Jim Fernaborg made it in the paper last year.  In celebration of his 50th
birthday, the article is copied below.  For those outside the chicago
area, Jim is one example of how a single person can make a difference in
their community.

kelly

 Copyright 1999, Chicago Tribune

 Headline: BLIND ACTIVIST IS DRIVEN BY VISION OF EQUAL ACCESS FOR THE
           DISABLED

 Date:     January 27, 1999             Section: LINCOLNWOOD/SAUGANASH
 Page:     26                           Edition: NORTH SPORTS FINAL
                                        Length:  1738 words

 Author:
 Adolfo Mendez, Tribune Staff Writer.


 Graphic:
 PHOTO


 Memo:
 SPECIAL TOWN SECTION. Lincolnwood/Sauganash.


 Text:
 In the year 2000, Jim Ferneborg will celebrate two milestones: his 50th
 birthday and the 10th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities
 Act, or ADA.
    The act has been a springboard from which Ferneborg has helped blind
 people find employment and transportation.
 Signed into law in July 1990, ADA prohibits job discrimination on the
 basis of disability. It also requires that renovations to public
 buildings, new construction and public transportation provide access
 for people with disabilities.
    Ferneborg considers these provisions two of the most important in
 allowing people with disabilities to function normally.
    "I have certainly used ADA, both with job placement and advocating
 for people with disabilities when it comes to transportation," he said.
    But he doesn't believe now is the time to think about celebrating.
    "There's still a lot of work to do," said Ferneborg, who lives in
 Sauganash. For example, he wants banks to offer voice-activated
 automated teller machines for blind people and software that can read
 aloud the words on a computer screen.
    Ferneborg is the assistant director of the Blind Service
 Association, a Chicago non-profit organization with more than 400
 volunteers that serves about 1,500 blind people a year.
    The volunteers read mail, college textbooks or any other material to
 blind people who request it. The association also provides material
 recorded on tape. In 1998, the organization helped 30 blind people
 attend college or graduate school with scholarships, Ferneborg said.
    Ferneborg, who is legally blind, considers himself a "stubborn,
 obnoxious activist" on behalf of people with disabilities.
    In addition to his 50-hour workweek at the association, he
 volunteers as co-chairman of the Metra Accessibility Committee, formed
 to make commuter transportation comply with the act.
    He also volunteers as board treasurer of the Progress Center for
 Living, a non-profit organization based in suburban Forest Park that
 serves about 300 people with disabilities a year in suburban Cook
 County.
    Much of his life's work, he said, is helping others understand that
 "people with disabilities don't need custodians or well-meaning
 caretakers. What they need is access to the same things that other
 people have. They need jobs, they need housing, they need
 transportation--access to public facilities, access to entertainment."
    As co-chairman of the Metra committee, he helped negotiate a lawsuit
 settlement in which Metra agreed to spend more than $5 million to
 comply with provisions of the disabilities act. Today, all train lines
 in the Metra system are accessible to riders with disabilities, said
 Frank Malone, a Metra spokesman.
    "I can't tell you how proud we (the committee members) are of that,
 because we had a big hand in it," said Ferneborg, the only blind person
 on the committee.
    Metra provides a rail car on each train to accommodate a wheelchair
 and has altered many of its stations to accommodate people with
 hearing, vision and mobility disabilities.
    One of the original complainants in the suit against Metra is Sharon
 Lamp of Des Plaines. She met Ferneborg about seven years ago through
 his volunteer work on the Metra committee.
    Lamp, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, said
 Ferneborg has helped her better understand the plight of blind people.
    "He helps me be a little bit more aware and sensitive to the needs
 of other people with disabilities," she said.
    Ferneborg "has a lot of skills and a very professional background,"
 she said. "He's a loud, outspoken advocate of disability rights (but)
 in a very professional manner."
    Metra Executive Director Phil Pagoni agreed. "Jim has been a strong
 advocate for the disabled population. He brings a degree of
 reasonableness into the process," Pagoni said.
    Although the committee meetings can get heated, they're never
 argumentative, Pagoni said. "I think Jim brings a sense of humor to the
 table.
    "He also follows the process well, puts out an agenda and makes sure
 it's followed. He's never taken the prerogative of the chair and said,
 `This is what I want. I'm the chairperson.' "
    Ferneborg is as conscientious about his volunteer jobs as he would
 be about a paid position, Lamp said. "I think that's pretty awesome,
 putting that kind of time in it while holding a full-time job."
    But holding a job has not always come easy for Ferneborg, 48. In
 fact, losing a job early in his career prompted him to become active in
 disability issues.
    He was born and grew up in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood on
 the North Side. He credits his parents, immigrants from Sweden, with
 raising him to be self-reliant.
    "I was legally blind from birth," he said. "That didn't really
