Happy Friday,  DVRS Team Supreme! 

In recognition of February being Black History Month, this week’s edition pays special tribute to just a few of the many African Americans that NC DVRS has served or who have served as important team members in our Division’s quest to improve the lives of all North Carolinians with disabilities that request our assistance with empowering them toward a better destiny.      
Most of these success stories come from the chronicles of our archived REACH publications spanning from  1953 through 1972. We will conclude our brief today with a more recent celebration of one of several success stories presented at last year’s NCRA C. Odell Tyndall  Memorial Legislative Breakfast.   Remember to mark your calendars for June 7, 2017 7:00 a.m. for this year’s event.  We will be putting together a program soon and inviting you and our NC Legislators to attend and celebrate your work early that morning in the Legislative Cafeteria,  downtown Raleigh—look for it! 
The first success story featured in this edition comes from the May-June 1954 REACH publication: 

Now….the rest of the story:  Apparently, Clifford, the multi-talented individual he was, applied his talents with lasting zeal as a folk artist in Elkin, NC.    There is a longstanding Clifford Morrison Memorial Art Competition and show and scholarship in his honor, as per these links: 

http://elkintribune.com/news/1642/do-it-for-gladys

https://elkintribune.com/features/community/1931/morrison-art-show-a-success

http://elkintribune.com/news/9089/starmount-student-awarded-morrison-scholarship

September 1, 2017 is the next annual event.

Yet another example of the VR Return on Investment—an investment long ago continues to give dividends as scholarships going on to help educate other young artists!  

Our next amazing success story comes to us from the Nov-Dec 1966: 

The Rest of the Story:  Amazingly,  thanks to historians who had the vision and took the effort to record this oral history,  it does exist!

If you wish to click on the link below, Mr. Hinton tells his story about his accident with the sawmill about 4:50 into the recording here.  He also discusses his rehabilitation of going to school and describes his counselor, and talks about tearing up when he recalls the inspiration he received by others (possibly referencing his counselor).    Class president of his school.  He later majored in Mathematics and Chemistry in college.    The record indicates that he was a Health Services worker, but indicated in the recording that he taught Physics at an institution in Auburn, NY.   Later he learned about prosthetics and orthotics at Duke and then taught about this health science at NYU.  Amazingly, he beat the New York City discriminatory practices against teachers with disabilities—very interesting story, including funny enough-- political maneuvering.   Worth listening to!    Another VR investment paying forward multiples in  returns! 
  
The next story celebrates one of our VR educators in the May-June 1969:

Unfortunately, Mr. Harring is no longer with us, as per below:

Aug. 4, 1927-Feb. 24, 2011
James Lloyd Herring, 83, of 110 Glenn Drive, passed away Thursday, Feb. 24, 2011, at Pitt County Memorial Hospital in Greenville. 


Another more recent success story from the central part of the state, as presented at the 2016 NCRA C. O’Dell Tyndall Memorial Legislative Breakfast:

S. K., a gentleman who received services from the Division tells his story about how DVRS and his rehabilitation counselor Vickie Winters was there for him. It was a time when he could no longer perform his computer IT work until he received assistance with orthopedic physical restoration and therapy services and additional certifications to help him increase his marketable skills in network storage, which was more suitable to suit his physical requirements and in higher demand.   S. K. has since become successfully employed with a major employer and provider of cloud computing services within North Carolina.  Congratulations to S.K. and to Vickie Winters!  Don’t miss the upcoming 2017 event scheduled for June 7, 2017, where you are bound to hear of current success stories presented in person. 

Check back here on our Events page for the announcements and also be on the lookout for email invitations!

We hope this week’s tribute has again provided you yet another expanded perspective on who we are and the worthwhile work we do for all North Carolinians with disabilities who request our hand in elevating them to higher ground.  Further, we hope this may also spark your interest in pursuing the knowledge that history has in store, beckoning for you to discover, just as we have in preparing this brief for your enjoyment. 

Warm regards,
 Phil

Happy Friday Team VR!     

