QUE PASA
Newsletter of the National Federation of the Blind of New Mexico
March 2014
Meet A Long-Time Nfbnm Leader, Christine Hall
By Pat Munson
Note: I met Christine (Gail by birth) in 1977 at a National Federation of the Blind (NFB) of California state convention. How lucky I was to have met her on her life’s path. Here is what she had to say to me about her journey so far:
Christine was born Gail Marie Hall in Los Angeles, California. When she was 11, her family moved to Torrance, one of the beach cities in southern California. Her parents were then able to buy an affordable two-bedroom house in a new area surrounded by farmland and new homes being built, which provided endless fantastic places to play. She and her friends had great fun playing in the houses being built. They also had fun eating strawberries which grew nearby, and they would run like lightning when the farmers caught them with the fruit. The only problem was that the builders and field workers did not want them around where they could get hurt. One day Christine was brought home in a police car, so her mother told her not to play there again.
Shortly after the family moved, Christine's teacher notified her parents that their daughter needed to see an eye doctor as she was having problems reading the eye chart. The doctor said she had an inflammation of the eyes known as Iritus usually caused by an injury or an infection.
After running a variety of tests and removing her tonsils, they began treating her with new wonder drugs. When she was fifteen, she was hospitalized for a month because of the high dose of medication and had to be on a special diet, no sugar or salt. Her mother came to visit her every day in the hospital, and the minute she walked in to the room, Christine said, "I am hungry." When she returned home, she ate a bowl of spaghetti big enough to feed a family of four. Since the doctors really did not understand her eye condition, they trooped in and out of her hospital room trying to determine the problem. The medicine did not decrease the inflammation in her eyes, but it did give her a lovely case of acne. One day, a bouquet of roses arrived from Bing Crosby, a famous actor-singer of the day. Christine received them because she had been in the Pediatrics section the longest.
Christine's high school years were normal, but she did state that her reading was limited because of not being able to see very well. When she was sixteen, her best friend Margaret introduced her to her brother who had been in the Air Force and was six years older than Christine. They dated for a couple of years, and after graduating from high school in June, they were married in September. Christine's family was not happy about the marriage, but they knew it would do no good to protest: At 18, she knew best.
Being young, they loved to party, but what she soon learned was that her husband had a serious drinking problem. So after 14 months, she walked out and knocked on her parents' door; they graciously took her in, as they knew there had been a problem with this marriage. At that moment, Christine did not know she was pregnant with her beautiful daughter, Candy.
Christine's mother had noticed that her vision was decreasing during this time, probably due to stress. By the time her daughter was born, Christine was legally blind. Since childhood she had always had little jobs, but now she was worried about what she could do to support herself and her daughter.
Then good luck struck: Christine's mother just happened to attend a luncheon at which a recently-blind woman was present. The woman told her mother about the Department of Rehabilitation and counselor-teachers who worked with the blind helping them to learn blindness skills and job readiness. Christine eagerly called Rehab to get someone to come to her home. A counselor-teacher came and told her about her employment options and began teaching her Braille. She was then transferred to a rehabilitation counselor who could advise her on her educational choices, for education was the ticket to a good job, particularly for a blind person.
After taking many tests, Christine was told that at that point she was not ready for college study. She had not planned to attend school after high school, which was common in those days, but to be a successful blind person, higher education was the ticket out of poverty.
Christine quickly learned Braille but needed cane skills, so she went off to the San Francisco area to a training center for two weeks. She could not stay longer because she had a two-year-old at home. Her parents took care of her daughter while she learned to travel with a white cane. While she was at the Orientation Center, she met Nancy Burns and was introduced to the NFB, which dramatically changed her life.
The next academic year, she enrolled at a community college. She had to prove to rehab that she could successfully complete higher level work. She did well, transferred to a four-year college, and earned an academic degree in what was then called Social Welfare. It took six years to complete her degree. Because she had not planned to attend college, she had not taken college prep classes during high school, which meant she had a lot of catching up to do academically. Her friends teased her because she studied so much, but that was necessary to pass her classes with high grades. Also, while she was attending college, her mother took care of her daughter. When Christine was at home, the child-rearing duties were a big part of her life.
Besides all her studying and taking care of her daughter, she had become involved in NFB. She became president of the blind college students. She also attended the local chapter meeting in Los Angeles. One of the great leaders in NFB at that time met her at a bus transfer and rode the rest of the way with her. This was another example of NFB members assisting one another.
Unfortunately, after all her work to acquire a degree, Christine hit a brick wall when applying for a social work job. But just when she was beginning to really get depressed, the president of the NFB of California, Tony Manino, took her to a luncheon. Tony had been contacted by a member of the Jr. League of Los Angeles who needed a qualified person to run their office. Tony told this woman that she needed Christine to run the Information Center for the Blind. With Tony’s very strong recommendation, Christine was hired, and she did a great job for the Jr. League.
