LIGHT AT THE TUNNEL END
by Leonard A. Robinson
Reviewed by William P. McCahill, former Executive Secretary
of the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped.
If Dean Acheson was "Present at the Creation" of our post-WW II foreign
policy, Leonard Robinson has provided "Light at the Tunnel End" in illuminating
one aspect of blindness in America during the past forty years.
Despite his own blindness, or perhaps because of it, Robinson sees clearly
in retrospect the events, large and small, leading up to passage of the
Randolph-Sheppard Act and hands down for posterity, a story of how the
Act worked and still works today.
It is good to have his first-hand account, told modestly and with restraint,
of the legislative and administrative history of the blind vending stand
program in the United States, a history which is even now being written in the
halls of Congress as the latest Amendments are working their way through
hearings to passage.
The fact that more than 3,600 blind persons are currently employed in
the operation of vending stands and machines in the Federal-State program is
indisputable testimony to the success of the original idea and to the good
sense of many Americans who have made the program a useful and necessary
part of our economic life.
Upon retirement from the government, which he served with distinction,
Robinson activated his dream of telling the Randolph-Sheppard story and
threw himself into several voluntary pursuits in the field of blindness and the
handicapped. Always the activist, he is well aware that"much more remains
to be done" and, pragmatist that he is (a pragmatist being a successful
dreamer), he reminds us all at the tunnel's end that "in whatever endeavor
the handicapped person finds himself, he is out to prove that ability, not
disability, is what counts." And, thanks to the staying power of folks like
Leonard Robinson, the confidence of the American people in the abilities of
the handicapped has never been higher.
LIGHT
at the tunnel end
by Leonard A. Robinson
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Name
Street Address
City, State and ZIP
Check enclosed for ..... copies.
Order your copies at $6 each from:
Foundation for the Handicapped and Elderly, Inc.
Leonard A. Robinson, President
1209 Burton Street
Silver Spring, Maryland 20910
Leonard A. Robinson Collection - National Federation of the Blind