Valentine’s day often summons thoughts of love, (com)passion, chocolates-- and jewelry.  Today’s special edition has most of those elements as presented through the story of two of NC DVR’s past success stories that are inter-related.  If you wish to round this out and enhance your reading pleasure, consider partaking in the pleasure of savoring some chocolate.  One  rehabilitant’s success created a platform to allow re-investing in the success of another.    This individual was also honored by the Governor of North Carolina at some point in this progression.  Another important point is the lasting power that the investment that NC DVRS made in a young gentleman, Lloyd Collier Sr., who at least sent him to Spencer School of Watchmaking in Spencer, NC.  According to the linked article, this school was heavily utilized by NC DVRS at some point in its past.  

Lloyd Collier Sr., whose story is featured below, used the Spark provided by VR to ignite his sparkling legacy in jewelry that continues today as a successful  jewelry store  in Whiteville, NC with $1.8 Million in annual revenue (14 employees). One of those career employees for 56 years was his son,  Lloyd Collier Jr., who recently passed away March 16, 2016. 

We wish to point out that according to the article below,  Lloyd Collier Sr. was a youth who successfully transitioned into employment through effective introduction to VR services—not a new concept at all but something we continually strive to improve! 
Lloyd Collier Sr.’s  story is followed by another great presentation about another individual named Cedric who became employed by Mr. Collier, who had compassion on his fellow rehabilitant and loaned him $500 at some point to become self-sufficient through the establishment of another jewelry operation in Elizabethtown, NC.  I could not determine that this jewelry store remains in business.  Probably transferred ownership years ago. 

Lloyd Collier’s Success Story from REACH July-August 1954 edition: 

Lloyd Collier’s Recognition by Governor Hodges featured in Nov-Dec 1955 REACH Issue: 

The following success story from the March-April 1956 REACH issue is of a gentleman Cedric, who also became self-sufficient as a  benefactor of VR services, then Lloyd’s success and friendship:  VR’s “spark” lights a spreading fire of success. 

This concludes this special Valentine’s edition.  Don’t forget to remember your loved ones, and perhaps renew your love of this profession.  We hope this has provoked some introspection and an important reminder that you/your team and its (com)passion are the true basis of the “VR Spark” that can ignite a legacy of success!  

I later discovered what I believe to be “the rest of the story” which may be the same individual based on description and vocation: 

NOW FOR THE FUN:   Several of you may remember Forrest Teague—long time Eastern Regional Director—he is featured in the following article where CLIENTS from what is now Work Source East voted on “Miss VR” and had the pleasure of crowning.   I believe I remember working with a Phyllis McLeod—do any of you?   Which of you fine VR ladies would clients vote for today based on the criteria within the article? 

More Recent Photos of Staff Enjoying Time Together “it’s good it’s good it’s good”(Clark Giswald and Cousin Eddie/ Mac Britt)  

 The Duck Dynasty Clan from Boone at one of our past NCRA Costume Events: 

Tie Cutting Ceremonies for SECC Fundraising in recent years (Kenny Gibbs, John Marens, and Director Elizabeth Bishop)   2014 

CLIENTS NEED FUN TOO: 

Note the cover and article from the January-February 1972 REACH featuring a new concept:  Wheelchair Basketball!  The sport is very much thriving today and NCRA has worked with a few of these programs in recent years to help them raise funds for equipment.  See Bridge II Sports http://www.bridge2sports.org/ for the latest update and testimonial how sports enhance the lives of individuals with disabilities.  There are many sports such as waterskiing, skydiving, snow boarding/skiing as well as biking, swimming and all other varieties 

FINALLY—OUR “DO YOU REMEMBER?” SECTION for THOSE WHO JUST MIGHT REMEMBER THESE FORMER REHABERS: 

Hal Collins (1972) :  From the Fayetteville Area.  Retired about 10 years ago and served as S.Central Assistant Regional Director under Jim Wade: 

Dennis Crumpler (Rehab Eng Technician) (1972)   I worked side by side with Dennis for about 5 or more years until his retirement.  I credit him for giving me a great welcome to North Carolina and filling me in on intricate details of fine NC Barbeque and NASCAR.  He literally grew up in one of the houses here on Dorothea Dix campus and also grew up with NASCAR when it was pretty much all dirt track.  

