Making It Count

Making It Count

Following the memorial service, Barbara Walker

reaches down to touch the roses on Dr. Jernigan's grave,

Making It Count

by Barbara Walker

From the Editor: Barbara Walker is

President of the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults. Here is the eloquent

and moving tribute she paid to Dr. Jernigan at the December 5 memorial service:

Somewhere in our National Center for the Blind, I

once helped to secure a nail. I don't know exactly where it is or even if, in the course

of remodeling, it's still there. But the lessons of that nail will always be a part of the

building of my life. My instructor was Dr. Kenneth Jernigan.

I believe the year was 1979. The occasion was a

meeting of the American Brotherhood for the Blind, now the American Action Fund for Blind

Children and Adults. The place was an old run-down building at 1800 Johnson Street in

Baltimore.

We gathered in an enormous, echo-y room, where we

were given the opportunity to nail down a section of floor covering. Some on the Board

eagerly accepted the hammer and nails Dr. Jernigan offered and went immediately to work.

As he handed me a nail (the biggest one I had

ever seen), Dr. Jernigan quietly asked me if I had ever driven one. Embarrassed and a bit

apprehensive, I said "No."

With irresistible enthusiasm he drew me into the

process of building. Neither the nail itself nor the driving of it was insignificant to

him. He showed me how to choose where to place it, taking into consideration its function

and its proximity to other nails. He then invited me to observe the placement of his hands

as he held the nail firmly upright while tapping it gently, saying that it was important

not only to get it started straight but also to hold it steady until its direction was

established and it was solidly grounded. After that, it was a matter of rhythm,

coordination, and confirmation of the nail's position and progress. This he accomplished

by touching the head of the nail between hammer strokes.

When he handed me the hammer, there was still

room for the nail to bend if I hit it wrong, but it had a good straight start. My first

taps were tentative. The nail didn't bend, but neither did it progress. Dr. Jernigan

pointed out that, even if you're doing the right thing, if you do it without conviction,

it's all for naught. "Make it count!" he urged. "Make it count!"

My next swing of the hammer was both true and

convincing. The nail went deeper. When I hesitated between swings, Dr. Jernigan said the

job would be done more quickly and with less chance of error if I just got into the rhythm

and drove the nail home.

He was right. As I concentrated on the goal,

bringing my whole self into synchronizing the components, most of my swings were

productive, and the nail went down, resting at last flush with the flooring. When, upon

completion, Dr. Jernigan voiced his approval, I felt at once proud of having made a small

contribution to our building and awed by the impact of the wise counsel I had just

received from this master builder.

As if reading my thoughts, Dr. Jernigan

proclaimed, intermittently slapping a nearby pillar for emphasis, that each of us had now

contributed to the structure of the National Center for the Blind. He hoped we felt proud

of our investment and personally responsible for maintaining and improving upon it. I did

and still do.

As I reflect on that moment with Dr. Jernigan, I

recall many similar lessons in building within the context of Action Fund business. Mostly

they have to do, not with nails, but with people's lives. For just as he took, more than

once in his lifetime, shabby and dilapidated structures and dreamed them into grand and

functional facilities, so too did he take broken and dispirited human beings and love them

into independent and fulfilled people.

Dr. Jernigan taught us, in all we do, to be

builders. Sometimes we build with intangibles—hope, encouragement, or truth about

blindness. Sometimes we build with things—grants, equipment, or books in Braille. But

whatever the setting, whatever the tools, our job is, as it was for me the day I learned

to drive a nail, to answer Dr. Jernigan's challenge and "make it count!"