Diana: Sister, Teacher, Guide and Pathfinder

In 1959 a guidance counselor at Beavercreek High School told my sister Diana, “With your eye problems you will never make it in college. Just forget about it. Get married. Raise a family.”

That advice only deepened her determination. She did it all in due time, in her own way –college, marriage, family. She became a guidance counselor herself. She certainly was the most important guide and pathfinder in my life.

Diana was the first in our family to graduate from college, and she did it a decade before anyone in America imagined accommodations and services for college students with disabilities. This photo was taken by our brother David moments after she received her diploma at Ohio State University in 1964. Two days later she would marry Harold Jamison, the love of her life. Two months after that she began her first career as a primary school teacher.

Diana’s eye problems began when she was four or five years old and were not understood until I was diagnosed with the same genetic disease when I was a freshman in college.  Late as it was, the diagnosis opened up a second career for my sister. She became an intake counselor at a large retina clinic in Memphis, helping newly diagnosed patients find a way through the maze of social services for blind and visually impaired people. She did the same for me.

It goes far beyond the publishing capacity of Facebook to tell the whole story of how Diana shaped my life. For now, let me tell you two stories from the 1990s when she launched a third career as a special ed teacher.

Several nights a week we found ourselves on opposite ends of a long-distance phone line sorting out the same life scenarios. Middle-aged with children, half-blind and sliding further down the path, working our way through graduate school a course at a time, butting heads with the lingering inaccessibility of university libraries and computer systems. As the Marvin Gaye song goes, “Makes you wanna holler!” We knew we could do that with each other, for each other. It’s still hard to believe I can’t call her up to holler now.

In this time our mother Mary Lou lived with Alzheimer disease at Friends Care Center. One day on a visit I tried to explain to her that her children were in grad school. I thought that might please her.

She said in a baffled tone, “Are you sure you two are smart enough to do that?”

For an instant I remembered a line from a B.B. King blues song: “Only my mother loves me, and she may be jiving, too.”

“I don’t know, Mom,” I said finally, “but we will try.”

A year later Diana had to explain to our mother that I had a heart attack and underwent emergency open heart surgery. She told me later how Mom was still a worried mother, frightened and confused.

She asked Diana, “What do I do now?”

“Just pray with me, Mother. Just pray with me.”