With a job in her pocket, she moved into her first apartment away from her parents. Since this was a part-time job, her parents kept her daughter during the week. Christine then came home on weekends. She was heartsick to leave Candy all week, but the job was just too far to commute.
Finally, with work experience under her belt, she secured employment with Los Angeles County. It was at that point she was able to rent a two-bedroom apartment where her daughter could join her fulltime. While Christine worked, Candy was at school.
One of the agreements that Christine made, in order to be employed, was that she would hire and pay for a reader-driver. Luckily, her mother was up for the job. Part of Christine's job description was visiting clients in their homes from one end of Los Angeles County to the other, which is a very large area.
Being a social worker for newly blind persons, clients were lucky to have had Christine, because she could answer many of their questions. It is likely that she was one of the first blind social workers hired. This only happened because the National Federation of the Blind changed laws which mandated that the county could not deny a job to a blind applicant.
After some time, Christine’s grandparents on her mother’s side died, leaving their house to her mother. Christine and Candy moved into the house and paid rent to her parents. That was a great arrangement for everyone.
When Reagan became governor of California, he significantly reduced the number of social welfare workers. Consequently, Christine was transferred to the job of an eligibility intake worker at a hospital. She moved to another welfare office and then decided to apply for a state job as a counselor-teacher. She got the job, but it meant Candy and she had to move to Sacramento in northern California, hundreds of miles from all they knew. Wrenching Candy from her high school friends, cheer leading, and her grandparents was difficult. Some NFB friends took them in while Christine looked for housing in Sacramento. Here is yet another time when NFB members assisted one another in hard times.
Another of Christine’s friends who had moved from Southern California told her of an apartment complex and said she had a friend who could help Christine with the move. This friend even moved Christine's heart by calling and asking her out shortly after her arrival.
The NFB had pushed the state to provide a driver for Christine for her job. Again, she most likely was one of the first blind persons hired into this job, so she had to explain how she would do the job the same as any other employee. The position required completing a lot of paperwork, so she showed how she would accomplish this task with a reader. Obviously, she did a great job.
After a couple of years, she was offered a job as a rehabilitation counselor at higher pay and with no traveling, so she took it. While she was working, her boyfriend Tim was still around. Some years earlier, he had taken her on a private yacht trip in the Caribbean, and they had a wonderful time.
As time passed and she became established in Sacramento, she bought a condo and her daughter got married. During this time, Tim had retired from the military and kept urging Christine to quit her job, sell the condo, and buy a boat for extended travel. He assured her that they were only young once and that this was the time to see more of the world.
At that time, Tim’s plan sounded fantastic, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! So along with Tim’s station wagon, they added a travel trailer and then took off. They journeyed up the west coast, up into Canada, across the Rockies and then down into the USA. They took a break in Chicago where they camped out at a friend's home, visited Tim’s family, and sought out the perfect boat. As soon as the purchase had been completed, the 24-foot cabin power boat was launched into the Illinois and then the Mississippi Rivers. However, there were many repair stops. These boats are complicated and temperamental, but with Christine as first mate, all would magically come back to life. After being on the road and water, they decided midway through 1981 that it was time to get back to reality, so they sold the boat and journeyed back to Sacramento, California by car.
After ten years of being together and apart, they decided to marry. Part of the deal was that they would not stay in California. They honeymooned in Hawaii. They liked it so much that they decided to make their home there. They sold most everything back in Sacramento and had the rest shipped to the Islands.
After some time, Christine became the NFB of Hawaii state president, so she was very busy with her Island life. During this time she had a variety of jobs to pay the rent and buy food. But, Tim decided he did not much care for the place, so he returned to California. Eventually Christine got a job with an independent living center working with the senior blind. She kept that job until 1991 when the cost of living drove her off the Islands.
For a variety of reasons, Christine decided to settle here in Albuquerque. Since she had experience working with older blind folks, she was offered a job as the coordinator of the Older Blind Program at the Commission for the Blind. She bought a condo on Indian School Road and settled into the Southwest way of life.
After a goodly amount of time, she decided to sell her condo and buy a home. She also retired from the Commission so she would have more time to travel, do more for the NFB of New Mexico, and enjoy her lovely house and backyard. Although she is retired from being NFBNM state president, she appears to be doing just as much work to ensure that this is an outstanding affiliate.
The blind community in NFB is exceedingly lucky to have had such a dedicated worker for all these decades, and I have been just as lucky to have had such a loyal, wonderful friend. If we had not had the NFB, most likely Christine and I never would have met, and we would not have had the opportunity to change what it means to be blind.