I hope you have enjoyed this week’s nod to us as a hard working fun-loving group of people we pride ourselves to be.   

Warm Regards,

Phil Protz 

Happy Carolina Friday!  While doing my Wed evening perusing of the REACH publication library looking for the best material to share with you I, ran across an interesting story that starts with trains and ends with a HUGE gain in NC Vocational Rehabilitation System.  I know of several train fans in the audience (Richard Palmer, VR Engineer (Hickory) and Train Engineer (Spencer), and Mike Lindsay (QDS Winston Salem) and me to name those that immediately come to mind.
 So the story begins with the Virginia-Carolina Railway,  as per Wikipedia, which was an interstate railroad in operating 1887-1977 in southwestern Virginia and northwestern North Carolina. It ran from Abingdon in Washington County, Virginia to Todd in Ashe County, North Carolina. The line charted a complicated course through the mountains of the area, crossing the Blue Ridge not far from Mount Rogers.    I ran across a book that covers this topic and the initial part of the story, “The “Virginia Creeper”: Remembering the Virginia-Carolina Railway,” by Doug McGuinn.   A graphic of the book with a train is shown immediately below:.

For this special edition, I have retyped various portions from this book and the September-October 1955 issue of the REACH  Voc Rehab Services Internal publication and will explain why later from a technical and accessibility standpoint.  This portion of the story is from the book above.
 
“SAM”   One particular day in 1913, between Todd and Fleetwood, the crews set their dynamite and charges in two holes.  When set off, one of the charges fired as planned, but not the other.  After some delay waiting for the second charge to go off and nothing happening, a foreman for the railroad by the name of Sam Cathey went to investigate.  Just as he stopped over the hole, the dynamite discharged, leaving Sam blind and part of his face blown off.  It  was reported that he was blown some sixty feet from the original blast site.
Not one to be dependent on others because of his blindness, Sam set out to make a new life for himself.    He mastered reading Braille and enrolled in the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill.  After much dedication and work, he not only received a law degree, but later went on to become a judge of the City Court in Asheville, N.C.”
 
Retyped from the 1955 REACH issue:
 
“With bowed head, the lone figure of a man standing in a vast pastureland atop a fertile plateau near Asheville, North Carolina, turned his back upon the setting sun to face eastward.  He looked downward to the rolling slopes of the foothills, across the Piedmont sections, in to the wide stretches of the peach belt and outward to the sea.  And looking thus across the great Tarhelia, he saw what no human eye may see.
 
In solemn reverence he stood there, standing before a background of his grazing cattle dwarfed by jagged peaks of the Blue Ridge.  He faced the sky now overcast by a deep shade of fiery red from the last rays of the sun.
 
But this man…blind…could see none of these beautiful aspects of his ranch.  He smiled, stretched his arms outward as if to embrace the entire world and thanked his God.
 
He sensed that cotton-like clouds were passing rapidly overhead.  They reminded him of his memories, recollections of the seven thousand  and more persons to whom he had restored eyesight.  Laughter of children rang like music in the ear of his mind, hundreds of children who have been snatched from long, useless lives of idleness without eyesight.  And there was the gladdening warmth, too, of other mature voices.  These voices belong to one-fifth and more of all blind persons now employed in this United States and who live in North Carolina.  Yes, twenty percent of all employed blind persons in the entire country live in North Carolina.
 
He thought of the North Carolina State Commission for the Blind of which he has been Chairman since 1935.  Then he remembered the Asheville Municipal Court of which he has been judge since 1931.  Reminded of some unfinished business, he walked resolutely toward the outer fringe of the pasture back to the people who love him and call him Sam.
 
Yes—and he loves his people too.  Judge Sam M. Cathey has already become traditional.  To the thousands of visually handicapped citizens of this State, he has become a symbol of a dream come true.  Actually, he lives in the hearts and minds of even those who have not yet met him.   He has searched the innermost, darkest recess  of misfortune among the visually handicapped and has dared defy all who challenge the thought that a blind person is not capable of work and of earning his own living.  Sam has proved that in his giant strides toward his own personal  success.
 
