Not reasonable? Unrealistic? Yes, and no. “Yes,” perhaps, when all the well-informed ifs, ands, and buts of today are tallied, exclusive of dreams. But saying instead “no, not unrealistic” to boundaries and limitations—that is the direction I have learned to take in my life. “No” to the idea that I should just accept being blind and learn to make screwdrivers back home in Buffalo. “No” to all the warnings that I should not return to Columbia, and in any case should not try to graduate with my class. “No” to the well-meaning admonition that I would be wise not to apply to big-time grad schools. “No” now to the injustice of blindness in the largest sense—that it needs to exist at all. Humans weren’t meant to live in darkness. We were made to see the light.
Maybe I will be proven wrong. Perhaps blindness is endemic to the human condition, a burden resistant to the wonders of science, to be randomly distributed across all of time. But given my own life experiences, given all the good fortune that has come my way, given the resources at my disposal, not to attempt to end blindness would be the biggest injustice of all. That, too, is of the essence of the tikkun olam, to pursue perfection even if it should prove unattainable. But here’s my deepest secret: I absolutely believe that blindness can be ended, that justice for those of us forced to go through life in the dark half-light of the unsighted is well within our reach. Sue’s and my End Blindness by 2020 Prize isn’t meant to conjure up a miracle cure. We’re merely hoping to nudge the clock forward to a time when all God’s children can not only feel the sun shining on their faces but also witness with their own eyes its rising and its setting.
I’ve never forgotten the wisdom of Congressman Jack Kemp, the former Buffalo Bills quarterback: “throw deep”—a bit of advice I have often followed, both in my business life and in my quest to satisfy my promise to my ghostly monitor to help make blindness a thing of the past. More wisdom underlies “throw deep” than may at first be apparent. Why? Because it is a default bit of human nature to give careful consideration to negative aspects of a contemplated action—essentially, negotiating with oneself. Too often, that ends with the action compromised or even avoided.
But throwing deep is not the same as acting rashly or, in the case of a Hail Mary pass, from desperation. Throwing deep is acting toward that which one truly desires, after having considered—and rejected or countered—the limitations. (In the case of Jack Kemp and other NFL quarterbacks, these considerations must be run through in scant seconds, with Everest-sized linemen bearing down on them!) All this differs greatly from the sorts of internal compromises and toxic regrets that negotiating with oneself tends to produce. But to me, the choice between the two has long been clear.
To throw deep is to honor one’s highest beliefs and aspirations. It is to answer the Call, to fulfill our tikkun olam, whatever that solemn vow might be. For an adventure such as pushing toward an end to blindness, throwing deep is hardly hyperbole and not necessarily the end of the story, either. It might be only the beginning.
22
Old Friends Sat on the
Park Bench Like Bookends
As readers of the epilogue will learn, our End Blindness Prize has not been a stealth campaign. One of my many appearances brought the prize and my backstory to the attention of Susan Goldberg, editor in chief of National Geographic magazine, and at her urging, on March 18, 2016, Arthur and I reprised our 1962 subway odyssey for a lead-in to an issue devoted to blindness viewed globally.
Once again, we started out in Midtown Manhattan, but this time I knew Arthur was with me and the Geographic was photographing as we went. I didn’t bump into people and smash myself up. Nor did I have to grope my way hand over hand from the 116th Street station to the gates of Columbia. Still, when we made it back to the Columbia University campus and I went to sit down on a bench, my leg slammed into it—almost predictably. I soon realized that this was the same stone bench on which I’d sat in 1961 with classics professor Moses Hadas while he told me, without beating around the bush, that I was “finished,” that Columbia was over for me because of my blindness.
I had long remembered that pronouncement as a thunderclap of doom. What was now flashing through my mind as I sat in that same spot more than a half century later was something entirely opposite. With this reenactment, my life as a blind person had come full circle in an unimaginably beautiful way. Thoughts and memories just kept flooding my brain, pouring in from somewhere. I’ve never experienced anything like it.
