[PHOTO/CAPTION: Dave Hyde]

[PHOTO/CAPTION: Dave Hyde]

Braille Monitor

January

2005

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I Remember

Alex

by

David Hyde

Dave

Hyde

From the Editor: Dave

Hyde is a frequent contributor to these pages. He is a leader in the Wisconsin

affiliate. Here is a moving profile of a blind man who refused to be conquered

by the blindness system in the first half of the twentieth century, even when

some of its professionals did their best to destroy him. We all owe quiet men

like Alex a profound debt of gratitude. Here is his story:

More than a quarter century

ago I made a promise to tell this story at a time when the protagonist had died

and when, for that matter, all the characters real and imagined had gone to

their rewards. I had to grow into the telling. Maybe now I can do it justice.

I

first met Alex when he was about seventy years old; I was in my early twenties.

He talked to people who weren't there, was afraid of people he didn't know,

and lived in an adult foster home. I didn't know much more than that about him.

My wife and I had just moved to Salem, Oregon, where I was working as a counselor

in a correctional facility. I saw Alex at our local chapter meetings, where

he told us about Braille watches, discount fares on trains and busses, and other

things we already knew. One day he talked to me about something serious. I don't

know why he picked me and my wife to talk to, but he did. He was in an adult

foster home, which provided housing and meals. He told me that he went to the

grocery store with the people who ran the home and bought beef, chicken, and

other food. He was unhappy because all the residents ever ate was soup--never

meat, never fresh vegetables, always soup. He wondered what had happened to

the food he bought.

I

went to visit his social worker, who told me that this old man was, not to put

too fine a point upon it, crazy. He'd spent time in the state hospital for the

mentally ill and therefore had no connection with reality. We in the local chapter

insisted that the claims be investigated anyway, and they were. It turned out

that those running the home were eating very well indeed while the residents

were eating soup. The residents were moved to a better facility.

From

then on Alex, the "crazy old man," was a family friend. He would call

me the Saturday morning after his SSI check arrived and tell me we were going

out to breakfast. Generally this was about 6:30 in the morning. My wife, my

mother, who lived nearby; and I would get into the car and go pick up Alex.

Breakfast was hotcakes at a local restaurant. He insisted on paying. Then it

was on to the grocery store, where he bought coffee and tobacco for us. I finally

started lying to him about the prices because I could never get him to let us

take our turn buying. When in frustration I told him one afternoon that, if

he insisted upon paying, we'd just stop going, he told me that he was old and

was perfectly willing to sit in my living room until I changed my mind.

Over

the years Alex told me his story. His name was Alex Cederov, and he had been

a lieutenant in the Russian navy before the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. He joined

the White Russian army, which supported the Czar. He moved to Alaska in 1922,

where he became a trapper. He joined the large Russian colony there. He and

his partner were in the Alaskan wilderness in 1937 when Alex was hit by a shotgun

blast and blinded. They traveled by sled for about two weeks to get medical

attention. By that time Alex not only was blind but had lost several fingers

and toes to frostbite.

There

wasn't much for blind people in Alaska in the thirties, so Alex moved to Portland,

Oregon. He could live at a blind trade school there and make brooms and mattresses.

The institution accepted both men and women. In the mid forties Alex noticed

that some of the male staff were, as he put it, "misusing" the blind

women. He complained and was told to mind his own business. He then complained

to the governor of the state, who investigated and, according to Alex, found

his allegations to be true. The administrator was removed, and Alex was fired.

Alex

moved to Michigan in about 1949, shortly after the incident at the school. He

applied for work there, and the employer checked his work record. This was the

time of the McCarthy hearings in Congress designed to root out Communists in

the United States. Being branded a Communist or a Communist sympathizer was

the kiss of death in most professions. Alex was labeled a Communist by the institution

in Oregon. Not surprisingly, he did not get the job in Michigan. The label,

he felt, was a slap in the face since he had fought against the Communists in

the Russian Revolution.

Alex

returned to Oregon, where he went back to the blind trade school. Things didn't

go well for him there, and he was eventually placed in the state's mental hospital.

He always believed that the reason was his actions to protect the girls. Nonetheless

he stayed there for more than twenty years. If he was not mentally ill when

he entered, he certainly was when he left. He was paranoid and always believed

that those people from the blind trade school were listening to him, following

him, and out to get him.

Alex died in the early

eighties. I promised him that one day I would tell his story. He had a profound

effect upon me and helped shape my beliefs about blindness. I've stopped asking

whether his story was true, mostly true, or a total fabrication. If he did everything

he said he had done, he was a hero when there weren't very many of us standing

up for our own rights, let alone those of others. If it was a fabrication, what

a wonderful story of altruism, sacrifice, and tragedy! And occasionally, when

the telephone rings early on a Saturday morning, I expect to hear Alex saying,

"Davit, you come pick me up. We go to breakfast."

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