Interviews to Empower Presents: Dan Oates

Welcome to Interviews to Empower, where we feature inspiring individuals to encourage you to become lifelong learners. This month’s interviewee is Dan Oates, a man who’s tireless work has provided many opportunities for children who are blind and visually impaired.

Q: First, tell us a little about your self.

A: Currently, I am retired from the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and the Blind and living in Romney. I travel a lot speaking about Space Camp for Interested Visually Impaired Students (SCIVIS). My goal is to interest more students in attending the program. My girlfriend, Jenny, lives in Oklahoma so I take every opportunity to go and spend time together.  We love to travel and see locally and nationally produced theatre performances.

I spend about four months a year now in Huntsville, Alabama.  During the summer I work as an Education Program Manager at Space Camp.  My job duties include managing 12-14 teachers who coordinate and lead the Space Camp Educators Program.  We host about 500 teachers from 30-35 countries attending Space Camp each summer.  I return in September to oversee the SCIVIS program for about 200 blind and low vision students from about 25 U. S. states and 10 foreign countries. During a two-week period in February and March, I return to Space Camp to assist with the Honeywell Leadership Challenge Academy (HLCA).  These are two one-week programs for Honeywell employee’s children, ages 16-18, to attend a leadership-based Space Camp program.  I act as a corporate liaison between Honeywell and Space Camp. While at home I enjoy working on genealogy, local history projects and working out at the Wellness Center. I am also a member of the Board of Directors for the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation (NOAH). NOAH’s mission is to act as a conduit for accurate and authoritative information about all aspects of living with albinism and to provide a place where people with albinism and their families, in the United States and Canada, can find acceptance, support and fellowship.

Q: How did you get into working with children with disabilities, especially with blindness?

A: I have had a long history with the school beginning with my earliest years.  My uncle and mother worked at the school. My neighbors, while I was growing up, worked there.  I can remember going to school to visit my Uncle Bill Oates, who was a houseparent at Seaton Hall for secondary deaf boys.  I spent many days attending youth group meetings, Boy Scout troop meetings, and just hanging out there.

My mother was the superintendent’s secretary, when she passed away suddenly in 1979.  She always wanted me to work there because it was such a great place.  But my plans were totally different than what she wanted for me.  I had always told her, “those kids are weird!”

After graduating from Fairmont State College with a B. S. degree in Recreational Programming, I landed a job at the Mineral County Parks and Recreation Commission in Keyser, WV.  One of the skills I learned while working in Keyser was chair caning – repairing and replacing old seats in antique chairs.  Something I felt was a complete waste of my time.  I worked there until spring of 1979, when the Federal funding was cut.  During this time, my father had a serious heart attack and my mother died in April.   I returned to Romney without a job and to care for my father while he recuperated from his heart attack and loss of his wife.

During that time to make a living I caned chairs, stripped furniture, and sold antiques.

One day, Mr. Ralph Brewer, principal at the West Virginia School for the Blind, called and asked if I would be interested in a three-month job filling a vacancy.  He said, “I hear you can cane chairs.  Just wondering if you could teach a blind child how to do that?” I replied, “Yes I can!” I had no idea but I needed a job.

Those three months changed my life!  I soon realized that my perspective of “those kids” being weird was so wrong.  I didn’t understand them but soon realized they were no different than other children. 

Eventually Mr. Brewer called me to his office and offered to pay for my Masters in Education and Orientation and Mobility certification if I would return to school.  So off to the University of Pittsburgh I went.  At the beginning of the 1981-1982 school year, I returned as WVSB’s first certified O & M instructor.

In the end, my mother got her wish and as usual, mother’s are always right!  So interesting to me that a skill that I thought was a waste of time combined with a misperception of some really neat kids equaled a career!

Q: Let’s talk about your career. What are some things you have accomplished while working in the field of blindness? Also, what challenges did you, and do you still, face in the field?

A: During my thirty years I had two job titles.  I was an orientation and mobility instructor from 1981 to 1994.  From 1994 to my retirement at the end of the 2011-2012 school year I was an Educational Outreach Specialist.

Early in my employment, Mr. Brewer began sending me to the University of Virginia to take classes in low vision. This quickly became an interest of mine.  He asked me to coordinate a low vision clinic on campus.  I worked with a number of optometrists over the years for our clinics.

In 1993 I was asked to present at the Outreach Forum at the Indiana School for the Blind.  These are outreach professionals from all of the schools for the blind throughout the United States.  There I learned of a traveling low vision clinic in Iowa that I felt would be wonderful to have in West Virginia.  Upon my return from the Forum, I pitched the idea to our superintendent, Max Carpenter, and he denied the request.  When I became employed as an Outreach Specialist I pitched the idea again and Mr. Carpenter shot me down again.  Knowing the idea was a good one, I went to Dr. Terry Schwartz of the Department of Ophthalmology at West Virginia University and she was all for it.  Dr. Jim Jones, an optometrist at WVU, and I traveled to Charleston to the Lions Conservation Foundation and presented the idea.  They granted us $6000.  The low vision clinic was off and running.  It soon became apparent to Dr. Schwartz and myself that due to our current job responsibilities we would be unable to manage the program.  Dr. Schwartz found some funding through her department and we hired Rebecca Coakley as the coordinator of the project.  It was through her enthusiasm, vision, and tireless energy the Children’s Vision Rehabilitation Project (CVRP) was born.  Today that project has helped children from all over the world and Becky Coakley is one of the leading low vision educators in the world.  I’m very proud of my work in beginning that program.

