Pay Day One Day

On a trip to the Philippines, I stayed in the city of Manila at the famous Philippine Plaza Hotel. (The best thing I remember about this hotel was the wonderful Black Forest cake served there.) This hotel was right down the street from the famous location of Muhammad Ali's famous fight “Thrilla in Manila.” As was my daily practice I would take a walk where safe, down one street, cross over and come back on the other side. Since Imelda Marcos was governor there (you'll remember all her shoes) and since she owned the property including the hotel on this street, it was safe. The university and the university hospital was located nearby and on this street, I met one of the most interesting young men I will ever have the chance to meet on this earth. His father or grandfather had been an American soldier in the Philippines during WWII and he was anxious to meet an American and practice his English. It turns out he was a doctor at the nearby university hospital. So he was delighted to make my acquaintance and he wanted me to go and see a patient who was the most unusual patient any person on earth will ever observe. To this day, I still have hesitation in even discussing this young woman of seventeen, who was the sickest person I have ever seen. I had visited Bangkok, Thailand, and I knew the sexual exploitation which went on there. She had been put on the streets as a prostitute at the age of twelve, had escaped her captures and in some way had arrived in the Philippines, where again, she was on the streets of Manila as a prostitute. At age seventeen, she had been brought into this hospital almost dead. According to all blood reports, according to the condition to her skin and appearance, she was infected with about every disease you could find in a Larsner's Textbook of Pathology. He wanted me to look at her eyes which were a globule of puss infection. She was barely alive and they were doing whatever they could with antibiotics to keep her alive. But I thought of our blessed Lord when he hung on the cross, having taken on Himself, all the diseases of the world, so pitiful was His condition that even His Father in glory pulled down the curtain of total darkness to hide Him from the world. (There were three hours of total darkness upon the earth. Mark 15:33) Remember, our blessed Lord on Calvary's hill, died not only for the sins of the world but for the healing of all the diseases of the world. (Isaiah 52) This girl's name was Certi and if she had been able to understand this blind man's English, I would have told her that she had available to her a Savior who could heal her of all her diseases and forgive her for all her sins, just as with the rest of us. “Whosoever will may come.” Romans 2:11

Attached, you will find a letter from Sharon Lovering, Editor of the American Council for the Blind. For the past 40+ years, as a totally blind 100% disabled service-connected veteran I have been an activist for the disabled and an advocate for veterans who, through no fault of their own, have been chosen by God, to live a life of disability with all the agony of such disability for which most of these organizations have no concern or empathy whatsoever. In addition to the American Council for the Blind, American Foundation for the Blind, Association For Education And Rehabilitation Of The Blind And Visually Impaired, and in each state, a state-tax-supported commission for the blind, such as the NC Commission for the Blind, for these forty years, I have dictated thousands of pages which a few have chosen to print coming from a blind man who has traveled the world and has been successful as an entrepreneur and philanthropist.

At seventy-nine, I will give anyone $1000 who can show that any of these commissions who are supposed to HELP blind people, has ever done one thing for this totally blind veteran. Someone from the NC Commission of the Blind came by my house one time, simply because, as a regular national caller to radio talk shows, I had spoken of the radios available to read the newspaper to blind people. Although there have been many newspaper and magazine articles of this blind veteran's exploits (voted one of the five most fascinating men in eastern NC), she, Becky Kozia, maintained that she had never heard of me. She could not give me the number of blind people in the county in which I live. (I learned from the Senator that the number is 576.) I do not know how these people get these high paying government and private financed jobs, but like so many “do gooder” groups, I think it is just an easy way of life for them.

I rented space in one of my office buildings to some of these groups, and it never ceased to amaze me how they talked about the laziness of one another. One group, The Audubon Society, had several males working there and it was contended that they spent all their time on the golf course. I can prove this, however, when they moved out, their offices were so despicable that after many years of renting property, it was necessary to totally renovate the area, including new carpet which they had ruined.

