Deborah Kendrick
If there is an individual who personifies the message of the Employment Matters series, it might well be Carl McCoy. McCoy retired from a 40-year career some 28 years ago, and is still working. He can't imagine what life would be like, he says, without some meaningful work to do. It never occurred to him not to work and, in his role as director of the Florida Division of Blind Services, he enjoyed a long and successful career focused on the gainful employment of thousands of blind and low vision individuals. At 93, he jokes that he is becoming famous for being old. Actually, he is so charming, so intelligent, humble, and entertaining, that his age seems more or less irrelevant when you are listening to his recounting of an episode from his own career journey or declaring his view on the significance of employment for blind people.
The Game That Changed His Life
When Carl was in the third grade he was playing a game with other kids that involved pulling the string on a wooden top, aiming for another top in the center of a circle. One day, Carl's top connected successfully with one that had been outfitted with a spring. The result was a flying wooden top with a nail that punctured his eye. It was 1936. The McCoys lived on a farm near Tallahassee where, as he describes it, there was a little bit of everything: chickens, cows, pigs, horses, and plenty of peas and corn and other growing things. The only doctor was miles away and might come days after he was needed. Within a month, the infection that had begun in the injured eye spread to the other, and Carl was totally blind.
He is thankful for the wisdom his parents displayed by sending him to the School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine the following September. Putting a nine-year-old on a train to travel 200 miles alone seems startling today, but Carl was the middle of seven children, and his parents had a farm to run. Kids from throughout Florida were traveling similarly alone, all arriving in Jacksonville for the final trek to the school. He still fondly remembers the kind teenager who took him under her wing, like a big sister, assuring him that everything was going to be all right.
He had to begin third grade again at the school for the blind and was learning to read all over again. Initially, expecting a braille A, B, or C to feel like its print equivalent, reading confused him, but eventually he mastered braille and it would forever remain one of the sturdiest pieces in his toolbox for success.
At the school for deaf and blind children, they did not plan for future careers. Mornings were spent on academics and afternoons on shop. He learned to make doormats, brooms, and mattresses. The deaf kids learned to cut hair, and practiced on all the blind kids. Legendary musician Ray Charles actually went to the same school at the same time, but Carl and Ray never shared a meal or a class. This was the segregated South of the 1930s and 1940s. Even though most students couldn't see color, the institution was divided into a white school and a Black school.
When Carl McCoy graduated in 1946, he had no idea what he could do, but knew he needed to go to college. A scholarship and funding from the agency that he would one day direct, then called the Florida Council for the Blind, added up to enough money to pay his tuition, his room and board, and his readers.
Time to Work
When Carl McCoy earned his bachelor's in economics from the University of Florida, he was eager to get to work. For the next year, he applied and interviewed, and applied and interviewed some more. This was the 1950s. Equal treatment for blind job seekers was not guaranteed by law. Technology that could serve as evidence of a blind person's capability did not exist. McCoy had his intelligence and his amiable manner. And he wasn't getting a job.
"I think a number of those people would have hired me," he says, "if I could have convinced them I could do the job. But I couldn't even convince myself."
Choosing not to work was never in Carl McCoy's lexicon of possibilities. His ego and self-respect would never have considered it. The challenge was finding the job that fit. He worked making box springs?tying the springs in a prescribed manner, and then fastening them to the metal frame. "I wasn't really any good at it," he laughs. So he tried working in a vending stand for a few months. He sold advertising for a radio station.
And then, as suddenly as a Florida rainstorm, he was offered a position at the agency that was helping him look for a job. The Florida Council needed an instructor, and Carl McCoy was soon teaching braille, mobility, and daily living skills to other blind people.
His mobility, he recalls, was always good. It was easy for him to orient himself to new spaces, and to travel from one spot to another without sight. At the school for the blind, kids were not allowed to use canes. As strange as it sounds to our 2020 way of thinking about orientation and mobility, the cane in Carl McCoy's childhood was seen as an insult, a tool for the aged and decrepit.