Eyesight was lost to him in 1912 on a construction job when dynamite exploded.  Sam remembers that it took him about three years to adjust to his handicap of blindness before enrolling in the State School for the Blind at Raleigh.  He remembers, too that there was no State Commission for the Blind to assist him in his adjustment.  And worse still, upon his graduation, he found that blind persons were denied admission into the University of North Carolina.  This situation struck the spark.  He resolved then and there to establish precedent.   He would open new trails. By example of accomplishment, he would prove that blindness need not be considered a bar to professional training.
 
First, he broke through opposition at the State University.  He is the first visually handicapped man to graduate from the Institution with Phi Beta Kappa [honor society that originated at the College of William and Mary Dec 5, 1776] honors and a LLB Degree.
 
One of his fellow students at the University recalls that the self-same faculty members who had so reluctantly accepted Sam as a student at the University later came to him for counsel when establishing a system of student government on the campus.  In those days, there was much to be hoped for in the matter of self-discipline of students.  That was nearly thirty-five years ago.  Students of that time can recognize to this day influences of Judge Cathey in the present honor system and student government.
 
This pioneer in work for the blind initiated the first social legislation for the adult  blind in North Carolina.   He found to his amazement that there were no provisions for text books in Braille, a system of fingertip reading for the blind.  He wrote a bill which was enacted into law.  This law provides tuition and expenses of blind students in state colleges and allows additional funds to be spent for reader service.
 
Having thus opened the way for the college training of blind persons in North Carolina, Sam surveyed other general conditions.  Employment opportunities for the blind were nil.  Except for the school for the juvenile blind, there were no organized groups doing anything.  Blind children were being educated  through high school and were being returned home to survive as best they could.  Sam recognized  that money spent educating blind children was well used as far as it went.  But an agency for the adult blind was sorely needed, an agency with the needed funds and skill to see that these children did find remunerative employment and useful citizenship.
 
In 1920, Sam Cathey established his practice of law in Asheville.  During the next three years, he launched what was virtually a one-man campaign, championing the cause of the blind.  His vigorous insistence that blindness is no employment handicap evoked surprise and admiration among citizens of Asheville, who elected him solicitor of the Asheville Municipal Court in 1927.  It was here that Cathey learned to judge human character by the human voice and through analysis of what people say.  Somehow, he has found it possible to penetrate behind the raw, seamy side of life and to plainly see the fabric that is a man himself.  Viewing the needs and aches of the human heart, he has averted what might have been many broken homes.  This insight has enabled him to establish a record in the area of crime prevention.  The people living in Asheville wanted Sam for Judge of the Municipal Court in 1931.  And they have never ceased to want him at the expiration of every four-year-term since.  Those who know him best have come to know him as “Judge.”
 
In  1934, Judge Cathey encouraged a group of citizens from all sections of the State to meet and plan for the creation of a state agency for the adult blind.  These people, representing the civic, fraternal, social, educational and religious organizations of North Carolina, were inspired by this dynamic figure who had so completely defeated the severest of physical handicaps.  In September, 1937, they met at Statesville to organize the North Carolina State Association for the Blind.  The following January, proposed legislation to create a State Commission for the Blind was enacted into law.
 
Soon afterward, J.C.B. Ehringhaus, then Governor of the State, was visited by a group of blind citizens who urged the appointment of Judge Cathey to the Board of the newly created agency for the blind.  At the first meeting of the Board of Directors, Cathey was chosen  by the Board to act as Chairman.  Originally appointed to serve a term of three years, Judge Cathey has been re-appointed by succeeding Governors to serve for four additional five-year terms.  And during the past 19 years he has served the State Commission for the Blind without remuneration and has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the original North Carolina State Association for the Blind.
 