During this time I was selected by the West Virginia Board of Education to accompany ten gifted students to Russia on a Space Exchange. These students were not blind but the top ten academic students in the state.  This was a very scary trip for me as I had only been on a plane once and never outside the United States.  Trips to Russia in 1993 and 1994 were so valuable to my maturity as an educator, allowing me to see other countries and educational systems.  As a result of the success of my first two trips, Mr. Carpenter and my office partner, Paula Athey, went to Russia in 1995.  While touring the school for the blind there, Paula was contacted by a parent of a child with an inoperable brain tumor.  Paula, myself, and many other state residents worked hard to allow Yelena Shilova to come to the United States for surgery in Huntington, WV.  Today, Yelena is alive and thriving in Russia.

My sixteen years working throughout the state as one of the coordinators for the INSITE program were probably the most rewarding.  Many times I was the first educator parents met after they had received the news of their babies diagnosis of vision loss.  I traveled all over our beautiful state and spent time in every county and met hundreds of families and educators.  I would like to think my knowledge in the field of blindness and low vision helped families begin to accept their child as a productive member of society.  

I feel my biggest challenge was staying current on all of the innovations in the field.  There was times that living in rural West Virginia limited me in this area.  I was fortunate to travel extensively within the U. S., Russia, Ireland, St. Lucia, and Australia to continue learning throughout my career.  I have always been blessed to work with professionals who shared their knowledge freely and I have always had a passion for learning.

Q: A lot of alumni of WVSB remember their experiences at Space Camp, from scuba diving to feeling what it is like on the moon to jumping off a 40 foot tower into freezing cold water And more! :) You were instrumental in getting that program off the ground. Can you please talk about that?

A: Contrary to popular belief, I had little to do with the initial program.  Edward Buckbee, the founder of Space Camp, grew up in Romney.  When he began to notice the desire of children with special needs to attend his program, he reached out to his friend, Max Carpenter.  Mr. Carpenter contacted Ralph Brewer, principal at the School for the Blind, and together they formed a committee to look into the possibilities.  I was a member of that committee but was not slated to go on the trip.  Mr. Carpenter, Mr. Brewer, Kathy Johnson (math teacher), and Michele Hooker Slocum (science teacher) drove to Alabama for the first meeting and overview of Space Camp in 1989. It wasn’t until the return of the committee that it became apparent that the services of a mobility instructor would be needed.  I was extremely excited about going and was so honored to accompany twenty amazing students on this trip in December of 1990.

Kathy Johnson was the early coordinator of the program and I was simply a chaperone who took orders, followed students to their activities, made sure everyone had low vision devices and knew where they were.  As the program continued and more students attended from other schools for the blind, I began to see potential for the program to attract hundreds of students.  Eventually, I approached Kathy with the idea of inviting students attending public schools and opening the program to all students with blindness and low vision.  My contacts through outreach made this possible.  Soon I handled all registration and contacting new students and Kathy handled materials and programming.  Our program slowly grew with Kathy always reining me in to slow down and make sure we were maintaining a quality program and not growing too fast.  By the late 1990’s and into the 2000’s, we were hosting between 150-200 students each year.  The program was named Space Camp for Interested Visually Impaired Students (SCIVIS) sometime in the late 1990’s and continues to be known by that today.  Since 1990 over 4000 students have attended the program. Kathy continued to work with the program until she retired in 2007 and soon thereafter passed away in 2010.

In 2007, I was honored by being selected as an inaugural member of the Space Camp Hall of Fame.  I have often been referred to, as the founder of SCIVIS but that is not true.  Each year we honor Mr. Edward Buckbee, Mr. Ralph Brewer, and Mr. Max Carpenter as the SCIVIS founders.  During graduation we further honor Mr. Carpenter and Kathy Johnson by selecting a special graduate who has overcome many obstacles to receive the Carpenter/Johnson Award.  In my nomination for the Hall of Fame it was stated that I am the “heart and soul of SCIVIS”.  I’m comfortable with that!

Q: Do you have any advice for other professionals working in the field of blindness, or for anyone who happens to be blind?

A: My advice to any vision professional would be to seek out opportunities to learn from others, visit other schools for the blind and conferences.  I’ve always said, “I haven’t had an original idea.”

Also find your passion and work it.  I was unaware of the passion that I would develop working with blind and low vision students.  Fortunately, my mother, Mr. Brewer, and others saw it first and directed me “blindly” towards it.  I would say my success in the field was based on the resources I made.  I also discovered that I was better working for children than working with them.

Q: We understand that you have published a book about a Confederate soldier? What is the title, the story behind it, and how can readers obtain a copy?

A: Yes, the title of the book is “Hanging Rock Rebel, Lt. John Blue’s War in West Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley Along with Other Writings”.

Lt. John Blue was a native born son of Romney. His adventures prior to and after joining the Civil War were detailed in weekly articles in the Hampshire Review from the spring of 1898 until April of 1901.  I have taken those first hand accounts of his story and placed them in a book format with accompanying pictures, chapters, and index, both last name and regimental.

The story of Lt. Blue intrigued me during my middle school years as I was blessed to have history teachers who valued teaching local history.  Upon discovering his writings in the local paper, I was amazed at reading a first hand account of over 300 pages; virtually unheard of!

The book is available in print for $22 and can be found at local bookstores or at http://www.fortpearsallpress.com.

Mr. Oates, it has been a pleasure interviewing you and learning more about you and the others who have made O&M and Space Camp some of our best memories at WVSB. Thank you so much for all you have done and continue to do to further the education of blind and visually impaired children.

A big thank you to our readers, too. This blog is about to become one year old, and we could not have made it this far without you.

We hope you will come back in two weeks for another post. We have some exciting news coming up about our new book, “ducking into UEB”, a braille manual for all students, children and adults who want a fun way to learn unified English braille.

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