by Catherine Skivers
The leaders of ACB were wise to hire professional writers to write the ACB history. It took several years to assemble, and the resulting document is excellent. If you have not yet read People of Vision, you have missed a great opportunity to learn about a wonderful organization. Work ,began on the CCB history some time ago, but unfortunately, we did not have access to professional writers. Although $1500 was allocated for the purpose of preparing our history, the only money spent to date has been by those of us in the membership who are working on it. We have been blessed with some wonderful help. Much of our material is in braille and has to be put into other formats. Over the years, many articles have been submitted by a number of different people. This has created challenges, since our committee members live all throughout California, and we have not been able to send braille to them to be transcribed.
We are indebted to Lynne Laird, who transcribed into braille the one print document we had: "The 50 Year History of the California Council of the Blind." The cost will be approximately $200.00 but as yet, we are not ready to offer it to everyone.
For a while, I was editor of the "Council Bulletin," which is the forerunner of "The Blind Californian". The last copy I edited was in February, 1959. I have the one remaining braille copy that we are aware of, and my thanks go to Connie Skeen, who has allowed me to read the entire magazine to her; she has then typed it into a format to send to Lynne for transcription. The Bulletin was a bi-monthly publication and was 90 braille pages. We have one more chapter, and the job will be completed. This is an important document because it was written just at the time when one quarter of the delegates of the California Council of the Blind left and eventually formed the Associated Blind of California. This group was instrumental in forming the American Council of the Blind, and was its first California affiliate. This publication contains many articles written by Bob Campbell, George Fogerty, and Catherine Skivers, setting forth the various reasons for their resignations from the CCB. It also has articles delineating the many legislative issues the council had introduced, along with a variety of other interesting articles that impacted the blind in California at that time.
The committee has been very fortunate to have Steve Medelshhn join us. He and I are going to work on a taped format of some information on our history. Some things will be written about me. Steve feels that there is information the blind community should know about my participation in our history. I think I will even tell him about the time when we moved into our new office in Hayward and found a cable to the phone system had been cut. I was distressed to think that, not only had we moved to Hayward from Burbank, but people would be unable to access the California Connection. I spoke to the telephone company and asked if it would be possible to put that line into my home for a week and they did. That's when I found out that people like to call the Connection at 2 or 3 AM or any time of the day and night! My family really didn't appreciate it, and I strongly advise any future presidents not to try it!
Now at the ripe old age of 92, you could say that I am on borrowed time. I'm not sure how much I am going to be able to borrow, so I am concerned about completing the task of writing our history. But with people like Lynne Laird, Connie Skeen, Steve Mendelsohn, Don Queen, Joe Smith, Bernice Kandarian, Roger Petersen, and countless others who have worked throughout the years, I'm confident that we will have enough of the history saved to insure that future generations will know about the Council and how much wonderful work we have done. I just hope that there are enough of you who will support the Council to continue to be important leaders in the blindness community in California and the nation.
If any of you have information that you think should be included that has not been, please forward it to me immediately. My address is 836 Resota St., Hayward, CA 94545.