Fortunately, with so many World War II veterans returning home as young blind men, the power of the cane as a way-finding tool gained recognition. Just before college, Carl and a few other classmates were introduced to this tool, which enhanced his already solid sense of orientation. Now, in his first, job, he was sharing the skills he had honed so well to put his own blindness in perspective: braille, orientation, and personal independence. More importantly, he was on the first rung of his ideal career ladder. Not long afterward, in 1956, he was hired to direct a blind rehabilitation agency in Topeka, Kansas, and reflects that he learned more doing that job for the next nine years than he had learned anywhere else.
When a new facility was opening in Daytona, he returned to Florida to apply. There were two serious candidates. They would be called in alternately for segments of the interview and then return to wait in the same room. Not the way an interview would be done today, but listening to Carl tell the tale, it is easy to imagine the energy and determination that vibrated in that waiting room.
Carl had only a bachelor's degree compared with his competitor's doctorate, but he got the job!
A Career Well Spent
From 1965 to 1978, Carl McCoy was the director of the Florida Council for the Blind, which provided training leading to independence and sometimes employment for blind people. Then, in 1978, he landed the job as director of the Florida Division of Blind Services, the vocational rehabilitation agency whose counselors in 12 offices throughout the state were charged with the responsibility of providing the tools and training necessary to enable blind people to go to work.
While he doesn't remember exact numbers, he says at least a few hundred blind and low vision people joined the ranks of the successfully employed each year. That adds up to thousands during his tenure from 1978–1992, thousands of blind people going to work. When he retired in 1992, the Division of Blind Services celebrated the highest number of successful placements to date.
Formula for Success
He says a Perkins braille writer and a telephone were his primary tools on the job. His secretary and a volunteer spent hours reading aloud to him. He dictated correspondence.
Once or twice a year, he hosted gatherings of all his staff statewide for a few days of meetings and, of course, traveled frequently, by plane or car, to visit the statewide offices for which he was responsible.
Although his agency began purchasing computers for blind job seekers in the 1980s, he himself did not own a computer until he purchased one after retirement in 1992. Today, he uses an iPhone for all his email and messaging needs, and a landline that he uses to satisfy his habit of listening to newspapers and magazines some three to four hours daily on NFB NEWSLINE.
When he attends a convention or other large gathering, it's the slate and stylus that comes out of his pocket when he needs to take a note.
Looking back at his career, he says he felt lucky to have a job that he loved, that he looked forward to doing every day. Besides travel directly related to interacting and supervising staff, he loved his work in advocacy, meetings with legislators both in Florida and in the nation's capitol. He played a role in the passage of numerous laws improving the quality of life for blind Americans, including the Americans with Disabilities Act, the inclusion of highway facilities for the Randolph-Shepard program, and the fine-tuning of rules regarding Social Security for people with disabilities.
He expresses some regret about the way Social Security Disability Income evolved. Too many people, he says, chose to work only long enough to accumulate benefits, and then elected not to work.
The Power of Work
"It always bothered me," McCoy says, "to find a blind person who was capable and who wasn't interested in working." And it still troubles him today. I asked him what advice he would have for a person who is blind or is losing sight regarding the challenge of finding employment. "You're not enjoying life as much as you could," he answered. "Work is good even if it's hard. It gets you out and gives you something to be proud of. It gives you a hell of a lot more dignity."
At 93, Carl McCoy has been officially retired since 1992, longer than some people reading this article have been alive! And yet, he is still working. Since 1969, he has had a side business of owning and managing rental properties. He is still involved with that work today. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic he was quarantined in his apartment in an independent living facility when we spoke, but he was able to allow his bookkeeper and others relevant to his business in through his patio entrance. He still goes to the area in his building where the exercise equipment is located to put in his 30 minutes a day on the stationary bicycle. He spends three to four hours daily on NEWSLINE, and reads plenty of braille books and magazines as well.
Like most of us, his participation in Zoom meetings and conference calls has accelerated during the pandemic, which he enjoys immensely. The pleasure he derives from interacting with others has served him well throughout his career and beyond and has benefited those lucky enough to cross his path.
Employment, his own and that of the thousands of people he has assisted directly and indirectly?has always mattered to Carl McCoy. His example is a shimmering one for the rest of us.
This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.
Related articles:
- Employment Matters: Haben Girma, Accessibility and Inclusion Advocate by Deborah Kendrick
- Petr Kucheryavyy, Senior Manager, Accessibility, Charter Communications by Deborah Kendrick
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