History of O&M
Metropolitan
Washington O&M Association:
May 1996
O&M Living History --
Where Did Our O&M Techniques Come From?
By Dona Sauerberger
This story begins during
World War II, when many U.S. soldiers who had been blinded in battle were sent to
hospitals at Valley Forge and Dibble, then to a rehabilitation program for the blind in
Avon, Connecticut. The Avon program had "orientors" whose job was to orient the
new patients. They didn't teach techniques as such, but during their orientation they
encouraged the patients to be aware of and use such things as echolocation, surface
changes in the floor, and the spatial layout and landmarks of the buildings and campus.
This was done without the use of canes, which were all but forbidden.
To provide services to the soldiers while they
recuperated at Valley Forge and before they went to Avon, the military searched for
personnel who had expertise in blindness. They recruited Warren Bledsoe and Richard
Hoover, both of whom had worked at the Maryland School for the Blind (MSB) before the war.
Bledsoe, in fact, had been born and raised on the campus while his father was
superintendent there, and he had coached dramatics and taught English to the blind
students before joining the army. Richard Hoover had been an athletic coach and taught
math at MSB.
"The
first thing they need to know ... "
One day, when the staff at
Valley Forge discussed what to do with a group of newly arrived blinded soldiers, Hoover
said, "I think the first thing they need to know is how to get around. We've been
working on it, but not enough. People say blind people in this country do a good job of
getting around. I don't think they do a good job. I think they do a hell of a poor
job." (Bledsoe, 1980)
Hoover and Bledsoe later discussed the feasibility
of using only echolocation to get around obstacles, as was taught at Avon, and realized
that echolocation wasn't enough; a cane was needed. Hoover then started to develop a cane
technique that would be effective. He blindfolded himself to try various techniques, and
also asked many others to experiment. After this trial and error, he realized the need for
a lightweight cane moved in an arc in front of the person, with the cane touching on the
side opposite the forward foot.
This Hoover cane technique, also called the
"touch cane technique," would revolutionize the independent travel of blind
people.
Bledsoe and the other instructors learned the
touch cane technique, and together with Hoover they taught it to the blinded soldiers who
were recuperating at Valley Forge hospital.
A
soldier learns and returns...
One particular soldier who
was blinded after the Normandy invasion was Russ Williams. He went first to Valley Forge
hospital and learned the touch cane technique. He then went to Avon, where he was told to
put away his cane, and where he learned orientation techniques (including the use of sound
shadows and echolocation). Afterwards, he incorporated all he'd learned from each program,
and started to develop techniques and challenge his skills to achieve greater and greater
independence.
After his training at Avon, Williams went back to
Valley Forge to teach Braille and other skills and offer counseling to those who had
experienced traumatic new blindness. His sensitivity to these soldiers resulted not only
from his own traumatic blindness, but also from an event which happened while he was
recuperating at Valley Forge -- an event which moves him deeply to this day. He had become
good friends with another soldier who had also been blinded in battle. This friend became
despondent about what he perceived to be his future life as a blind person, dreading the
burden he would be placing on his family. He died soon afterwards from a condition that
does not normally cause death. Williams is convinced that his friend had willed himself to
die because he thought that blindness means dependence and despair. This experience
emphasized for Williams the importance of early intervention and counseling for people who
lose their sight.
Perseverance
pays off
Meanwhile, the touch cane
technique and the training that accompanied it were not generally accepted by civilian
agencies which served blind people, nor even by some military authorities. Bledsoe worked
doggedly to advocate for it, and became skilled at the political and bureaucratic
strategies needed to maintain the program. Eventually his efforts paid off with the
establishment of a national rehabilitation program for blind veterans at Hines VA
Hospital.
Many revolutionary ideas have failed to become
reality because of lack of support. It is quite likely that if it were not for Bledsoe's
efforts, political skill, and determination to gain support for the program and its
concepts, the idea of the touch cane technique and the training that accompanies it would
probably not have survived.
Russ Williams was chosen to be Chief of the new
rehabilitation program. By that time, although he visited Hines occasionally, Hoover had
moved back to the MSB campus to attend medical school at Johns Hopkins University, and
later became an ophthalmologist. Bledsoe had become involved in Washington in the intense
bureaucratic work needed to establish the center and have it succeed, but he came for
several months to help set up the center. All the other instructors who had been involved
in the Valley Forge program had also left for other careers.
Pioneers
join the effort
Thus Bledsoe and Williams
had to recruit and train new instructors. These early O&Mers were Eddie Mees, Alford
"Dee" Corbett, Stanley Suterko, Bud Thuis, and Larry Blaha.
One of those instructors, Stanley Suterko, had
been working as a therapist in a program of corrective therapy for soldiers with spinal
injuries. He found working there to be discouraging because his supervisor had limited
expectations of the patients. Suterko had been promised that he would be rotated to other
wards, such as psychology, but more than a year had passed without his leaving this ward.
When he told his supervisor that he would apply
for the new Hines program for the blind, his supervisor discouraged him, saying he'd end
up carrying bedpans because the blind patients would not be able to do anything. Suterko
didn't believe him, any more than he believed his pronouncement of the limited potential
of patients who had spinal cord injuries.
The
torch passes on as the flame burns brighter
Bledsoe taught Suterko and
the other new instructors the cane technique which Hoover had developed. Williams taught
them the techniques that he had learned at Valley Forge and at Avon, and the techniques
that he had developed while pushing himself to the limits of independent travel in areas
much more advanced than where he'd been taught.
