough to survive in the world as we find it today. For many of us this is sufficient challenge, and I think that we too have an important role for the blind of the future, both in showing that we were productive and actively pushing for integration while at the same time making certain that opportunities for the blind of tomorrow continue to be nurtured and expanded. Here is Peggy’s most recent offering as she dons her costume as the Blind History Lady:

Hello Blind History Lady Fans:

In a vacant lot with cousins, just before his fourth birthday, Dale was playing baseball. The kids were using a broken table leg as a bat, when it splintered, driving a screw into Dale’s left eye. Blood came pouring down his cheeks. Little Dale ran to his aunt’s home, where his mother was visiting.

“Mommy, Mommy!” cried the little boy.

“Let me see,” his mother said as she took the little boy’s hands down from his face and looked into the space where only moments before Dale’s eye had been. Within weeks the second eye went dark from infection.

Dale was born May 24, 1933, in Conrad, Montana. His parents spent almost two years exhausting their savings and some of the savings of others to find a cure for his blindness. After recognizing defeat, they sent him to the Montana School for the Deaf and Blind in Great Falls. He dropped out at seventeen, married, and found the world was not ready for a blind man needing to support his family. Mostly Dale fixed cars out of his garage.

A man from vocational rehabilitation came in August of 1960 to visit him. He said there was a project in DC to recruit blind translators that was sponsored by President Kennedy. The intended result would be to open careers in the federal government for the blind. Was Dale interested?

The man from rehab explained that fifteen blind people who passed a series of tests would participate in a pilot program to learn Russian fluently and translate secret documents. If he passed the two-year program, he would be offered a job with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Dale had to make his mind up in two days since the test was in just a few days in Denver, Colorado. Aggie, his wife, said: “Go for it!”

Dale flew for the first time and did so by himself to Denver. He listened to sounds on the tapes and repeated them back to the testers. When he left Denver, Dale had no idea how he did.

Three weeks later he got the news that he was one of the fifteen. He had to be in DC in two weeks. Aggie said she would join him later after closing the house.

Dale found DC hot and humid, weather he was unaccustomed to. Someone met him at the airport and escorted him to the hotel.

The fifteen blind students were housed in a hotel for the first several days. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare provided a $43,000 grant to pay the expenses incurred by the university for accommodations for them. The Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind was contracted to provide travel training for the newcomers to acquaint them with the District. Dale did not bring a cane with him. The other students had a cane or dog guide and were college students or graduates.

The blind travel instructor who taught him to navigate the city, ride the street cars, and find an apartment was horrified that Dale did not have a cane and no travel experience. In Conrad, Dale rarely walked alone or carried a cane. Someone always offered to pick him up if Aggie could not drive. Dale took Aggie’s arm or the arm of someone when not at home. Now he was in a big city and expected to travel on public transportation on his own!

Three students took an apartment with Dale on the opposite side of Connecticut Avenue from the institute. Connecticut Avenue’s six lanes of traffic terrified Dale. One roommate had a little sight, and Dale thought that guy could lead them back and forth across the street each day. No such luck. His roommates expected Dale to be as independent as they were.

Three instructors at Georgetown from Russia immersed the students in their native language and culture in and out of classes. Not only were they taught to speak Russian; they had classes in Russian history, geography, politics, and spelling. This was to ensure that they knew the words, the phrases, the context in which they were used, and the idioms that make really understanding a language difficult. They even learned to use a Russian typewriter.

For two years they lived, ate, slept, drank, and played in Russian. Due to secrecy they were encouraged to stay within their group, even outside of classes.

Four months after Dale arrived, Aggie came to DC with the children. She and Dale rented a house in Virginia that provided an education on East Coast life. They learned about rats in garbage cans and cockroaches. Taking out the trash became his job. Dale hit the garbage cans with his cane before he opened them to scare the rats that were inside.

Dale found a lady who rode the same bus he did, and she helped him find the right bus and the stop to get off each day. Not confident in his travel skills, he carried a cane but relied on sighted travelers to help him.

Pat, one of the female students in the project, came to their house at night. She played with their kids until bedtime. Then the two studied. After a year, phase one was completed. Five of the participants were excused from the project.

From the beginning, there was no Braille dictionary. Before the project began, officials voiced their concerns over its absence and the lack of Braille in Russian. Money allocated to the project did not cover the expense of transcribing a Braille dictionary. The library for the blind in the Library of Congress had neither the volunteers or expertise on staff to transcribe one. Sighted Georgetown students read the entire 50,000 word English to Russian dictionary onto tape, spelling almost every word so there would be no mistakes. The blind students listened to the tapes and Brailled the dictionary themselves. Dale was put in charge of the entire project.

At the end of the two-year training, the ten remaining students took their final audio tests. The recordings were garbled purposely. Each wrote out in English what was said on the tapes. Only three passed. What do you know: the hick from Montana was hired by the super agency!

The hours of his CIA job were nine to five. Dale took more interest in his family. They toured the city, visited the museums, and went on picnics. He built soap box derby cars with his son.

CIA offices were on the twelfth floor of a building in Arlington. Several interesting situations occurred there in which blindness played a part. Dale was in his office alone. There came a knocking sound from the window. “On the window! No way, I must be hearing things.” Dale thought. “We are on the twelfth floor.” The knocking persisted for several minutes. Then nothing. Dale went back to his work. Later, an angry man burst through the doors.

“Why the hell did you not open the window when I knocked?” the voice of a window washer yelled. Dale had no experience with tall buildings in Montana and never gave a thought about washing windows that high up. He tried to explain that he was blind, but the man walked away in frustration.

Another day, Dale was trapped in an elevator for hours with four others from their section. When the doors opened, Dale thought there would be some sympathy. Rather, the supervisor yelled at them. So many from the unit, with unique training, could have been killed, devastate the unit, and waste the time and money the government spent on them, he angrily proclaimed.

Out of the blue, their unit was disbanded. Dale was offered other jobs in the federal government on the East Coast. Now he had to choose his family or a job. Dale chose his family. He did not get a chance to say goodbye to many of his colleagues, partly because of the secrecy of their project and partly because Aggie was jealous of Pat and the time Dale and Pat spent together.

For the rest of his life, Dale did not speak Russian, except when he tutored a Conrad high school student.

Dale went on to become a county commissioner as well as an artist working in rock, wood, and bronze.

[Peggy Chong says: If you would like to schedule a presentation, contact me at [email protected]. You can read more of my books at https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/24325