From the Editor: Cathy Randall is a longtime leader in the National Federation of the Blind of Illinois. Not too long ago, she lost her husband Bob, a partner in all she did including her Federationism. Here is how she tells their beautiful story:
When I was growing up in Quincy, Illinois, no one ever suggested that I was blind. People said I "didn't see very well," and I wore glasses for reading, but the b word was never spoken.
Like many other low-vision kids at that time, I attended what they used to call a "sight-saving class." Children from kindergarten through eighth grade were all taught in the same classroom, with the teacher scampering from one kid to the next. We had some of our classes, such as music, with the mainstream kids.
Apart from touch typing, which I started in sixth grade, I can't say I learned much in the sight-saving classroom. The playground was a different story! That's where I learned to fight. Once a boy started teasing me, calling me Four-Eyes, and I beat the heck out of him. When he begged me to stop, I told him we could be friends as long as he promised never to tease me that way again. He promised. After that we became good friends, and he never broke his word.
I was fully mainstreamed in high school, and that's when I fell in love with literature. Shakespeare really opened the door to learning for me. I had plenty of friends, some I met at school and some who were the children of my parents' friends. It was a happy time for me, and when I graduated I was ready to go away to college.
I enrolled at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois. It was a small coeducational liberal-arts college founded in 1846. The academic work was challenging, and I spent a lot of time studying. But I found plenty of time to have an active social life. One of the fellows I dated occasionally was a tall, shy guy named Bob Randall, who went to Illinois College, a school nearby.
During my junior year I went to Bob and told him, "Bob, will you take me to the Homecoming Dance at McMurray?" He said, "Cathy, I'd love to, but I don't know how to dance." I said, "Fine! I'll teach you." So I went over to his apartment and gave him dancing lessons. As it turned out, we danced together for the next fifty-five years.
Looking back, I sometimes marvel that Bob had the guts to admit that he didn't know how to dance. Even more, I appreciate his complete lack of concern about my blindness. It never was a problem for him at all, even when I lost my remaining vision in my thirties. His mother was a different story. She asked him, "Are you sure you want to get involved with Cathy? That girl can hardly see." Bob told her, "I'm sure." Eventually his mother and I became good friends.
When Bob and I got married, I still had one more semester of college to go. My name on my diploma is Catherine Horn Randall. Bob and I lived in an apartment off campus, and later we bought a house in Jacksonville, where we spent the next fifty-five years. I taught him about literature, and he taught me about birds. Together we went on birding expeditions all over the world. I often think how blessed I have been, that I met a guy with the courage to admit that he didn't know how to dance, and the willingness to let me teach him.