After each lesson from Williams, one instructor
would teach another who was blindfolded. Williams followed on these lessons, asking the
one who was instructing what the other was experiencing, provoking the instructor's
thinking with such questions as "What is he hearing?" and, "Is his cane
close to the wall?" Suterko says that these remarks didn't mean much to him at the
time, but when he started teaching his first blinded veterans he realized how important
they were.
Williams was the only blind person whom the new
instructors had ever met, and though they were impressed with what he could do as an
independent traveler, they attributed it to his being exceptionally gifted. Nevertheless,
Williams taught the instructors how he accomplished what he did, such as how he could
locate buildings, statues, and even poles by noticing the sound shadow that they made when
cars passed on the other side of them, or by the sound that they reflected when he clapped
his hands.
Once, for example, he took the instructors into an
open field and threw a football to them as they ran and called to him, and showed them how
he could point to the edge of a distant building by clapping his hands as he walked and
listened.
Thus the successful development of the O&M
techniques and programs as we know them today is due in great part to William's
determination in learning the best from the experts and teaching himself even more, and
passing this knowledge on to the Hines instructors. It is also partly due to his high
expectations for the blinded veterans who, he was confident, could do it as well as he.
As the new Hines instructors began to teach the
veterans, their techniques and strategies began to change. Probably the most significant
change that took place was that the lessons and techniques became increasingly
sophisticated, with greater and greater expectations of the blind men. Suterko remembers a
lesson with one of his first learners, who was asked to complete a complex route indoors
to find a certain room. When the man reached his destination, he exclaimed, "Hot
damn! I did it!" Suterko felt like saying the same thing, because he was equally
surprised that the man could do it.
Williams wasn't surprised by what the veterans
could achieve because he had done it himself, but the instructors and Bledsoe and Hoover
continued to be pleased and surprised with what the blinded veterans were accomplishing.
One day Hoover, who visited Hines occasionally, watched a lesson in which the veteran
crossed several streets and went to a train platform. In retrospect, the lesson would not
be seen as particularly noteworthy, but Hoover was exceedingly impressed.
Williams also reports that at one visit, Hoover
asked him if there were any new developments. Williams couldn't think of any, but when
Hoover went to observe a lesson, he was astounded at the new procedure he witnessed: the
"drop-off" lesson. This is a lesson in which the blind learner is dropped off
without being informed of his location, orients himself, and meets the instructor at a
destination. Hoover's first reaction was that this lesson was cruel to the blinded
veterans, but he later said that he approved of the practice.
And
it keeps getting better
The techniques and the cane
itself also changed in those early years of O&M. For example, the canes that Hoover
had taught the soldiers to use were less than 44 inches long; the Hines instructors began
to use longer canes and also individualized the length of the cane to suit the height of
the user ("prescribed canes").
In another example of evolving training
techniques, Hoover introduced Williams and the other soldiers to the cane only after they
had learned to travel indoors and were starting outdoor travel. Williams taught the Hines
instructors to introduce the cane and its use at the very beginning of their instruction.
They were to use the touch cane technique indoors as well as outdoors, except for crossing
narrow streets, when the diagonal cane technique was to be used. After teaching this way
for a while, however, the instructors realized that the diagonal cane technique doesn't
prevent travelers from hitting their knee against the bumper of parked cars, so they
started teaching people to use the touch technique during all their crossings.
Other techniques and strategies also evolved,
primarily through the discussions that the instructors had at the end of each day when
writing their progress notes. Some of these strategies were developed by the blind
veterans themselves as they applied what they'd learned to travel independently. Each year
around December, the instructors also blindfolded themselves and tried things that hadn't
seemed to work with the veterans, and adapted or came up with new techniques and
strategies.
Whenever the instructors had different ideas or
preferences for techniques, they all agreed to use the technique that the majority chose.
They felt it was imperative that they all be consistent because, even though each veteran
had one instructor assigned to him, other instructors often filled in and also reinforced
techniques when they were in charge of the ward overnight. They felt that it would have
been confusing to the veterans to have conflicting methods being taught or reinforced by
the various instructors. Students were told that after they had left the program, they
could adapt the techniques as appropriate for their needs.
Thus these early instructors, because of their
sensitivity, creativity, increasingly high expectations of the blind veterans and
willingness to learn from them also contributed significantly to the development of
O&M techniques.
Why
O&M there and then?
The population that was at
Valley Forge and Hines was different from the blind civilian population, most of whom have
functional vision. Williams feels that one factor which may have influenced the
development of O&M is the fact that the vast majority of men who had been blinded in
the war were totally blind and had no hope of recovering their vision. Many of them were
young and energetic, and they wanted to be independent. The circumstances of having so
many totally blind, determined young men in one program may have inspired efforts to find
and develop alternative techniques for orientation and mobility, and to establish a
program to present those techniques to the blinded veterans in a sequential, orderly
manner.
Williams feels that another factor which may have
fostered improvement of the techniques and program is the fact that each person at Hines
felt comfortable sharing ideas with the others. The staff members felt close to each
other, and there was no hierarchy of status to inhibit their interaction and
communication.
Leaders in the rehabilitation of blind people were
convinced of the effectiveness of O&M training only after persistent efforts on the
part of the originators and their converts. Without people like Williams, Bledsoe, Hoover,
Blaha, Corbett, Mees, Thuis, Suterko, and the blinded veterans who were determined to gain
their independence, O&M programs may never have developed to the point where they
eventually proved their value and were accepted by the blindness field.
(Bledsoe, C. Warren (1980)
"Originators of Orientation and Mobility Training" in Welsh, R. L. and Blasch,
B. B. Foundations of Orientation and Mobility, pp. 581-624.)
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