Telling Our Story

Telling Our Story

The Braille Monitor

April 1997

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Telling Our Story

by Michael Baillif

From the Editor: Michael Baillif

is President of the Capital City Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind

of the District of Columbia. He is also a past president of the National Association

of Blind Students (NABS). He was invited to address NABS's Mid-Winter Conference

on Saturday, February 1, in Washington, D.C. President Maurer made the following

remarks about Michael in connection with that speech. Here are both President

Maurer's comments and Michael Baillif's recollections of and reflections on

the student division:

Michael Baillif is a member of perhaps the stodgiest profession

in the history of the world. He is a lawyer--you know about lawyers--but even

worse, he is a tax lawyer! He knows about the Internal Revenue Service and the

Internal Revenue Code, the distribution deduction and the Tax Equity and Financial

Responsibility Act of 1986--he knows all about it. If you want something dull,

read about that. It is as dull as you can get! If you have trouble sleeping,

I can recommend a book, written by Michael Baillif. He's a tax lawyer, and he's

good at it, very good. He works for one of the top tax law firms in the United

States.

Using this stodgiest of all knowledge, Michael Baillif helps

to represent companies whose worth is in the billions. In other words, Michael

helps to make tax policy in the courts of the United States of America.

You may think that the tax law is dull, and you are right unless

you have to pay the tax man and with Michael's help you can find a way out of

it. But I'll tell you something; Michael Baillif is not dull. You have seen

that today. He has committed a very fine mind to what we have been talking about

all day: our belief in ourselves and each other and our effort to create a mechanism

to bring enough pressure to bear to compel others to recognize and value our

abilities. He has made something impressive of all this, but all of us have

also had a hand in shaping him. Did Michael do it? Sure he did. Could he have

done what he has without us? No, he could not. Could we have shaped him without

his ability and drive? Not at all. His success is our success; his enthusiasm

is shared with us. For my part, I am proud of Michael Baillif and glad that

he is my colleague in the movement.

"You are an evil generation; you wait for a sign."

"You are a perverse generation; you wait for an answer." "You

are a lost generation; you seek both reason and purpose." These are all

statements that have been made about earlier generations. But they are equally

applicable to us here today. We each come seeking something that we have not

yet found: a sign, a reason, an answer, a purpose.

Today we are beginning, just beginning, to build some bridges

and establish an identity. A few weeks ago I stayed late at a party. Those of

us who remained were sitting around drinking very good Scotch and talking about

philosophy. A friend posed an interesting question. He asked, "What do

you think has been the most important career in the history of the world?"

I responded flippantly, "An attorney, of course."

He said, "No, the storyteller because people's beliefs and actions and

identities are in large part determined by where they fit into a story."

Whether that story revolves around a religion or an ethnicity or a family or

an individual dream, it has tremendous power to shape and mold, to motivate

and to energize.

If I told you there is a story of hidden pain and fearful loneliness,

a story of awesome determination and quiet courage, a story of constant struggle

and ultimate achievement, would you want to hear it? Would you wonder whom it

was about and how it ended? Well, it is my story, and it's your story, and it's

the shared story of all blind people in this room and outside it. It's a story

that's gone on for a long time, that took on new focus when this organization

was formed more than fifty years ago, and that will be concluded by those of

us with the strength and courage and passion to write it.

Let me tell you just a small part of this story as it relates

to what brings us here today, the National Association of Blind Students. For

a time I had a chance to serve as president in this organization that Carlos

now guides so ably and so conscientiously. I can tell you that it was one of

the best experiences of my life. Those of us who formed the leadership in the

National Association of Blind Students, which in my heart will always be just

the Student Division [applause], did two things: we worked hard and we had fun.

We established this national conference of blind students some seven years ago.

We initiated the Monte Carlo Night. We regularly published the Student Slate,

and we went out and organized student chapters in New York, Texas, Oregon, and

Minnesota.