What was it? Relief? That old sense of being fortunate beyond any reckoning, maybe even undeservedly so? Both, I’m sure, were a part of the moment. But really, at the heart of what overwhelmed me was something I have seldom allowed myself to feel: pride. Pride that a junk dealer’s son, a blind kid from Buffalo, had done all this. Pride of accomplishment. Pride that I’d managed the impossible despite Moses Hadas’s malevolent benediction—finished at Columbia and with my own class, won fellowships and advanced degrees at Harvard and Columbia, attended Oxford and Harvard Law School, been a White House Fellow, served on important boards, founded highly successful businesses, made much more than a good living for my wife and children, even helped launch a substantial prize that my wife and I believe will help end blindness forever.
Richard Axel, the 2004 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine and (appropriately) a long-time Columbia professor, would later say that in my story he recognized, “perhaps for the first time, a true triumph of the human spirit…. Sandy showed me that it is possible not only to endure, but to prevail.” I’m still deeply touched by those words, and by their echo of William Faulkner’s unforgettable Nobel Prize acceptance speech in the early, often terrifying days of the Cold War. Sitting on that stone bench after Arthur’s and my reprisal of what seems in memory almost a primal event, I had something of the same thought: Dammit, Sandy, you did do it! But the thing is, I had no idea how I had managed it—and still don’t.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the psychic aftermath of that reenacted subway ride has changed the architecture of the life in my mind. My old feeling that every day was a dawn-to-dusk marathon, of having to constantly prove myself to others (and myself most of all), was finally gone. The race was over; the jury, in. I’d won. It’s a strange thing to admit, but for the first time since becoming an adult, I felt fully human.
A famous prayer in the Jewish religion has taken on new meaning for me. It is the Shehecheyanu: “Blessed art thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us in life, sustained us and enabled us to reach this glorious moment.” For me, that glorious moment arrived as I sat on that stone bench on the Columbia campus, my journey finally over.
Just then, I heard the strangest thing: music coming from I knew not where. Not from Arthur, although he is apt to break out in song at any moment. Not from any external source that I could discern. And then I realized the music was coming from inside me—my own internal celebration in music and song of the life I’ve led, the challenges I’ve overcome, and the many friends who have helped me along the way; a symphonic and choral arrangement orchestrated by me and performed solely for the enjoyment of the luckiest man in the world.
23
My Big Party
While I’m on the subject of music, there’s a lot of it coming from the ballroom. Trumpets mostly—I’ve paid for them to go all night long. What with the bright lights, the musicians almost seem to be holding champagne flutes to their mouths.
This is a party, a really big party—my big party, spun entirely out of my imagination. But remember, for the blind, the imagined and the real are often a hair’s breadth apart. Even dead people get to attend. In fact, they are the ones who do the most dancing, along with me, on the wide parquet dance floor.
The smokers are smoking. The silverware is cool and comfortable to the touch, and all the drinks go down smoothly, disintegrating worry. You can eat the food—every kind you could want—and never get full, only satisfied. Clocks keep on going, but at this party we are making a big fool of tim
e, and space, too.
Arthur and I take over playing and singing together for a time, he on the guitar, me on the drums but coming in occasionally on the trumpet—switching back and forth from the instrument Sarah and Carl had given me back in Buffalo to the one Sue gave me much later. Sue’s gift is magnificent, shiny and new, while the one from my Buffalo days is a bit dull, scratched and dented. Yet to everyone’s amazement, each produces a brilliant, rounded tone. We swing into one of our college favorites: the Gospel hymn and jazz-band classic “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Unless I’m mistaken—and I’m not—that’s Bill Clinton wailing away beside us on the sax. Party on, Mr. President!
Even better than back at Columbia, a parade of actual saints now begins streaming by, almost three thousand of them—you really cannot fail to invite even one saint—from the early martyrs Peter and Paul and Stephen, referred to as “the Jew,” thought to be the first Christian martyr, beating out Paul; to better-knowns including Teresa of Ávila, Thomas Becket of Canterbury, and Joan of Arc; to the more obscure, ranging from the virgin Bega, patron of bracelets; Guy of Anderlecht, patron of bad business deals; and Nicholas Owen, patron of basements; followed by the last saint to strut in, the virgin Lutgardis, who rejoiced in losing her sight as a God-given means of detaching her from the distractions of the visible world. (I’m not sure that was such a great idea.) For this party, she strides by confidently, without aid. The parade would normally have lasted a full day, but time for now is elastic—the clocks calibrated not by hours but in units of serenity.
