millionaires can be good people to know

Having the money to hire everything done for us is one very good reasonable accommodation for the blind.  In 17 years and over 2,000 clients, we have served perhaps 5 or 6 really wealthy folks.  The five people who stand out in my mind lived in palatial homes with staff fluttering about eager to do their bidding.  In those five cases all that was wanted of us was to produce some hitherto unknown miracle cure for their vision loss. 

In all of these cases the people were grieving over their loss of sight, but their life style was not impacted in the slightest.  They could go anywhere, buy any sort of helpful device, eat well, sleep warmly.  They had their loving families about them.  But they wept over their loss just as if they were living under a bridge. 

And none of them ever understood the difference.  None of them ever said, "Well, at least I'm filthy rich and can afford the support services, and that poor slob under the bridge has no one". 

But way back when we were struggling to pass our Commission for the Blind Bill, a fellow named Joe Smith walked into Lilac Foundation in Spokane.  Smith was a man in his mid 70's and was beginning to have serious vision loss.  It turned out that Joe Smith was a timber baron and a multi millionaire.  The director at Lilac Center, Al Fisher, told Joe about our struggles to pass the Commission Bill, and how it was kept in committee year after year. 

Turns out that Joe Smith owned a couple of politicians.  One of them happened to be the Chair of the Social and Health Services Committee, the committee where our Bill lingered.  

The next session our Bill popped right out of committee and after seven long years of hard work, one crook of a finger and the Bill passed.  

Millionaires can be good people to know.  

 

Curious Carl