When I was a student at Notre Dame, Marc Maurer (pronounced MAU-er) walked the campus faster than anyone else I knew, and I don’t just mean faster than any other blind person. I mean faster than anyone, period. Like twice as fast as the next fastest person. His cane, which he used to sweep the sidewalk in front of him like a hockey player on a breakaway, was as much for our benefit as his, because he was a man on a mission, he was coming through, and it was clear even back then that nothing or no one was going to stand in his way.
Marc was, to my knowledge, the best auto mechanic on campus. He’d wheel his Low Boy under a car chassis, listen to an engine, or spider around under the hood and demonstrate that while you might have had the supposedly functional eyes, you couldn’t look at a car with the skill that he could.
He was one of the best students at Notre Dame. And a party animal. And a ladies man. He had a great sense of humor. In Sorin Hall, where Marc and I lived, nobody thought of him as handicapped. Quite the contrary. He was gifted. By comparison, most of us were lazy, ignorant slugs.
I have not stayed in touch with Marc over the years, but I have kept tabs on him.
A few years ago, for example, Disney planned to release a feature film based on the sight-impaired Mr. Magoo cartoon character. At first I heard the rumors coming out of Disney’s film marketing department. “Someone in Washington representing blind people is causing trouble.” And then I heard the name Marc Maurer, and I had to smile, because I knew it was game over, a mismatch from the get-go. Dr. Maurer, who today is President of the National Federation of the Blind, chewed up the Mouse and spit it out. Making fun at the expense of the sight-impaired is a mistake Disney will never make again.
Later this week, I will be conducting a GameChangers workshop for Executive MBA students at Notre Dame, and I intend to mention Dr. Maurer. In researching him, I came across one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. In keeping with the character of the Marc Mauer I knew at Notre Dame, the speech is by turns intelligent, inspiring, and hilarious. Take the time to listen to it.
Some of the beautiful ideas Dr. Maurer expresses in this speech:
If we let a single characteristic become the identifier of a person, it ensures that our estimate of them will be wrong. Value is measured not by a single characteristic, but by the aggregate of those possessed by each individual. Each characteristic contributes to the whole, and each may strengthen or hinder the person possessing it.
We live in a society in which blindness is thought to be a condition to be repaired. Eyes that cannot see are broken. However, it is false to say that the person who owns them is broken.
We, the blind, do not need to be fixed. We are fine the way we are. We can find our meaning and our purpose without modification or alteration.
I do not believe that blindness and helplessness are synonymous. I carry the cane because it is a tool that helps me travel. It is a tool of my independence, not a badge of my helplessness.
Learning should not be limited to what trains the mind, it should also train the spirit.
Your life belongs to you!
Note that it’s Federation OF the Blind. Not FOR the Blind. It’s not about what we can do for blind people. It’s about what blind people can do for themselves, and if we’re lucky, for us. Yeah, Dr. Marc Maurer is blind. And his vision is just fine.
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“TRON came true,” says one of my geek friends, referencing the early 1980s film about a gamer played by Jeff Bridges who gets zapped into a digital universe inside the memory of a computer network. What my friend means is that today, entire populations are getting zapped into that digital universe. Avatars, auctions, blogs, social networks, and databases storing information about everything from bank accounts to medical records comprise primitive alter-egos that project our personalities and do our bidding — and if we command them to, they’ll do it while we’re walking the dog or drinking a Schlitz at the corner bar. 
Ollie Johnston died Monday at the age of 95. Ollie was the last surviving member of 
