Organization enables disabled to succeed
ANCHORAGE – When Amy Bower of Falmouth was diagnosed with macular degeneration while in graduate school, she was in danger of losing more than her vision. Her professional and athletic drives, including a love of cross-country skiing, also were at stake.
“As my vision got worse I found it was harder and harder to push my physical limits, except maybe on a weight bench or exercise bike, and that wasn’t good enough for me,” said Bower, an ocean currents expert at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “As I got into my 30s, it got harder to find anyone in my shoes: someone striving to be a scientist who is also visually impaired.”
A turning point for Bower, 43, came in 1995 when she discovered Ski for Light, Inc., an all-volunteer program begun in 1975. Ski for Light promotes cross-country skiing among blind and mobility-impaired persons by pairing them with sighted guides who teach skills for all levels and describe the landscape.
“At Ski for Light, I had an opportunity to meet a lot of other professional people who were pursuing careers in all sorts of areas and really pushing the envelope,” Bower said. “And that really energized me and has kept me going back year after year.”
The 28th international Ski for Light event concluded here last week. The winter that has left an embarrassment of Nordic riches back East left Anchorage as mild and rainy as Seattle. The rasp of waxless skis over the icy paths became a familiar sound to the 282 attendees and volunteers, who shoveled snow from the woods to build tracks for the final day’s race and rally in Russian Jack Springs Park.
At this event, however, community outweighs conditions.
“It’s the most highly motivated, highly energized group of blind people you’ll find anywhere in the world,” said Dave Wilkinson, a 35-year-old sales manager from Longmont, Colo., who posted the fastest time in the 8-kilometer race (there was also a 3K rally). “A lot of times you run into people who are doing the best they can but what they can do isn’t too hot. By making good guides available – something not easy to do – SFL can pair me with someone who can push me.”
Competition is not stressed at Ski for Light, but it is there, usually each participant versus his or her perceived limitations. Victories in that sphere have changed lives.
“There is a lot to be said for competition,” said Laura Oftedahl, who first came to SFL in 1980, sedentary, overweight, and unfocused, and discovered an inner drive she didn’t know was there. Within a year, she quit smoking, lost 50 pounds, and was training seriously with what would become the US Paralympic ski team, picking up tandem cycling – her next competitive arena – to train in the summer. In 1984, she was on a relay team that won a silver medal at the Disabled World Championships.
Carol McCarl, an editor for leading blind publication Dialogue, lost her husband in 1977 and was loathe to leave her children, but went to South Dakota in 1978 to learn to ski. “It was difficult,” she recalled. “On the first day I could barely move.”
By the end of the week, she’d competed in her first race. “When I walked down the steps of the little plane, I hear my son’s voice call up to me, `Mommy, what did you win?’ I was so proud to have a second-place trophy in my bag.”
Duane Farrar of Malden first attended Ski for Light in 1996 after learning about it from Bower. Farrar later attended a sailing program taught by Bower and her husband, David Fisichella (an SFL guide), at Boston’s Community Boating on the Charles River. Within two weeks, Farrar competed in his first regatta, sponsored by the SailBlind program at Newton’s Carroll Center for the Blind, and his racing team last year captured a bronze medal at the World Blind Sailing Championships in Italy.
“I used to get down after the holidays, and this event helped me to focus on the beauty of winter, too, and awakened an active drive for staying much more fit,” said Laurinda Lacey, program analyst for the US Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board in Washington.
Guides, too, the lifebloods of SFL, are changed by their experience. Bob Civiak, an arms control consultant from Lebanon, N.H., has returned 13 times. “Seeing people who refuse to be limited by their disabilities is amazing and has tuned me into a community of mutually supportive people,” he said.
Pervading all is a love of skiing. “SFL has given me back my passion for outdoor activity, especially cross-country skiing,” said Bower. “I had skied quite a bit as a young adult, but as my sight diminished, I did not feel comfortable on skis by myself. With a guide, I can give it my all and not worry.”
SFL has been strengthened by a strong and enduring connection to Norway. The program is modeled on the Ridderrenn, an annual race that attracts more than 500 disabled skiers. A strong Norwegian contingent attends each SFL, which has infused the American event with elite skiing and enlightened approaches toward serving the disabled.
Brit Peterson grew up in Norway. “I’ve skied so long I don’t remember learning,” she said. Peterson came to the US on a student visa in 1939, would win the St. Olav Medal for her service to Norway during World War II, and served as an SFL guide from 1979 through 1985, when a car accident crushed both her ankles.
She was 66 at the time. Within a year, she was back at Ski for Light in Duluth, Minn., as a volunteer, with braces on both legs. A guide helped her ski once around the beginners loop. “I cried in pain,” recalled Peterson. “And happiness.” Peterson continued skiing as a mobility-impaired participant and lately has served a key role assisting SFL’s growing number of deaf-blind skiers.
At Anchorage, Peterson, now 84 and a US citizen, announced she would retire.
“A special aspect of Ski for Light is that it is not a place where a group of well-minded able-bodied people tell those of us with disabilities what we can and cannot do,” says SFL president Larry Showalter. “It is a program where disabled people drive the process that defines goals and programs, and where the sighted people work with us in partnership.”
As Peterson said, “You don’t do it for people, you do it with people.”
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