This is good Phil. I was thinking about this subject just the other day remarking that as we change decades, it's hard to find a role model. It's amazing what media wants you to model. Enough said about that.
Vicki
----- Original Message -----
From: Phil Scovell <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 11:01 pm
Subject: Fw: [BLIND-X] There aren't many left; role models, I mean.
>
>
> ----- 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.
As Always, Vicki
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