In my last blog, I invited you to hop aboard the Blind Visionary Express and join our party, including my co-author, Virginia Jacko, on the first leg of our travels around Tampa Bay on February 19.  Our mission:  to introduce Virginia and our new book, The Blind Visionary, to the Tampa Bay community.  You’ll recall that our first stop was Hillsborough High School, where Virginia was introduced by Superintendent MaryEllen Elia to around 200 students and faculty.  I have to tell you I was amazed, as the day went on, by Virginia’s energy, considering she’d left Miami that morning at 4 a.m.  She was just as upbeat at 8 p.m. that evening, when our final event ended, as she was at Hillsborough High ten hours earlier.  As soon as our new Blind Visionary web site is up in the next few days, you’ll be able to see videos of Virginia speaking at various events that day, and you can see for yourself that her incredible energy never flagged. 

From Hillsborough High, the Blind Visionary Express headed for The Lion’s Eye Institute in Ybor City, on Tampa’s east side, where Virginia spoke to some 150 parents and students participating in the Braille Challenge.  I’d sum up Virginia’s message to the kids and their parents as:  “Go for it!  You can do it!”  Virginia told about living alone, doing her own shopping, choosing her outfits in the morning, traveling by plane to Tallahassee – in other words, living a full, normal life despite being completely blind.  She encouraged the parents in the audience to let their girls and boys spread their wings and to resist being “helicopter” moms and dads, hovering protectively over their visually-impaired kids.  “Sighted kids can fall out of trees,” she said, “why can’t blind kids?” – paraphrasing her friend and the author of the Foreword to our book, Jose Feliciano.  The audience loved Virginia’s stories, including one we tell in The Blind Visionary about her falling from the sea wall in her condo complex into Biscayne Bay while walking with her new guide dog Tracker.  Virginia’s message:  Sure, things like that can happen, but you’ve got to get right up, dry yourself off, and get going again.

From the Lion’s Eye Institute, the Blind Visionary Express made its way to the Hillsborough County Public Schools headquarters on Kennedy Avenue in downtown Tampa, where we filmed Virginia’s dialogue with Superintendent MaryEllen Elia.  Then we sped across the Bay to PARC, an agency serving children and adults with disabilities, in St. Petersburg, where we filmed Virginia talking with PARC’s president & CEO, Sue Buchholtz.  Among other things, MaryEllen and Virginia talked about how technological advances were helping to level the playing field for the visually-impaired (MaryEllen’s son is a highly successful software architect planning to attend law school), but how finding teachers certified to work with visually-impaired students was tremendously difficult, in no small part because of the decline of college programs in this field.  Sue and Virginia talked about the importance of positive thinking in overcoming barriers and challenges, and how critical it was to maintain relationships with key stakeholders, like the members of their boards of directors.  Sue and Virginia both, by the way, have aggressively helped their boards become more engaged and effective governing bodies, using my High-Impact Governing Model.

The clock struck 4:30 p.m., so we said goodbye to Sue and headed north to Safety Harbor, where Virginia was scheduled to speak and sign copies of The Blind Visionary at the elegant Syd Entel Galleries on Main Street.  I’ll tell you about that in my next blog.  Meanwhile, I’d appreciate knowing how we might introduce Virginia and our book in your community.