We worked hard and achieved much, but we also had fun. We used

to stay so late in bars that they had to throw us out. We talked of blindness

and life and nothing at all. Today I really don't remember the content of those

conversations, but they were very important at the time. We put on student division

parties that were so good they rarely lasted for more than two hours before

being closed down by hotel security. And we laughed a great deal, most of the

time with one another, occasionally at each other. For as Jane Austen says,

"For what do we live, but to be made sport of by our neighbors and to laugh

at them in our turn?" And the people: they mattered more than anything

else. There were Scott LaBarre and Melody Lindsey, Maria Morais and Tom Ley,

Dan Fry and Melissa Williamson, Jennifer Dunham and Pam Dubel, all of whom are

involved today and doing very upright and respectable things. But I'm sorry

to say that we had so much fun during those days that the very best stories

can never be told.

While I was president, I saw many things. Some things made

me furious: the self-satisfied disability offices that because of their own

pride and power and petty gratification strove to dominate the lives of blind

students and push them into dependency, the apartment owner who refused to rent

a room on a second floor to a blind student because he didn't think she could

climb the stairs, the mobility instructor who threatened to break the long white

cane of a blind student if he ever caught her bringing it to school.

I saw some things that made me want to cry, such as the blind

students who themselves bought into the notions of infirmity and incapacity

that the disability offices were selling, or the students who came to this event

or to a national convention knowing in their hearts that we had what they needed

desperately, but were so overwhelmed and afraid that they went away and never

came back. There were students who went to get residential training and for

the first time found out what it was like to live, but then went home, where

they were viewed as having little more capacity than a rocking chair and sat

in that rocking chair and are still sitting there today.

But I also saw many things that made me laugh: Joanne Wilson

all dressed up and ready to go to Mardi Gras in a tiger costume complete with

flaming orange wig and a tail made from one of Jerry Whittle's old dress socks,

or the time at a National Convention when I got out of bed one morning and bumped

into my roommate, who was standing on his head doing Yoga meditation. Then there

was the Student Division party that had been going on for only half an hour

when security came to close it down, and Melody Lindsey refused to let them

in until they paid a cover charge.

And I saw many things that made me incredibly proud, such as

looking out over the Student Division meeting audience at the 1989 convention

in Denver and realizing that the room was full. The speaker was saying something

important, and people were listening, really listening. There were wonderful

moments when I heard that an event we had sponsored had been important to someone,

had meant something, had helped that person deal with an issue, surmount a hurdle,

or simply feel good, even though none of us had known it at the time. And there

were times like today when I would meet blind students much further along than

I was at their age--at your age. I can see unlimited potential, all that they

and you can be and do and give.

So what is the Student Division to me now? Well, it is everything

about which I have just spoken. It's the story that I have just told about days

gone by. But it is much, much more than that. It's new ideas and energy and

hope. In your hands lies the continuation of our story, and not just at some

vague point in the future, but right now. Today you can go out and organize

and fight for that which is good and right, and you can have an awful lot of

fun doing it. You can become a part of a much larger story, the story that took

on new texture fifty years ago when Dr. tenBroek established this organization

and that has been evolving through the leadership of Dr. Jernigan and President

Maurer. This is a great and powerful story. Yet it is a story the final lines

of which have yet to be written. It is you who will write them. You who are

seniors in high school and sophomores in college and you who have not yet been

exposed to all that this organization is and has to offer: you will tell our

story.

Where do you begin? You begin by becoming involved in whatever

way you can and by accepting the involvement of others on whatever terms they

can offer. This is crucial because, if you don't, if you opt out of our story,

you will be alone and isolated, and not only that, you will deprive the rest

of us of that special something that only you can contribute to the story.

This organization provides the only way for us to tell our

own story. Unless we are all involved and pull together in whatever way we can,

we will allow someone else to tell it for us. We have much too much to say and

too much to do and there is too much fun to be had to allow anyone else to do

it for us.

I've been a part of this story for a very short time, but I

intend to be involved in it for a long while to come. I truly hope that you

will share it with me and with everyone else in this organization here today.

But as Ayn Rand said in The Fountainhead, "Don't work

for my happiness, my sisters and brothers, show me yours. Show me your achievement.

Show me that it is possible, and the knowledge will give me courage for mine."