Awww, come on, Sandy, you already knew that.  Ha!

earlier, Sandra Scovell, wrote:
>I guess you learn something every day, thank you Philip.
>
>Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Jan 14, 2015, at 11:21 PM, Phil Scovell 
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Phil Scovell" 
> <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 11:17 PM
> > Subject: [BLIND-X] There aren't many left; role models, I mean.
> >
> >
> > I saw men, as I grew up as a youngster in Des Moines Iowa and 
> later in Omaha Nebraska, whom I admired.  I often hid just out of 
> site behind bookshelves as I listened to the men in our living room 
> over to our house, with their families for Thanksgiving or 
> Christmas, discussing the weather, farming, hunting, fishing, 
> building houses, fixing automobiles, guns, and even talking about 
> God and the Bible.  I would lay on the floor, one ear cocked toward 
> the living room and think to myself, "I hope I can do that some 
> day. You see, in the early and mid 1950s, children were taught to 
> only be seen and not heard when other adults were around.  My Uncle 
> Fred, for example, is one of my role models, a hero to me actually, 
> because he was 17 years old when his father, a Kansas farmer, died 
> an early death.  Two months later, my dad was born without knowing 
> he was fatherless.  There were now 5 children in the Scovell family 
> and Uncle Fred was the oldest.  He rode a horse 3 miles to school 
> but his horse ride totaled 10 miles one way and 10 miles 
> back.  Why?  Uncle Fred had a seven mile trap line which he had to 
> check first before going to school and once again on the way 
> home.  The pelts of various animals brought as much as a dollar and 
> a half and the family needed every penny since Uncle Fred also was 
> responsible for, not only the farm, but the raising of the 
> children.  He took my dad to the circus whenever it was in town, 
> dad was 5 years old the first time his big brother took him to his 
> first circus, and he taught my dad to hunt and fish and to farm and 
> how to work.  Strangely enough, my Uncle Fred taught me many of 
> those same things because my father, Uncle Fred's baby brother, 
> died when I was 11 years old.  So I got to go hunting, fishing, and 
> even went to sports shows and the like with my Uncle Fred just as 
> my father had when he was young. Uncle Fred was short, nearly died 
> of colon cancer when he was 65, but when he was 82 years young, he 
> called me up on the phone from Wichita and said, "Is that offer 
> still open, Phil?"  I said, "You mean the one about you moving and 
> living with me and my wife and our children in your later years?" 
> He said that's what he was talking about.  I said, "Come on, Uncle 
> Fred, we've got the room."  So he sold the small 2-bedroom house he 
> built with his own hands after he retired and recovered from the 
> cancer, packed up all his things  in a 2-wheel trailer he also had 
> built by himself, and drove to Denver and moved in with us.  He 
> died a couple of months before he turned 92; outliving all his 
> other brothers and sisters.  So we got him for nearly the last 10 
> years of his life.  I was in my early thirties by this time but 
> Uncle Fred did all the yard work by choice, spent his days in our 
> double car garage building things, putting up fencing around our 
> property, and having my three young children running in and out of 
> his 2-bedroom full sized apartment we had for him.  I felt 
> uncomfortable at first, Uncle Fred living in the basement, walking 
> up and down the stairs many times a day at his age, and finally 
> asked him how he liked living in the remodeled basement as he sat 
> eating and taking his lunch and supper meals with me and my 
> family.  He said, and I can hear his voice now, "Why, Phil, that 
> place is the nicest place I have ever lived."  I told him I was 
> sorry he had to go up and down the stairs all the time, and he 
> said, "Why, think nothing of it.  I don't mind atall.  It's no 
> bother so don't you go to worrying about that."  Even in my 
> thirties, I learned more about home upkeep, repair fencing, 
> building gates, making bookshelves, and working with my hands than 
> I did the few short years I had with my own dad.  In Fact, since I 
> am a ham operator, I put up my first tower with my Uncle doing all 
> the ground work and even showing me better ways of how to do the 
> tower installation since he built bridges in his youth for the 
> county.  I said all of this just to say, Uncle Fred was one of my 
> role models.  Now, shifting gears, I've had other adult men role 
> models such as my dad, who was like God to me when I was little, 
> and other men in their late seventies and early eighties that were 
> the kindest, and most Godly, men I ever knew before my 
> blindness.  Over the years, 50 plus years now, of my blindness, 
> role models seemed harder to find but find some I did and I'm 
> thankful for what I learned just listening to them talk about their 
> lives, jobs they had, and places they had been. Making one more 
> step now, I'm to the purpose of this message.  Over this past 
> Christmas holiday, I was listening to lots of college and 
> professional football games on the radio.  One Saturday afternoon, 
> between back to back games, ESPN, the sports network, played a 
> story about a reporter who was doing a short biography of a young 
> teenage girl.  I think the series is called Sport Life.  She began 
> losing her sight as a very young child and by her teens, she had to 
> get a guide dog because she simply had light perception 
> remaining.  She still ran track and field events and won more times 
> than not.  This intrigued me because just before I went blind from 
> detached retinas, I was into track and field.  Even at the school 
> for the blind, I not only joined the wrestling team right away at 
> age 12, but I participated in all types of track and field events 
> we had at the school. One year, we had a full track and field 
> competition with running events, standing high jumping, throwing 
> events, and too many other events to mention in one post.  I did 
> not know it was competition but rather just thought it was 
> something we did in gym class the last month of school since the 
> wrestling season was over.  We had a full school meeting in the 
