It’s possible to think by talking with the right person you could together tell all the stories in the world. I spent yesterday in Greenwich Village with Arthur Krieck, musician, raconteur, and guide dog user. Arthur was born in the New York City in1950 to blind parents who as he puts it: “dressed like elegant grown ups every day” and “went out into the city commanding respect.” His mother was quite possibly the first woman to get a guide dog, receiving her first in 1955 back when the guide dog schools still operated on a military model–guide dog trainers were all former military men, clients were often veterans of WW II or Korea, and blind women need not apply. But his mother did apply and by the end of her life she had worked alongside 7 guide dogs, six of them from Guiding Eyes for the Blind. Her first guide was a boxer from The Seeing Eye named “Sugar”–back in the mid fifties several of the guide dog schools were turning out boxers and Arthur, who was five at the time recalls Sugar as both wonderfully loyal and affectionate.
“But my mom’s first dog was complicated for me,” he said. “Before Sugar came into our lives I was my mother’s guide. And then one day I realized everything had changed. We were in a grocery and I decided I wanted some OrangeAid. I still love OrangeAid to this day. Anyway, my mother wasn’t having it and told me she wasn’t buying any and I started whining and acting out the way kids do, and suddenly she said, ‘Sugar, forward’ and off she went down the street without me. She didn’t need me as her guide! I was shocked! My mother was independent! I was alone!”
Arthur, like me, was a partially sighted kid and wore glasses thick as padlocks, and so being alone on the street had to be a complex experience, especially in the Bronx. As he spoke I could see him navigating through domains of ambient light amid terrible glittering cars, his mother long gone, for guide dogs give their human partners tremendous speed and confidence.
Nowadays Arthur gets around the city with his own first guide dog, a cream colored yellow Lab named “Jillian” who is clearly in love with her man. She was also happy to make the acquaintance of my guide dog “Nira” who may very well be related to her as all the dogs at Guiding Eyes come from their Canine Development Center in Paterson, NY. They lay together under a table at Pete’s Tavern while we ate a long lunch and we talked about his parents generation of blind people and our own. I wondered if the dogs were telepathically communicating down on the floor.
We talked about the differences between his parents generation and our own. “Blind people could find jobs in New York in the fifties and sixties,” Arthur said. “My dad worked in a radio factory even though he was totally blind.” There was a lot of light industry in the city up until the ’70’s. When Reagan came it all went away. “My dad could alway s get a job in the old days,” Arthur noted. In our era 70% of the blind are unemployed.
We talked all day, covering guide dog history, cultural morays, politics, William Sloan Coffin (who Arthur knew at Riverside Church), life in the arts, and the joys of walking with our respective dogs. What a good day.
Posted with Blogsy
Planet of the Blind 
When I lived in Manhattan in 1981-83, I was working on the Upper East Side and one day met an elderly blind woman standing on a street corner, probably 1st Avenue and 90-91st. She was standing at the street corner and asking (well, bellowing) for help. I held her arm and walked her across 1st Avenue, and asked her why she didn’t have a guide dog. She replied that she was old, and had had 5 guide dogs and she couldn’t bear to lose another one because it was like losing a child, so she’d decided to rely on social services and people like me that would just show up and get her across the street. That’s how much someone can love their guide dog(s), thirty years ago.
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