One of my best friends, Chief Congressional Aide, originally from Grantham (Margaret Thatcher of Grantham, England, he from Grantham, North Carolina) said, “Most bureaucrats and social workers spend their days just going from buffet to cocktail party and over again.”

I never had one minute of rehabilitation from the Veteran's or anyone else. I made a complaint to the chief of staff VA, Durham, NC, that, like the Duke Hospital directly across the street from the VA Hospital, volunteers could be utilized and appreciated to assist blind veterans in getting around the maze of clinics at this large hospital. He called me later, after getting the advice, and told me that they did not need my advice even though I was a medical officer in the army, but they were “just waiting for me to die.”

My worst experience as a patient, I was placed in the Duke Eye Center (second floor, corner room), since the VA felt I would get better care at Duke. This was during the Vietnam War (I was a Korean veteran also). Students from Duke and UNCCH were demonstrating against the war around the VA Hospital and a black nurse one morning, me, laying in a hospital bed trying to recover from many eye surgeries, spat on me, and told me how much she despised veterans. The heartbreak was that my mother, after a long trip, arrived shortly thereafter, but before my parents could get me up and out of that hospital, it was either Dr. Anderson or Dr. Allingham who assured them that nothing like that would happen again. This is the appreciation that veterans in most places receive. Think of the 126,000 who are buried on foreign soil. (I have stood in the cemetery in the Philippines where 18,000 are buried, and was at the 25th Normandy Memorial where 9,000 are buried; to say nothing of my being in Arlington, where 250,000 are buried.)

A friend, who died three years ago, Cathryn Vasalou, born blind, attended the NC School for the Blind and East Carolina University. She was an only child, worked as a typist at a local hospital while caring for her parents until their death. She told me that not one of these state and national organizations had ever done one thing for her AS A BLIND PERSON. I talked with Cathryn many times, met her once, because she had never ridden in a Cadillac and although living just five miles from the ocean, had never been and heard the sound of the ocean. My driver and I took her in my Cadillac to my house at the ocean where she could have this experience. When she died of cancer, she had asked the funeral home just to take her body to the cemetery and bury her. No services...nothing. She had told me that the world had left her alone in her isolation of darkness, and so, it would end that way.

Servitude, attitude, on any level is of little concern anymore. We have forgotten that God blesses those who help others. These editors and foundation “big wheels” who should love the opportunity to demonstrate God's blessings with their own lives, think only of membership profits and political prophets. I'm sure Kozia is an Obama abomination, promises and pretending.

I do not have a refrigerator that would hold the money that has been stolen from me from sighted people taking advantage of my blindness. It was necessary for me to fire one of my several assistants yesterday, but, I have much more respect for a thief who needs to steal than a highly paid bureaucrat or politician who is taking tax dollars and dollars given by concerned people to live like the “rich and famous”.

Attached emails of interest:

Yes, I’ve been receiving them for quite some time now. Perhaps I’m subscribed as info@acb.org, or maybe editor@acb.org. Both of those along with slovering@acb.org come to the same box. Whichever it is, I want to be removed.
Sharon Lovering, Editor
American Council of the Blind

And some comments regarding this.....

Wow! I guess you don't fit into their agenda! My husband and 37 year old daughter are both paraplegic...totally different reasons and incidents. There will always be those who want to "help" but only on their terms.
Kathy

Dr. Morris,

We had a brief telephone conversation back in June. I have been enjoying your e-mail messages ever since. I keep you in my prayers.

I understand your frustrations with the ACB. I don't know if you've written to the National Federation of the Blind, but believe you would likely have the same problem with their organization.

I have chosen not to become a member of either group because of my work with the Southern Baptist Convention on behalf of blind and visually impaired church members. I don't believe I should be involved in a politically active blind organization. The two groups seldom, if ever, agree on anything. If they did agree in general, they'd still disagree on some sticking point and become a hindrance to progress.


The Lord bless you,

Charles