“I was 23 when I deployed to Vietnam in January of 1968 aboard the World War II-constructed USS Luzerne County, a ship designed to support amphibious operations on both land and sea. One night while on the waters of the Mekong Delta, I had just unloaded ammunition from the ship when a pulley used to load it into storage swung free, striking my face with force and directly in the left eye.

“Dazed, shaken, and alone but not unconscious, I picked myself up the best I could. I knew something was not right when a dim light proved to be too much for my eyes. Despite this grim discovery, I was four months away from the scheduled docking of the ship in Guam. I could do nothing and there was nothing anyone could do for me.

“At the end of those four months, I had lost most of my sight in the left eye due to the onset of glaucoma caused by the pulley blow. I received a medical discharge and returned to my former job at a Ford assembly plant in Kansas City. Unfulfilled at the job and now with a vision for my future that included working with people, I spent time in the retail industry and then worked my way up to a manager position at a restaurant.

“It was at the restaurant that I believed I’d found my niche because I discovered how much I enjoyed relating to people, both those who worked for me as well as my customers on the other side of the counter.

“Unfortunately, in 1983, I began experiencing symptoms of glaucoma in my previously good eye. One day, I realized that I was unable to see a lone customer approaching the counter with a weapon. With the understanding that I could not protect myself or my staff members, I resigned, immensely sad.

“Having accepted that I was now blind, I went to bed one night feeling that there was no real reason to get up again. I woke up and drank water, used the bathroom, and went back to bed thinking ‘Why me?’

“I was tempted to find a way to permanently languish for years in the same situation and mindset, thinking that blindness had become the deal breaker that had stolen both my physical sight and my vision of what was possible. Somehow, I awakened after an epiphany that brought me instead to ‘why not me’ and a new personal mission statement that included a vision of what I could do with all the things I still possessed that blindness could not take away from me.

“Along the way, I discovered BVA, a motivational instrument by which I earned, while totally blind, a graduate degree and several professional positions working for and directly with blinded veterans at the Department of Veterans Affairs and as an authority, teacher, counselor, and effective communicator in the areas of Smart Home Technology, Information Technology, and Guide Dog Handling and Care.”