Brighter futures for many blind veterans

July 17, 1944 is a day Bob Routh will never forget. Based at Port Chicago, California, a Navy base 30 miles northeast of San Francisco, the 19-year-old sailor turned toward a window in his barracks one night after hearing an explosion.

“It was the greatest fireworks you ever wanted to see,” he recounts. The fireworks, in fact, turned out to be the last thing Bob would ever physically see. He remembers it as the night he lost his eyesight from both the flying glass and an ensuing concussion.
Port Chicago had been the busiest ammunition depot on the West Coast during World War II. Although the Navy had been warned by the Coast Guard of impending disaster due to unsafe conditions at the port, procedures did not change. Bob was among the 390 sailors badly injured. Some 320 died.

A tragedy such as Bob’s could have easily meant the end of purposeful living. Not only was he completely blind, he was also a proud African-American intent on earning a living during a time of racial inequality and intense segregation. Instead of submitting to defeat, Bob refused to abandon the bright future and full life that he had envisioned for himself before the injury.
During his journey, Bob discovered an organization and a number of related causes that would serve him and to which he would dedicate his life for much of the next 55 years. The Blinded Veterans Association, or BVA, elected Bob to the National Board of Directors in 1973-74 and then again in the mid-1980s, when he served as National Secretary, National Vice President and National President. But a major turning point for Bob came in 1949-50 as he completed a Veterans Administration (now named Department of Veterans Affairs) blind rehabilitation program at Mines, Illinois, a program wholeheartedly endorsed by BVA. “The mobility I gained at Hines gave me freedom, and my newly discovered freedom gave me life again,” he said.

Many of our nation’s veterans from the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are facing adversity similar to that endured by Bob as he recovered from his injuries in the late 1940’s.

BVA as an organization traces its roots back to World War II. Since then, the organization has been instrumental in spearheading and helping to sustain programs and services meant to give aid to blinded veterans.
To learn more, call 1-800-669-7079 or go to www.bva.org.