My Friend Carl

“Are you sure you don’t have eyes in the back of your head,” I often asked him.

Carl is blind—has been since he was 14 and diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa. It’s a rare eye disease that causes the cells in the retina to break down over time. At first, he started losing his peripheral vision so that he couldn’t see things out of the corners of his eyes. By the time he was in college, he no longer had any vision. There is no known cure.

  Carl also is my former boss—President & CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), a national organization serving people with vision loss, and heir to Helen Keller and her archives. I was his VP for Development for 20 years. Now retired, we’ve remained very close friends.

  I had never known a blind person before meeting Carl. When I applied for the job, I was intimidated. He sat behind a large, shiny mahogany desk that once belonged to Helen Keller. There was not a single piece of paper or coffee cup on it. Not even a post-it–only his phone and braille printer. How can I work for someone this neat, I wondered? How can I work for someone who can’t see me?

  Carl didn’t care about the color of my hair, or my skin, of what I wore.  It didn’t matter if I was short or tall, or thin or fat. It became clear that I could not depend on my attributes to win his admiration, as I had with former bosses. It was a transformative experience. One of my younger colleagues anguished over the fact that Carl couldn’t see her pretty face, her long, flowing hair, and shapely body. “How will he know what I look like?” she kept asking me. She couldn’t accept that her feminine amenities were not of any use, not with Carl. Out of desperation, she tried using tears to get the attention that she craved. But he soon was on to her girlish wiles, and she eventually left AFB.

  Carl doesn’t look blind. After losing his sight at 14, he spent years honing his orientation and mobility skills so he could continue to appear as if he had sight. His eyes are perfectly aligned. He looks directly at you. People meeting him for the first time often make the mistake of thinking he has sight, especially if they don’t see his cane. Then, too, he uses the language of sighted people: “I just read a book you might enjoy”—or—"I saw a good movie yesterday”—or—"Come see the view from my office; it’s beautiful.”

  Carl prides himself on being independent and organized: he uses a cane instead of a dog. He commuted from Mahwah, NJ to Manhattan by public transportation, using the Path and then the subway. He knew where everything was—the elevator, the bathroom and his files, and where every staff member sat; he cared deeply about his staff and would work with them to ensure they did the best for AFB and for themselves. He had high expectations, he was demanding, but he was the best. I learned more from Carl than any other boss I’ve ever had, skills that I continue to use today in working with my co-op and local Democratic club.

  For instance, Carl insisted that his Executive Team be on time and well prepared for all our meetings. If he left us a voice message, he expected a response within 24 hours, if only to say they didn’t have an answer yet. He expected us to tell him the truth, no matter how difficult, and had an uncanny way of finding out when we didn’t. He didn’t tolerate brooding. “If you have a problem, come to me. I can’t help you if I don’t know,” he’d say. And our annual performance evaluations were intense; he’d review every accountability in our job descriptions, one by one, and keep referring to the pile of brailed notes he’d been taking that whole year. The evaluations took days for us to prepare for and would last two to three hours. They were grueling and often felt like we were taking the Bar Exam. But, even then, Carl was still the best.

  Given that Carl had some vision up until his college days, he had a good sense of what to wear. He always looked sharp and with it. His suits were tailored and shoes were shined. His brown hair and beard were closely cropped. There was always a handkerchief in his breast pocket. He told us to be frank about his appearance: Was his hair combed? Was his shirt clean? Were his trousers pressed? Were there stains on his tie? Did his socks match? One day we noticed he came in wearing two different shoes; he stayed in his office that day and kept his feet under his desk. Another time we noticed he had a cut on his forehead; he had bumped into the sharp corner of a hallway wall, but bumps were such a normal occurrence for Carl that he didn’t realize he was bleeding. He stayed in his office that day, too, with a big white bandage across his forehead.

  Carl and I were a good team. He taught me how to help guide him—on the street, in the subway or on the bus, on a plane. With his cane in his right hand, he’d grab my right elbow with his left hand and let me gently lead the way. Raising money for AFB brought us to the highest corporate offices in the country: McDonald’s; American Express; Xerox; Johnson & Johnson; and Marriott. In fact, CEO Bill Marriott asked Carl to help mentor his blind son, Stephen, as he struggled to enter the corporate world and follow in his father’s footsteps. Together, we created the Helen Keller Achievement Awards, an annual fundraising event at which we honored those visually impaired celebrities who had set an example for other blind people, including Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Andrea Bocelli and Ronnie Milsap, though our all-time favorite celebrity was Jeopardy’s fully-sighted Alex Trebek for his charitable support of blindness organizations.

  Of most importance, Carl became my mentor. On several occasions, I got itchy and start exploring other job options, and I would discuss them with Carl. My family and friends strongly advised me not to; it wasn’t his business and he might begin to feel vindictive towards me. But I knew Carl: On the contrary, he would consider it an honor to be kept apprised of my professional goals; as my boss, he’d would feel that my success was his success. And I was right.

  There came the time when the job of my dreams became available: Executive Director of the NY Chapter of Juvenile Diabetes. I was one of two candidates for the position and on the morning of my interview with the chapter’s board, Carl called to wish me well. After a two hour interview, I realized we weren’t a good fit. I didn’t like the ultra-conservative board and they didn’t like ultra-liberal me. What had seemed like my dream job now felt like a bad dream. Back at  the office, I knocked at Carl’s door. “I’m here to reinstate my vows to AFB,” I said. He rushed over and gave me a big hug. “This calls for a celebration. Lunch is on me!”

  I retired 12 years ago. Carl, five years later. Once upon a time, we had dreamed of creating our own fundraising business, called A to Z Consulting (A for his last name, and Z for mine), when we retired. It never happened. Carl is now board chair of a blindness organization in New Jersey and has persuaded me to join its Development Committee. “I’m asking you because you know so much about fund-raising,” he said, “but also because it’s a way we can keep working together.” Of course, I said yes!

  We keep in touch regularly. I recently spent an overnight with Carl and his wife, Sue, at their home in Mahwah. I had received an invitation to an event in New Jersey honoring Carl for all his efforts on behalf of visually impaired people and was invited to sit at his table. But I no longer drive at night and declined the invitation. “Oh no you don’t,” Carl called to say, “Come here that afternoon and Sue will drive us to the event together. Then you can come back with us, spend the night, and go home in the morning.” When I left them, they reminded me, as they always do, that I had an open invitation to come again, anytime.

  My most indelible memory of Carl will always be at the Atlanta airport. Walking down a long wide corridor to get from one terminal to another, Carl suddenly asked: “Is it just us?” Yes, I said. “Here, hold my cane,” he said, and with that, ran down the corridor, laughing, and waving his hands in the air, not worrying about who he might bump into. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” he told me when I caught up with him. “Thanks for your help.”

  “You bet,” I said, sounding as if this had been a normal occurrence, and grateful he couldn’t see my tears.