me several times. At one point we lost touch for a while. Finally Mr. Herbo looked up my number one day and gave me a call, out of the blue. When I picked up the phone, he said, “Hello, Mike.”
“Hi, Mr. Herbo!” It had been fifteen years, but I will never forget his voice. I always end our conversations with, “Just remember, Mr. Herbo, I’ll always be younger than you.”
While many of my teachers were as encouraging and accommodating as Mr. Herboldsheimer, my high school experience was not without obstacles. In the spring of my freshman year, I was called into the assistant principal’s office. “We have a problem, Mike,” he said. He opened up the Palmdale High School student handbook and began to read: “No live animals of any kind are allowed on school buses.” I had been riding the bus to school with my very first guide dog, Squire. We were both still new and building our handler–guide dog relationship, but Squire was doing a great job. He minded his own business on the bus and had never caused any problems. The other kids were interested in him for the first few days, but after the novelty wore off, they went back to discussing kid stuff, and everything went back to normal. So I was shocked and confused. The law is clear. Certified guide dogs can legally go anywhere a blind person goes.
I went home and checked the handbook for myself. That I even had access to the handbook was due to the work of a wonderful local group called the Antelope Valley Braille Transcribers. At that time, not many Braille books were mass-produced, so many books and other printed materials had to be transcribed into Braille, page by page, by volunteers. Later on, in the late ’60s, transcribed books began to be mass-produced using a thermoforming device. It was a slow process whereby the bumps on a Braille page were transferred to a special sheet of plastic. The plastic sheet was heated and then used to imprint a sheet of paper, resulting in a duplicate page of Braille. The process was something like a printing press, but it was revolutionary and meant that books and other printed materials could be produced cheaper and more quickly, a page at a time. But at this point, we didn’t have access to this type of device and that meant most school-related materials had to be laboriously hand transcribed.
I pored over my hand-inscribed Braille student handbook and found the school bus rules. It was right there under my fingers. According to the handbook, Squire was not allowed on the bus.
Guide Dogs for the Blind had given me a special card to carry. It read, “California law guarantees a blind person the legal right to be accompanied by a specially trained dog guide in all public accommodations and on all public transportation.” But the card wasn’t any help now.
As irritated as my dad had been when the neighbors called to complain about the blind kid riding his bike, he was a hundred times more incensed now. He called the assistant principal that evening and asked if there had been a complaint about Squire. There had not. The school offered me alternate transportation; they planned on hiring a car and driver to take me to and from school. But this idea, besides costing the school district unnecessary expense, went against everything my parents had tried to do. My entire childhood was about finding a way for me to fit in and function in the community, not separating me and treating me as special or disabled.
My dad requested a special school board meeting to discuss the issue. Meanwhile, the district hired a private car and driver to ferry me back and forth to school. The Saturday before the school board meeting, my dad spent the day in the Palmdale Public Library, scouring Black’s Law Dictionary , known as the most widely used law dictionary in the United States and the reference of choice for definitions in legal briefs and court opinions.
California law was clear: “Any blind person, deaf person, or disabled person
“Hi, Mr. Herbo!” It had been fifteen years, but I will never forget his voice. I always end our conversations with, “Just remember, Mr. Herbo, I’ll always be younger than you.”
While many of my teachers were as encouraging and accommodating as Mr. Herboldsheimer, my high school experience was not without obstacles. In the spring of my freshman year, I was called into the assistant principal’s office. “We have a problem, Mike,” he said. He opened up the Palmdale High School student handbook and began to read: “No live animals of any kind are allowed on school buses.” I had been riding the bus to school with my very first guide dog, Squire. We were both still new and building our handler–guide dog relationship, but Squire was doing a great job. He minded his own business on the bus and had never caused any problems. The other kids were interested in him for the first few days, but after the novelty wore off, they went back to discussing kid stuff, and everything went back to normal. So I was shocked and confused. The law is clear. Certified guide dogs can legally go anywhere a blind person goes.
I went home and checked the handbook for myself. That I even had access to the handbook was due to the work of a wonderful local group called the Antelope Valley Braille Transcribers. At that time, not many Braille books were mass-produced, so many books and other printed materials had to be transcribed into Braille, page by page, by volunteers. Later on, in the late ’60s, transcribed books began to be mass-produced using a thermoforming device. It was a slow process whereby the bumps on a Braille page were transferred to a special sheet of plastic. The plastic sheet was heated and then used to imprint a sheet of paper, resulting in a duplicate page of Braille. The process was something like a printing press, but it was revolutionary and meant that books and other printed materials could be produced cheaper and more quickly, a page at a time. But at this point, we didn’t have access to this type of device and that meant most school-related materials had to be laboriously hand transcribed.
I pored over my hand-inscribed Braille student handbook and found the school bus rules. It was right there under my fingers. According to the handbook, Squire was not allowed on the bus.
Guide Dogs for the Blind had given me a special card to carry. It read, “California law guarantees a blind person the legal right to be accompanied by a specially trained dog guide in all public accommodations and on all public transportation.” But the card wasn’t any help now.
As irritated as my dad had been when the neighbors called to complain about the blind kid riding his bike, he was a hundred times more incensed now. He called the assistant principal that evening and asked if there had been a complaint about Squire. There had not. The school offered me alternate transportation; they planned on hiring a car and driver to take me to and from school. But this idea, besides costing the school district unnecessary expense, went against everything my parents had tried to do. My entire childhood was about finding a way for me to fit in and function in the community, not separating me and treating me as special or disabled.
My dad requested a special school board meeting to discuss the issue. Meanwhile, the district hired a private car and driver to ferry me back and forth to school. The Saturday before the school board meeting, my dad spent the day in the Palmdale Public Library, scouring Black’s Law Dictionary , known as the most widely used law dictionary in the United States and the reference of choice for definitions in legal briefs and court opinions.
California law was clear: “Any blind person, deaf person, or disabled person
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