Joyce Driben

Joyce Driben talks about being a blind woman and her journey to University and beyond. She focuses on her path to getting into University and how hard it was to get a Seeing... More »

Joyce Driben talks about being a blind woman and her journey to University and beyond. She focuses on her path to getting into University and how hard it was to get a Seeing Eye dog so that she didn’t have to walk around with a cane. She did very well for herself in University which made her and her family proud. One of the things she’s most proud of is the fact that she has worked for 25 years. It’s hard enough for women to get jobs back in her day nevermind a blind women. She’s very active in the community and is involved in a few organizations for the blind specifically B.O.L.D – Blind Outdoor Leisure Development. She loves the fact that she has been able to keep B.O.L.D going since she first started working with them. She talks about having a Seeing Eye dog and how much she likes it compared to a cane and some of the issues with having a dog. She has had a few injuries with her knees and ankles thus making it difficult for her to get around – she doesn’t prefer to be in a wheelchair and blind because she enjoys being independent. She must be a very popular lady in her community because her phone rang a few times in the middle of the interview.
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Joyce Driben and I grew up in Massachusetts actually, I was born in Boston Massachusetts section of Boston called Dorchester and I have a twin sister who is sited. Well... More »

Joyce Driben and I grew up in Massachusetts actually, I was born in Boston Massachusetts section of Boston called Dorchester and I have a twin sister who is sited. Well depending on which you name you like written I believe optimum prematurity is the current name but I grew up calling it retrolental fibroplasia. When we were about four, my younger brother was born and he has cerebral palsy. When it was time for him to be promoted to first grade, the Boston school system refused to promote him and that was long before the days of the ADA right to education and the legal advice my parents got was to move out of Boston so we moved to Brookline which is where I spent most of my growing up years. Now I went to Perkins and that’s the school for the blind in Massachusetts. I’m one of the few people you might talk to who liked going through the school for the blind and did not wish to be mainstreamed because I got some advantages that I wouldn’t have gotten in a larger high school. My Spanish class particularly in high school, the Spanish teacher I had always pulled in the Spanish speakers to work with our Spanish class. So I could when I was a senior in high school carry on a conversation in Spanish – you couldn’t have done that in public school. I got a chance to do some girl scout work where it was tailored to blind kids and actually it was my first experience with deaf/blind kids at the school for the blind because they pulled some deaf/blind kids into our troop and I was one of the people that got to learn how to communicate with them. Disadvantages, my social skills were not what they could have been and my math skills were not what they could have been. But I gained a lot when I learned to participate in sports. I had a good music background, played the piano for years and I’m in a coral group now. When I was at Brandeis which is where I did my undergraduate work, which is in Massachusetts. I wanted to go to a school; I wanted to get a degree in Social work. My parents were wonderful folks but they were very over protective and I knew that if I stayed in the Boston area I would never be able to have my own apartment and have my own freedom. So when it came time to apply to graduate schools I started writing letters to schools and again this was before the ADA or before right to education, any kind of laws. And I wrote about seven graduate schools of social work, I did tell them I was blind, wondered what their experience had been with blind people in the past and requested information about scholarships. Some schools never replied, the University of Chicago sent me a classic letter that basically said to the effect of the degree of your success will depend on the degree of your visual handicap; we have not had favorable experiences with blind people in the past. That was back in ’63. I interviewed at Columbia but did not get in and I interviewed at Pitt and they were the only school that offered me a scholarship and we had no money so I came to Pittsburgh. One of the things that was a real problem back then is getting a seeing eye dog admitted places. And I received a letter from the University of Pittsburgh housing department, telling me that I would not be able to have my dog in a dorm. Totally illegal now but not then and my mother and I came down after I graduated Brandeis in June of ’63. My mother and I took the bus because she was not going to drive this distance. We came down to Pittsburgh and we didn’t know anything about the city and I had not yet got my first Seeing Eye dog. I was using a cane and I was not particularly good with it. And one of the reasons I wanted a dog is that when I tried crossing streets with a cane I really didn’t really feel safe. And then I knew a number of people with dogs so I applied to the Seeing Eye and was accepted for a July ’63 class. But before I go into seeing I came down here with my mom and we started talking to people at Pitt about housing and they were pretty adamant that I was not going to be in the dorm with the dog. Somebody in the housing department, I don’t even know who she was said to us very quietly ‘you know, there’s this place on Craig street, I think it’s something like the Pennsylvania Association for the Blind, why don’t you go there to see if they can help you.’ So we went over and at that time it was called the Pennsylvania Association for the Blind and I told my tale of woe to the secretary and she had me see Marcello Goldberg and she said did they put it in writing, I said yes, she said do you have the letter with you? I said yes. She said may I see the letter? And that was the last I saw of the letter for many years. She immediately called Seeing eye to verify my story that I was indeed you know registered for a class and then she told me and my mother to enjoy Pittsburgh and she’d call us in a couple of days and she did.
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