> auditorium of the school a couple of days before summer vacation 
> began and various awards and citations were handed out.  This was 
> for music, drama, academics, and many other things that all the 
> teachers voted on.  I still had no idea what was going to happen 
> next.  My name was called.  I flushed.  The coach was handing out 
> awards.  He said, "Phil, that's you.  Please come up to the 
> front."  I did so, not knowing what he was going to say or do.  He 
> gave me a certificate for winning the highest score in track and 
> field events for that year.  I hadn't even gone to the state 
> wrestling tournament and here they were giving me an athletic award 
> for being number one on the field.  I was shocked because I would 
> have tried harder if I had known it was a competition in the first 
> place.  Yet, what I am talking about has nothing to do with me 
> personally but it is related to my track and field interests and 
> the blind girl who was into track and field after losing her site 
> which they were interviewing on this sports program.  What really 
> caught my attention was she competed in a state competition in 
> Texas in her teens as a pole vaulter.  Strangely enough, before I 
> lost my sight, I saw a pole vaulting track and field competition on 
> TV and these guys were pole vaulting 14 and 15 feet into the 
> air.  I wanted to try it right away.  In case you are reading this 
> and don't know what pole vaulting is, you stand about 80 feet away 
> from two poles, which are vertical, placed several feet apart, , 
> and on top, or near the top, his a place with two hooks upon which 
> a horizontal bar is placed precariously.  You use a fiberglass pole 
> which is 12 or 13 feet long, depending upon how high you plan to 
> jump, with a grip on the end you hold and you run for the center of 
> the top vertical poles.  The purpose is to jam your pole into a 
> block set in the ground that will stop forward movement of your 
> fiberglass pole and will then hoist your entire body mass into the 
> air and up and over the top bar without tipping it off the hooks, 
> or racks, holding the horizontal bar barely in place.  Yes, your 
> fiberglass pole, as it hits the stationary block, bens almost in 
> half as you swing your feet and body completely off the ground into 
> the air to levels from 10 feet and higher for high school events, 
> 12 feet and higher for college, and even 20 feet records have been 
> won, and broken, for clearing the bar in Olympic games.  Remember, 
> you cannot knock the horizontal bar off its perch and however high 
> you go into the air,, is how far you fall back to the sandy ground 
> at the base of the pole vaulting structure.  What might that feel 
> like; the landing, I mean?  Well, when I was 9 and 10 years old, we 
> went to a public swimming pool several times each summer and 
> especially on hot days. It had a three level diving tower over the 
> 12 foot deep end of this huge, double sized, Olympic pool.  You 
> took stair steps up to either the 17 foot level, the 27 foot level, 
> or the highest level, which was 33 feet above the water.  I jumped 
> all the time, or dove, from the 17 foot level but when I turned 10 
> years of age, I thought I'd try the 27 foot level.  The lowest 
> level was great; no problem.  Going 10 feet higher and diving from 
> the 27 foot platform turned out to be nothing like I imagined.  I 
> dove, head first , my arms outstretched in front of me, and hit the 
> water.  I heard myself grown audibly, underwater, at how hard the 
> water was to my body.  It was like falling 10 feet out of a tree 
> and hitting the ground.  It slammed my whole body so hard, I was 
> never going to try that again but I did and it was just as 
> hard.  Now try and imagine Olympic high divers jumping and doing 
> roles and flips all the way down from well over 100 feet and 
> landing in the water feet first.  I'm sorry; I cannot imagine what 
> that must feel like.  I didn't even flip; I just did a simple head 
> first dive off the 27 foot tower level.  Now go back and think 
> about being blind and falling to the ground from 12 feet, or a 
> sighted pole vaulter in the Olympics falling from just over 20 
> feet?  Wow!  Think of this, too.  Points are taken off, or added, 
> for style, time, the way you use your pole in twisting yourself up 
> and over the bar, and even how you fall and land on the 
> ground.  Yep, when I could see, I wanted to do it.  After going 
> blind, I forgot about it.  Last Christmas, just a few weeks ago, 
> this girl I mention, her name is Charlotte Brown, if I heard it 
> right, has set local Texas records of just over 12 feet and took 
> fourth place in a track and field pole vaulting event.  When that 
> program was over, I turned down the radio and sat and thought about 
> this young lady.  Her guy dog stood with her at the starting line 
> and I believe ran free along side her as she ran the 80 feet down 
> the lane to the stopping ground box, which you have to hit 
> perfectly, where her tip of her pole jams into where they had her 
> coach yelling her name and an electronic beeper guiding her 
> directly to the short stationary box on the ground.  I'm getting 
> goose bumps right now just retelling the story as I did when I was 
> listening to this young lady's life.  When it was over, I said out 
> loud, "Thank God. There's at least one role model for me as a blind 
> person."  Now, don't get me wrong.  I've met many blind men, 
> especially when I was in my twenties, whom I not only admired but 
> they encourage me to press onward and upward and their influence on 
> my blindness as a young man, made a big difference.  In fact, they 
> made all the difference in the world to me.  I'm saying, they were 
> my role models, too, just like men I saw as a sighted kid at the 
> age of ten.  In fact, over these many years, I have some blind 
> women I consider role models to me and my wife is one of them.  She 
> impressed me so much when we met, I was 18 and she was 20, I 
> married her two years later and have been married to her now for 43 
> years as of this month of January.  Don't tell her this but she 
> still amazes me to this day.  Anyhow, for any of you out there, 
> regardless of your age, there are role models to emulate and I 
> encourage you to keep looking for role models wherever you go.
> >
> > Phil.