This Week's Story

If I was born blind, would I be tangled in a foxhole mentality or could the foxhole be eclipsed?

This Week’s Story relives American history and the Bible through brief inspiring stories presented on mp3 audio recordings and text for reading.

The Foxhole Eclipse, part two

Brian Blair was born blind. Those five words send something like an electric shock through me. What would I do if I were born blind? Those five words remind me of when I took my bicycle across a country pasture for cows. I did it to avoid bicycling on a country road where dogs would chase me. I avoided the dogs, but not a wire fence. My bicycle got tangled in it. Uh! I struggled and struggled to get it disentangled! I succeeded!

Then I reached the back of a barn where the ground was deep in manure. As I walked my feet sunk into the manure until it covered my shoes and ankles. Somehow, that stinky walk was almost an adventure after getting my bicycle free.

If I was born blind, would I be tangled in a foxhole mentality or could the foxhole be eclipsed? Could it be literally covered by a sense of: I have possibilities. I can ride a bike. I can read. I have friends. I can graduate from college. I have a family who love me. God loves me. He has been good to me.

Could I succeed or would I be a victim? Would my folks protect me

from outsiders’ stares? Would my happiest dream be to hide in a dry foxhole or would I risk climbing out of it? Could I be curious and explore the world? Could I be comfortable around people?

Brian escaped being trapped in a foxhole mentality. Currently, he is working as program director and radio announcer at KCAM in Glennallen, Alaska. He is multi-skilled in the field of radio broadcasting and has played the piano well for many years. He is married and has four adult children.

Brian told me, “I had practically a normal childhood. The Lord gave my mother wisdom. She allowed me to learn to be self-reliant. She did not coddle me. My feeling was: Yes, I am blind, but I can live a normal life in spite of it.”

Brian had been living with his mother and grandparents. He had no siblings or father. His family loved him. His grandpa was like a father to him.

He attended kindergarten at a public school in Dayton, Ohio. The teacher and students were nice to him, but there was no understanding of how to teach him. When the students were working, he was sitting in a corner with headphones on.

It was decided that he would go to the Ohio State School for the Blind in Columbus, Ohio. It was the United States’s first public school for the visually impaired. There Brian would redo kindergarten since he had not been taught to use Braille. He learned quickly, doing well in all the academic education.

He had to live at school in a dorm or cottage. On weekends he went home. The first year he was homesick. Not surprising, since he was the age of a first grader!

Next week we will return to Brian Blair’s journey.

This is Barbara Steiner inviting you to find stories from American history and culture, and classical Bible stories at thisweeksstory.com.

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