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NO SIGHT, BUT PLENTY OF VISION
Workshop for blind carpenters takes shape
5/6/2003
From: St. Petersburg Times
By: COLLEEN JENKINSHERNANDO
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The future home of a warehouse and workshop for products made by the blind doesn't yet look like much. Only a 10,000-square-foot slab of poured concrete and stacks of curved steel sit unimposingly off the side of a stretch of State Road 200.
Bob Krokker can't see the foundation of the building, and, even though he's doing most of the construction, he'll never see its finished form. But the founder and president of Citrus County's Blind Americans Inc. has an ambitious plan for the 12,500-square-foot structure clearly mapped out in his mind.
By early next year, the 61-year-old Hernando man expects to be teaching 15 fellow blind individuals from around the country how to become skilled carpenters. Then he wants some of them to take their craft and return home as journeymen to pass on the trade to more blind people. He hopes the others will stay in Citrus County as instructors for a new batch of students.
Krokker and his apprentices will build wood cabinets, chests and hutches, and they will sell their handiwork. Habitat for Humanity has agreed to purchase the kitchen cabinet units. The blind workers will make a living or at least supplemental income, Krokker says.
He's been pushing and pleading for the program for more than a dozen years, and he knows it sounds grand for a remote corner of Citrus. He thinks it will be the only program of its kind in the United States. But don't dare tell him the idea isn't plausible. Don't even hint at skepticism.
"Blind people are really capable of doing the stuff we're doing," he said almost testily. "I believe a blind person can do any darn thing they want to if they want to do it."
Krokker already is championing the viable skills of Citrus County's 4,000 blind residents at the Wishing Well Center, a sort of school and community center run by Blind Americans Inc. in Hernando. He leads a weekly woodworking class, and a small shop at the center showcases the work of his students: wooden stools, wicker and wooden rocking chairs, tall cabinet units.
The current students are developing the skills needed for a full-fledged factory, but the center has no place to store their goods. Hence, the need for the new building, Krokker said.
The center also teaches Braille, computer and typing skills and provides arts and crafts classes. Participants range in age from late teens to the mid 90s.
A recent arts and crafts session involved piecing together picture frames with cardboard, cotton backing and colorful fabrics. The group also made angels out of bowtie pasta noodles.
Their progress was guided by Beth "Becky" Kennedy, a volunteer whose sight is not impaired. Krokker said it works well for someone with sight to monitor such activities, to make sure students are on the right track.
But he has a different outlook when it comes to the woodwork currently fashioned in two crowded rooms of the Wishing Well's campus of clustered buildings. The problem with most schools for the blind, he says, is that the teachers can see. As a result, they inevitably teach techniques suitable for seeing people.
That's a sure road to failure for the blind, Krokker said. He thinks the sight impaired need to learn blind-specific techniques for using the tools and machines necessary in woodcraft. And only blind instructors can really relay the information effectively, he said.
"We need to make sure we don't get our fingers chopped off in a saw," he said. "We see with our fingers. If we lose them, we've got problems."
As evidence that he knows what he's talking about, Krokker holds up his hands.
"You see all my fingers?" he asked, wiggling all 10. "I haven't lost the tips or nothing."
Later, he explains his viewpoint this way: "Blind people know what blind people go through to get where they need to go. Sight people do not. Blind people can do things their way, not the sighted way."
The ideal candidates for Krokker's school will have followed a similar path as the teacher, those who were born with functioning eyes and were schooled in the ways of carpentry before going blind.
Krokker was a successful contractor for custom-built homes in Clearwater when he lost his sight to diabetes and glaucoma nearly 20 years ago. His wife of 23 years left him, unable to adjust to his new lifestyle. Doctors urged him to close his business. So, Krokker said, he came to die on the 10 acres of property he owned on the Withlacoochee River.
He was lonely and feeling sorry for himself when he met Evelyn, a blind woman. She sparked a new fire for life in Krokker. They fell in love and married.
Then, he embarked on a two-year tour of the United States, looking for a program that helped the blind to become more independent. In Dallas, he found a factory where blind people did work with plastics. It seemed like a concept worth replicating.
The journey since, however, has progressed excruciatingly slowly, in Krokker's opinion. He hasn't been all that impressed with the state's blind services division - officials there don't seem sure his plan will work, he said - but he was pleased to finally receive a $50,000 grant from the state to pay for the new building's steel.
The state has pledged to cover the remaining $50,000 Krokker will need to finish it, he said. Also, the county's Community Support Services has applied for a grant to furnish a bus that would transport woodworking students to the Wishing Well Center.
Meantime, however, Krokker and Jim Miekka, a 42-year-old blind man from Hernando, are working to fasten more than a quarter million bolts for the warehouse's structure. Miekka, a former physics teacher, lost his sight in an accident at age 26. Most days, the men toil alone.
That's a shame, according to volunteers and acquaintances of the men. When Judy Hall, a neighbor of Krokker and Miekka in the Arrowhead community, happened upon them holding up the giant steel pieces, she couldn't believe they were undertaking the project with so little help.
She wants to organize some Saturday work sessions that would bring out additional volunteers.
"Every time I'm around these people, they just completely baffle me," she said. "(Bob) is hell bent on getting that building up."
Kennedy, the volunteer, said: "I'm sure it's going to happen. But we do desperately need help. It's a really big job, and it can't be done by just a few people."
Krokker, stubborn as he is, would welcome the aid. But he won't let a lack of it stop him. Last week, he and Miekka were busy bolting down the frame of the warehouse.
"Where are you at, Jim?" Bob asked as he approached the construction site.
"Right here," Jim replied, sitting in the dirt with his guide dog, a German shepherd named Gidget. "Don't run into me."
As Bob walked closer, Jim asked, "How close to the end am I, Bob?"
"You're there," Bob said, feeling out the end of the foundation with his cane.
The foundation of the building was finished. But there are hundreds of thousands of bolts to go until the dreams of the warehouse and factory for the blind in Citrus County materialize.
- Colleen Jenkins can be reached at 860-7303 or cjenkins@sptimes.com.
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