[nfbwatlk] Article About Kirk Adams

[Alco Canfield]

Blind CEO a Lighthouse first 

By Nancy Bartley 
Seattle Times staff reporter 

As the talking alarm clock tells him it's 5:30 and time to get up, Kirk
Adams' day unfolds in sound, scent and touch.

The aroma of coffee drifts through the house. He hears his wife's soft voice
in the kitchen of their small, white Leschi home as he reads the morning
news
with his fingertips. The sound of his children clomping on the floor lets
him know they're getting up.

The day for Adams - the first blind chief executive officer and president of
the Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind - has begun.

In the organization's 90-year history, only executives with vision have been
at the helm of the organization, which offers training and employment for
the
blind. Proponents for the blind say his appointment illustrates how
technological advances, like talking computers and laptops with Braille
keyboards and
screens, now open opportunities for talented people to do most of the jobs a
sighted person can do. They say Adams' appointment is not just a promotion
but a statement that disabilities don't have to be limiting.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Whitman College and a recipient of a master's
degree from Seattle University, Adams, 46, was employed by the agency for
eight
years before the board selected him to take over for President George
Jacobson, who retired Friday after 40 years - 29 of them leading the
organization.

The time has come for a blind president, said Jacobson, who mentored Adams.
"He's a good choice to fill my sandals."

Paula Hoffman, a board member who hired Adams, said he was promoted because
he's skilled, has a background in nonprofit management, and "he's
brilliant."
That he happens to be blind "is a bonus," she said.

"It's gives him so much credibility with blind people and other blind
agencies ... and he's just a regular Northwest guy," Hoffman said. He's got
a favorite
table at the Virginia Inn, never misses opening day of fishing season and
loves the Mariners.

Help with the details

On a recent morning, as Adams' family stretches and yawns and sinks into
chairs at the breakfast table, his wife, Roslyn Adams, stirs eggs on the
stove.
Does he want anything to eat? When does his flight leave? And what about the
TV appearance in Spokane? Does he want the blue shirt or white?

As soon as she drives him to the office in time for his 8 a.m.
teleconference, she'll go home and pack for him. As he gets out of the car,
he raps his knuckles
against the window in a gesture of affection, then - seemingly effortlessly
- navigates his way up the stairs, into the building and to his office.

His computer gives him a message. He calls a shop foreman on a standard
cellphone, having memorized the keys. With his white cane held before him,
he makes
his way downstairs and into a workshop. There he asks a foreman, who can
see, for an elbow, and takes hold of it as he walks along the aisles, the
cane
swishing from side to side.

There's the hiss of compressors and hum of machinery - nearly all run by
people who are visually impaired. The machines have been modified for the
blind
and vision-impaired. Sometimes the modification was simply getting a larger
computer screen to make the type bigger, and other times it was adding a
computer
program that talked, giving instructions to a router operator.

"Where we see the disconnect is with the kids" coming into the Lighthouse,
Adams said. Most have not gone to special schools for the blind, so they are
not proficient in Braille or other technology to make them employable. And
while sighted kids get jobs "flipping burgers," blind kids miss the
opportunity
for entry-level jobs.

"I want Lighthouse to be a beacon of [Braille] competency," he said.

The blind can do most jobs, except those involving driving. But because most
employers don't realize that or aren't willing to pay the extra cost to make
a workplace accessible to the blind, there are limited employment
opportunities, Adams said.

As many as 70 percent of all adult blind people are unemployed, according to
one survey.

That makes organizations like the Lighthouse, which employs 200 blind
people, 40 of them who are also deaf, vital as both employers and places for
learning
"blindness skills," like reading Braille and becoming familiar with
technology that compensates for being unable to see, he said.

Those skills Adams learned early in the Oregon School for the Blind in
Silverton, which he attended as a day student. By the fifth grade, he
entered public
school. Later, when the family moved to Snohomish, where his father, Jim
Adams, became a coach at Snohomish High School, Kirk ran track, skied and
wrestled.

The oldest of three children, Adams was born with crossed eyes. He had
surgery to repair them and apparently had an adverse reaction to the
anesthetic,
causing hemorrhaging that eventually detached the retinas.

He was only 5 at the time, and although his vision was fading, he never
seemed to be any different from a typical boy, his father said. His parents
vowed
to never overprotect him.

Learning to ski, through the Ski for Light program for the blind, came
easily. The person who skied behind him was his eyes and told him to turn
left or
right. He went to championship meets across the nation.

When he went away to Whitman College, his father was looking for Seattle
students with whom Adams might be able to ride to and from campus. A college
newsletter
had photos of freshman students from Seattle. Jim Adams saw a photo of
Roslyn Jackson and told his son, "Hey, she's beautiful. You should call
her."

Once he was on campus, he did. Eventually they married and now have a son,
Tyler, 21, a college freshman, and daughter, Rachel, 17, a freshman at
Garfield
High School.

On the move

Adams was in Spokane early last week announcing the opening of a Lighthouse
for the Blind there and made an appearance on a local television station, in
addition to meeting with architects and planners. Then he was off to Florida
on another business trip.

Through technology, or sometimes requests as basic as asking for "an elbow"
or an explanation, Adams navigates strange airports, subways, machine shops,
high-traffic streets, shopping, cooking and the daily routine of running a
corporation. He credits his ease to having learned blindness skills early in
life and to a world that is slowly, steadily opening, giving blind people
access to some of the opportunities the sighted take for granted.

On Adams' desk are tactile objects - shells, a prickly sea star, a
jagged-edged amethyst, a smooth rock. He's a nature lover who in 1980
climbed Mount Rainier
with famed climber Jim Whittaker.

On the wall of the office is a quote from a Sherman Alexie novel about a man
who stood in the dark, the only light the distant stars, small miracles that
"happened at the edges of his peripheral vision, tiny wonders exploding
while his back was turned."

Although Adams cannot read the type - it's not in Braille - he knows the
words like he knows his world: through his senses and his heart.

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or 
nbartley at seattletimes.com

Copyright C 2008 The Seattle Times Company

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