There’s no need for speeches on multiculturalism or political correctness at this affair because everyone was invited, and why not? The invitees have all meant something to me, even if I am not always aware of just what it is. In fact, in most cases I am definitely unaware, but the way I see it, that may be irrelevant to their meaning for my life. Which is probably the significance of the thousands of holy bodhisattvas and pratyekabuddhas who file in after the saints. They are followed by the quite extensive cast of the Bhagavad Gita, by the Jewish sages and assorted rebbes (disputing so loudly with each other that you can hardly hear the music), by crowds of bˉo-san from medieval Japan holding beggars’ bowls, by the many spirit gods of old Egypt (a really motley crew), by a huge crowd of gods of the hearth from ancient Rome and gods from pretty much everywhere else in the ancient world (there is even a squirrel spirit from Scandinavia, Loki), and by all manner of other religious luminaries from around the world and across time.
The whole Mount Olympus gang is here. An ancient Greek Chorus has popped up, in full throat—somewhat to the annoyance of many of the guests. Joshua and Moses are among the many eminences who have chosen to participate as well.
Four Sues are here: the one from sixth grade, still ignoring me; the one from high school who finally acknowledged me; the one at our wedding; and, of course, the Sue of today. All the old friends from the Buffalo block have come, too, as well as many other dear friends from my life. Barack Obama, a young revolutionary in his own way, chats with another one, Alexander Hamilton, as they pose with Arthur, Jerry and me—Columbia alums all—for a photograph by Edward Steichen. And while I’m on the subject of Columbia alums, that pinstripe uniform I see across the ballroom with number 3 on the back could be only Lou Gehrig.
Also here: Michael Bloomberg, as gifted at governance and business as he is magnanimous in philanthropy; Justice William Brennan, in so many ways wisdom personified; David Rockefeller, who showed me how to carry myself; President Lyndon Johnson, my former boss in the White House, who bobbled a war but otherwise changed America for the better in many ways; my cherished friend and neighbor, Marty Ginsburg; Herman Wouk, who generously partook of our Jewish heritage with me and who refused to autograph his book Winds of War for six provincial governors from the People’s Republic of China at a dinner in my home because it was the Sabbath; both Paul Simons, the senator and the singer; a zany Rhodes Scholar friend from our Oxford days; Mike, a reader of mine at Harvard Law School, who personified the nation’s terrible tensions of the bottom half of the twentieth century.
I see Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who administered the marriage oath at the wedding of my Kathryn: “By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States…” Her beautiful human qualities, her intellect and greatness of spirit, are shared by another guest who has honored us by coming, Vice President Al Gore—the two also sharing more than their just due of heartbreaks. And there’s President George Washington himself, complimenting Justice Ginsburg on her omission of the usual word “respectfully” from her historic “I dissent” in Bush v. Gore, and praising Vice President Gore, too, for honorably declining to press his case after the decision went against him.
President Clinton, who appointed Justice Ginsburg to the Supreme Court and convinced Vice President Gore to be his running mate, is hurrying this way as well, beaming with pride.
Now that I have moved on to towering presences, there’s Ford’s Theatre itself, dark and empty just as it was on that memorable day when I stood in the fatal box where Abraham Lincoln had been shot and felt down to my soul a strong connection with him, truly a mystic chord.
The Wizard of Oz original cast and L. Frank Baum are here (Tik-Tok is buzzing around), along with Jimmy Stewart, Bambi, Boris Karloff, Bette Davis, E.T., Marlon Brando, Beyoncé, all the Lassies, Billy Wilder, Edward G. Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald, George Gershwin, and W. C. Fields twisting the ear of a sniffling Baby LeRoy.