Remembering those dark, bleak days in 1912 immediately following the accident that left him blind, he turned his attention to the need for a social adjustment center for the adult blind.   In 1947, he appeared before the Joint Appropriations Committee of the General Assembly, asking that this provision be made.  At considerable financial sacrifice to himself and with neglect of his law practice, he attended many committee meetings and hearings prior to and after the creation of the first Rehabilitation Canter for the Blind in the United States.  The quivering, sensitive bewilderment of the newly blind is transformed into an asset, the Rehabilitation Center being the gateway to their social and economic independence.
 
This Rehabilitation Center is an indispensable tool in the vocational rehabilitation of the blind.   It has been the means of bringing the level of employed blind persons in North Carolina to such a new “high” that the present twenty per cent of employed blind persons living in the state will be exceeded.  Training methods established under Cathey’s direction at the Rehabilitation center for the Blind have attracted people from all sections of the United States, from Egypt, France, South America, and other countries.
 
Along the way up, Judge Cathey has identified himself with numerous organizations in order to expand his effort and plant seeds of suggestion among as many people in the State as possible.  He is a past President and member of the Asheville Lions Club.  He has come as high as a 32nd –degree Mason.  He has served as exalted  ruler of the Elks.   He is a past Governor of the Moose in North Carolina.  He has served as a member of the Fraternal Order of the Eagles and of the Red Men of the World.  He has contributed much as a member of the Buncombe County and State Bar Associations.
 
Those who have observed his long record of never ending services to his fellow-men, wonder how he has managed to accomplish so much good in so short a time.  But the Judge devotes little time to the past and all that he has done—rather he likes to dream of the many other things to be done so that the blind may have equal opportunities to live, work, and enjoy life.  Some say the forward progress of the blind is impossible but the cattleman of Western North Carolina quickly remember the other things that were impossible but became possible with dogged determination, hard work, and a goal.  He smiles as he muses on the successes of the past and the dreams of the future which will be realized with the continued interest and help of thousands of persons across the great State of North Carolina.

I HOPE this has inspired you to continue your proficiency in first inspiring HOPE to those who need it, then ACTING to change their status in life just as Judge Cathey did for himself and all the individuals who lived their lives more fully realized.

Team,
 
Normally, I would greet your morning with Happy Friday; however this Friday, is not entirely happy in that it is one in which would be most appropriate to pay our respects to Bob Philbeck,  6th director of the NC Division of Vocational Rehabilitation who left this world less than one week ago today.  However, we will not only honor him, but the series of those who have accepted the challenge of providing leadership and direction to this historically rich and effective assembly of dedicated workers who make their mission to improve the lives of North Carolinians with disabilities.
 
I will give a brief synapses of each director, some of which I never had the honor to meet, along with several I have (spanning Claude A. Myer to Tara K. Myers).
 
The story of NC DVRS Directors begins here:

LINDA S. HARRINGTON (2007-2013) Linda Harrington lead the Division during difficult economic times and had a strong commitment to the Division’s performance and partnership with stakeholders and community rehabilitation programs.   She helped direct some restructuring of sections within the central office, lead the Division during the period when several innovative practices were explored with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a period of intense partnership.   The Dual Customer Approach of serving both consumers and employers with equal commitment was a respectable accomplishment during her era.  Milestone reimbursement system that is utilized today as a performance-enhancing measure was implemented under her leadership.  Linda had high performance expectations and the Division responded accordingly during this era.   Finally, under her leadership the Division began the implementation of the BEAM case management system, which replaced BEAM.

And they thought they were in a healthcare cost crisis then (1953)…. 

From 1972 Edition: 

This Gentleman George Parrish worked at the State Office when I was here and retired at least  10 years ago. 

This concludes this week’s Fun Friday edition.  Hope you enjoyed.  Should have some more familiar faces next week.    Hope to see many of you at this year’s conference next week.   

I was impressed to hear from Barbara Garren, of the Hickory Unit who indicated that she attended the 1972 NCRA conference and remembers the banjo pickin’ and other events featured in last week’s photos!   Barbara apparently is one of our VR legends!! 
Remember as Carly Simon says in one of her songs “THESE ARE THE GOOD OLE DAYS!”