Paul and Joan Flynn

Paul and Joan Flynn

Paul Flynn reads to a group of children.

Paul and Joan Flynn

From the Editor: Paul Flynn is a

rank-and-file member of the Baltimore Chapter. He and his wife Joan recently wrote Mrs.

Jernigan the following letter:

December 18, 1998

Dear Mrs. Jernigan,

Joan and I wish to express our sympathy to you in

your great loss. We are in Dr. Jernigan's debt forever. He was an inspiring and admirable

man and leader of the blind.

I would not have secured my teaching job in the

Baltimore Public School System without Dr. Jernigan's swift, timely, and decisive

intervention on my behalf. In late October of 1983 officials in the hiring division of the

Baltimore School System were vacillating and had been stalling for several weeks, failing

to give me the teaching assignment they had promised. At that point I phoned Dr. Jernigan

and told him about my problem. He immediately called Mayor Schaefer's office. Later that

day he called me and told me to expect a phone call from one of Mayor Schaefer's aides the

following day. I did receive that call, and within a week I received my teaching

appointment at Mergenthaler High School. I taught English at that high school for the next

fourteen years.

I know that I am only one of the many hundreds,

perhaps thousands, who owe their success at least in part to Dr. Jernigan's assistance. He

was one of those rare human beings who actually fulfill their remarkable powers. All of us

will greatly miss him, but his influence is too deeply involved in the Federation, as in

the lives of blind people everywhere, for it ever to die.

Your husband was, I think, a very good and great

man, for whom my wife and I will always be grateful.

Love,

Paul and Joan Flynn