Founder of Recording for Blind saw need 

Vivette Ravel Rifkin, who lives in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, is
president of Educational Tape Recording for the Blind. 
(Bill Konway/Daily Southtown)  

Monday, August 2, 1999




By Kevin Carmody
Staff Writer


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Nearly 40 years ago, Vivette Ravel Rifkin persuaded the University of
Missouri to enroll her blind daughter, Gerelyn, although it required a
promise.
"I told them they would not have to lift a finger to accommodate her
academically," recalls Rifkin, a resident of Chicago's Beverly
neighborhood. "I said that I'd read all her books for her, record them for
her."

Word spread and other blind Missouri students sought Rifkin's help.

Soon her volunteer project mushroomed into Educational Tape Recording for
the Blind, a Chicago-based organization that has served more than 15,000
blind students during the past 35 years by providing recordings of their
textbooks.

As president, Rifkin, now 88, still works 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., six days a week
at the organization's office, coordinating the efforts of about 200
volunteer readers and 30 others who help out at the office and gift shop.
And although she has never accepted a paycheck, Rifkin gets up at 5 a.m. to
make recordings herself and works at home in the evenings on fundraising
projects.

At her family's insistence, she added one paid position, an office manger,
several years ago "because at my age, they thought I should be training
someone else to run things."

Rifkin boasts that her organization provides books-on-tape faster than any
of the other similar organizations in the country, and that's important to
keep blind students from falling behind their classmates.

"If we don't do it quickly, they won't pass," she said. "It might be
different today in that universities now welcome blind students, but these
students have to keep up to graduate.

"I don't do anything less for them than I did for my own daughter."

The recording service costs each student $75 per year, she said. Donations
and sales at the organization's gift shop, 3915 W. 103rd St., cover the
rest of the $200 to $300 it costs annually to serve each pupil.

Rifkin has received about 25 awards for her efforts, most recently an
honorary doctorate from the University of Illinois.

She said she has been able to concentrate on charitable endeavors because
her late husband, Milton, originally a silent movie actor, became such a
successful businessman — as pioneer in plastic bags and inventor of the
upright freezers used in grocery stores.

She grew up in El Paso, Texas, but the family later moved to Denver, where
she met Milton. The couple moved to Chicago and she has lived in the same
house since 1945.

Gerelyn, who lives in suburban Detroit with her husband and three children,
lost her sight while in an incubator as a premature twin. Her twin brother,
Jeremy, is a widely published author and educator and the nation's best
known critic of genetic engineering.

Rifkin says her way of doing things was established at a young age. She
started her first charitable project at age 8, recruiting other girls to
crochet and to raise money for Near East Relief, a Jewish aid group. 

Grown-ups learned that Rifkin was her own boss when, during a civic program
in El Paso honoring the president of Mexico, she refused to do a double
encore of her dance routine. 

"I told them I was tired and I was going home," Rifkin recalled.

She is still strong-willed. But today, she never seems to tire of her
books-on-tape work, even when she's at home.


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