Julius Caesar, his ribs covered with bandages, is going over some maps with Alexander the Great. Others I spot: Cyrus the (yet another) Great; Booker T. Washington; Maurice Ravel (a special invite for him in honor of his Mother Goose Suite); James Taylor and John Coltrane; Hamlet’s father, in his ghostly phase, while Polonius explains something or other to Walter Lippmann; Moctezuma, keeping an eye out for Cortés; Bugs Bunny; Otto von Bismarck; William Wordsworth; Peter Pan; Benito Mussolini (upside down, as in what he complains is a prejudicial photograph); Siddhartha Gautama; Rosa Parks; Paul Revere; Al Capone; Immanuel Kant (he arrived most promptly at the party); Rainer Maria Rilke holding a panther on a leash; and Ray Dalio transcendentally meditating amidst the hubbub.
Merlin and Steve Jobs have arrived with Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe, and Og Mandino in tow. Did they share a cab? Possibly with Jeff Bezos? There’s the man at the Giza Pyramids who wanted to buy my daughter! The city of Florence is here, too, I guess to apologize to Sue and me for its lack of hospitality to us, unintended or not.
Over there I see P. H. Viswanathan, the young man from Gujarat, India, who read an article about my blindness and wrote to offer the transplant of one of his eyes as a gift. (With deepest gratitude, I declined his offer.) Standing nearby is the man with whom I sat in meetings who subsequently jumped off the roof of a building. Just over his shoulder, far away in the smoking lounge, Albert Einstein is arranging three balls on a billiards table. An agitated Leo Tolstoy is waving a copy of his What Is Art? in Kazimir Malevich’s face. There are Ed and Jane Muskie with the Brennans, Michael Jordan, and Bill Bradley. Just to test me, Bill fakes left and goes right, but I’m onto him. Now Senator Muskie has gone to stand arm in arm with Yitzhak Rabin, who was Israeli ambassador to the United States, a reminder of a different time in the modern world. My father-in-law, Marty Roseno, is next to the senator, poking him with a golf club to get back to the game that the three of us were enjoying with Tiger Woods. My lifelong friend and business associate, Washington’s Abe Pollin, is playing night basketball with LeBron James and me on the court Abe built at my home; Thomas Edison is presenting his beta version of a light bulb for the blind. Marshall McLuhan, fascinated by the compressed-speech machine I invented, is here, trying (unsuccessfully, it would seem) to explain the principle to Johannes Gutenberg.
Mohandas Gandhi is standing nearby, all by himself, which I take to be a symbolic statement: how much more one man may be able to accomplish than entire armies and powerful empires. He won’t be
alone for long, though. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is headed his way to talk about their common experiences. I wish I were closer.
As Pericles listens, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk recites his famous 1934 letter to the Australian people, who lost so many sons (ultimately pointlessly, as usual) battling his Turkish troops on his country’s Gallipoli Peninsula during the First World War: “Those Australian heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives—you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets; to us they lie side by side, here in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from far-away countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are at peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”
Other party guests nearby, among whom are Kaiser Wilhelm II, generals Douglas Haig and Curtis Lemay, and Robert McNamara, nod solemnly in agreement—unfortunately, agreement that comes too late. Winston Churchill is looking down at the floor, I suppose so that none of the Gallipoli dead might catch his eye. The Chorus now speaks of the unreasonableness of life—its unfathomable direction…the caprice that so delights the gods. Oh, yes…caprice.
I see that the Australopithecus afarensis “Lucy” is here, late of the Cradle of Mankind in South Africa, although that was not her name for it. She is really old—some three million years old and change—and there are much older creatures here from the broad human family. (In her day, by the way, she was addressed as Ma-ba within her circle; they tell me she finds the “Lucy” tag annoying—and unfortunately we did use it on the invitation.) Jack Benny is giving tips on the violin to Emperor Nero, while the Pony Express is represented by Ichabod Crane, attired in his finest green, who left the Van Tassel party to attend this one.
Hello Darkness, My Old Friend Page 22