 prevent me from doing anything, and, as a matter of fact, it was never
 an excuse when I was a kid (for not doing something). It was never a
 crutch. It didn't mean a thing. It was like an inconvenience, but we've
 all got inconveniences, don't we?"
    Ferneborg graduated from North Park Academy in Chicago in 1968 and
 from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1973 with majors in
 history and classical languages.
    "My vision was much better back in college," he said. "I could read.
 I could walk around. And you probably wouldn't know I had a vision
 impairment."
    Finding and holding a job was a different matter.
    "Through my life in the private sector, I lost jobs due to
 discrimination, but this was pre-ADA, and I didn't know about adaptive
 technology," he said. "When I came out of school, I worked largely for
 retailers and insurance companies."
    Ferneborg picked up some business skills working for Evans Inc. in
 the Loop, which he considers his "first really significant job."
    "I worked in their credit department and I was a business manager at
 one of their branch stores for a while. And then I left there in 1979,"
 he said.
    While working at an insurance company, he began to suffer severe
 vision loss, which cost him his job.
    For a year in the late 1980s, Ferneborg remained unemployed as he
 underwent laser surgery.
    "I emerged very much a blind man, functioning as a blind man, not as
 a visually impaired guy who could get by," he said.
    A friend told him the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind could help
 find him a job, and he visited the organization. Two months later, he
 was hired to operate the Lighthouse's job placement program.
    "I worked for them for seven very, very happy years and have the
 greatest respect for them," he said.
    That job was the turning point in his life, he said. "I really found
 out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I knew that after the
 first week I was in there. Vocational rehabilitation was something that
 really charged me up."
    Ferneborg pursued a graduate degree in human services from DePaul
 University in Chicago. After three "very, very tough" years, he
 received a master's degree in 1994. That year he was hired to his
 current position at Blind Service Association.
    "I always feel uncomfortable when somebody comes up and says, in a
 well-meaning way, `Oh, you do such wonderful things at Blind Service
 Association,' " he said. "At best, we try to create an atmosphere with
 services (in which) people can do great things for themselves. Yes, we
 provide reading and recording, but isn't it great that somebody gets a
 law degree and we help that along a little bit?"
    Ferneborg has served on the board of the Progress Center since
 September 1997.
    Diane Coleman, executive director of the center, praises his
 business diplomacy. "What I have appreciated most about him is having
 someone on the board who is a fellow manager of a non-profit
 (organization)," she said. "He's someone who understands the
 practicality of how an organization juggles the complex demands of
 relationships with state government, a volunteer board, staff and
 consumers.
    "I have found his counsel helpful in his work with Progress Center
 because he has a good mix of detail orientation and seeing the big
 picture.
    "Jim brings the specific knowledge and perspective of the blind and
 low-vision community. We need that insight, and we need to ensure that
 our programs are accessible to people with all kinds of disabilities."
    The center is part of a national movement that began during the
 1960s at the University of California, Berkeley, Coleman said. There, a
 group of severely disabled college students, who at first lived in the
 campus hospital, took part in the full academic and social life of the
 campus.
    The program began with one student who had had polio. He and his
 mother in 1962 negotiated the arrangement with university officials for
 him to live in the hospital. By the end of the decade, about a dozen
 disabled students were living in the hospital, and some of them later
 moved into off-campus apartments. A little-used federal fund paid for
 special care the disabled students required.
    In 1975, all the students were moved into special living units. The
 movement grew nationally, in large part because of its philosophy that
 people with disabilities know best what their needs are.
    Ferneborg said Metra officials were wise to involve people with
 disabilities in the process of initiating changes in its rail system.
    "Once again, it goes back to the idea, `You don't have to do for me.
 I'm not an object of charity here. I need access,' " Ferneborg said.
 Such access will eventually level the playing field for people with
 disabilities, he said.
    "Once I have access, I can do your job," he said. "Then I'm
 competition, and when I'm competition, I can never be looked upon again
 as an object of pity or a recipient of charity."
    ----------
    For more information about the Blind Service Association, call
 312-236-0808, or the Progress Center for Living, call 708-209-1500.


 Caption:
 PHOTO: As co-chairman of the Metra Accessibility Committee, Jim
 Ferneborg helped lead efforts to bring Metra trains into compliance
 with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. Tribune photo by
 Gerald West.


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