Re: A personal anniversary
- From: "Peggy Kern" <kernsac@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:12:33 -0700
I first read about the Optacon in the mid-70's, and got real excited. TSI
sent me literature on it, and I daydreamed about it constantly. Then I had
the opportunity to see an Optacon, which I think must have been
malfunctioning or something, because I couldn't feel anything on it. I was
devastated. A few years later when Rehab was helping me find a job, they
mentioned the Optacon, and they had a TSI rep come up and give me a demo.
This Optacon worked just like I'd dreamed, and I wanted to steal it and keep
it. <grin> I went for training in January of 1979, and have been using an
Optacon ever since. I don't necessarily use it every day, but pretty close
to it. I don't know how blind people survive without it, when they want to
know what something is, or when they need to put something in a window
envelope the right way, or whatever. I love my Optacon.
Peggy
http://kernsac.livejournal.com/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pat Byrne" <k9jau@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 5:48 PM
Subject: A personal anniversary
>I saw my first Optacon at a "blind convention" in Chicago, probably
> in 1972 or '73. I read a few letters and decided I wanted one!!
> I got a bank loan and bought it; I talked my boss into paying for the
> training at TSI. That was in July the year before Nixon
> resigned. It was all over the news and I remember a few politically
> WAY incorrect statements about him and the horse he rode in on!! (I
> think made by me)!!
> That was probably 1974, and I have used my Optacon every day (almost)
> ever since. My original Optacon, which I still own, was the first
> R1C to come off the production line. Richard Oehm keeps that one and
> another I have since acquired going, and going quite well.
> I had forgotten about the Optacon and Social Security. Some time
> after I was trained, I was talking to someone at TSI, probably Gayle
> Brugler. She told me they were talking with Social Security, and it
> turns out, one of the people from S S was Jim Linsley, someone I had
> shared a locker with all through high school. My name somehow came
> up and somehow Jim thought I was competent so an old friendship might
> have influenced the Optacon at Social Security. Jim was across the
> country from Chicago where we went to high school, and I have never
> talked with him about this.
> Thanks a lot for the memories.
> And as so many of us are saying: "Long live the Optacon."
> Pat Byrne
>
>
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