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Letter to the editor

Blindness has never held him back

He's a successful lawyer but also a "determined humanitarian."

By ELISABETH DYER Times Staff Writer
Published October 12, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Special to the Times] Richard Salem went skydiving to celebrate his 60th birthday. He bike rides, skis, climbs mountains. The Duke law grad started Enable America in 2002 to help disabled people get jobs. Richard Salem.

As midnight approached, friends tapped on the window to his bedroom, where he had stayed for six solitary months.

Sixteen-year-old Richard Salem pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and grabbed sandals. He raised his window and leapt into a dark abyss - a 10-foot descent, around shrubs, into his friends' arms.

They were off to their old haunts. They cruised the North Carolina beaches, laughed at goofy people on the boardwalk. The radio blared popular tunes and a sea breeze cooled their faces.

It was pure magic.

"For a fleeting moment," Salem said, "I forgot that I couldn't see."

* * *

Since then, Salem hasn't let much slow him down. He says he was the first blind student at Duke University's law school. He ran for U.S. Congress in 1977. He worked on Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign.

He founded a Tampa law firm in 1981 that works with companies in 17 countries and more than 30 U.S. cities. As a lawyer, he represents business interests in court and before government agencies.

Now 60, he sometimes lives for days without consciously thinking that he can't see. He climbs mountains, snow skis. He went skydiving in March to celebrate his birthday.

He does yoga and rides his bike on Davis Islands with Robert Holmes, a brigadier general at MacDill Air Force Base.

Every morning he prays for strength to face the day before leaving his room.

On Wednesday, Salem will speak in New York City for Disability Mentoring Day. He is passionate about the topic. Most people in similar situations are denied the American dream, he says.

In 2002, he founded Enable America to help people with disabilities find employment. The nonprofit organization links disabled people to transportation, job seeking skills, technology that can help compensate for disabilities, and other services.

Salem meets with prospective employers, business leaders and managers and tells them the benefits of hiring disabled people - good attendance rates and problem solving skills.

"I think about those 18- to 20-million young people who are sitting out life, watching the parade go by, so I went to work."

* * *

Salem was 16, talking to a friend on the sidelines of a baseball game when he heard the bat connect with a ball.

He next woke up in an emergency room. The ball had hit his head and caused a hemorrhage. Vision in one eye gradually became cloudy. His father, themayor of Havelock, S.C., at the time, and his mother, took him to the best doctors.

One broke the news to him: Soon he would not be able to see at all. His MG sports car and beach buggy sat in the driveway.

"My world crumbled in front of me," he said.

But things changed that night on the beach, with his friends, when he forgot he couldn't see. Since then he has been finding ways to live productively.

When he forgets his disability, so do others. Some talk with him for hours without knowing he's blind.

But the reality of his disability catches up with him.

He struggled through law school untangling reel-to-reel tapes, which were the audiobooks of that era.

Still, he made it through, setting the tone for how he dealt with challenges to come. People with disabilities have refined their problem-solving skills, he said. Today, he often works 16-hour days.

He takes a pen and pretends to write on a legal pad periodically during office meetings. He learned the technique at a hospital years ago. He can't see the scribbles but the idea is that doing what others see as "normal" makes them more comfortable with his blindness.

Some challenges, though, can't be solved with ready-made techniques.

"I'll find myself in the middle of a hallway or some place and it will dawn on me, I have no idea where I am," Salem said with a laugh.

He hires assistants to drive and accompany him wherever he goes. His computer also converts text to speech.

There are benefits in not seeing, Salem said. He does not judge a person by appearance, only envisioning opportunities to collaborate.

He describes the view from his 32nd floor office in the Bank of America Plaza downtown as a compilation of details others describe to him.

"Wherever I look, I do see a picture. It's not like I'm living in a darkened world."

His secrets to success: a positive perspective and time management. He finds new ways to get the job done. He manages his time to the second. For instance, his commute from Davis Islands to downtown takes 4.5 minutes - time to make a quick phone call or scan the newspaper.

His legacy: He wants to help 3 percent of unemployed disabled people find jobs.

"I want to be known as being a determined humanitarian," he said.

* * *

Sometimes he thinks back to that night more than four decades ago.

"Son, you've been in that room for an eternity," Salem remembered his father telling him. As his vision had deteriorated, the teenager had retreated.

"The other thing," his father said: "You've got to keep fighting it."

He hasn't stopped yet.

Elisabeth Dyer can be reached at edyer@sptimes.com or 813 226-3321.

BIO

Richard Salem

Age: 60

Home: Davis Islands

Family: Married for 30 years to Eileen; two daughters, Susan, 21, and Lizzi, 16

Job: Lawyer

On disabilities: Eighty percent of people will have a disability at some point in their lives, and 70 percent of them will want to work but not have a job. Yet disabled people show up for work more often and keep jobs longer, he says.

Do-overs? "People ask if you could go back and live your life as a sighted person, would you? I think of all the wonderful people I've met and opportunities I've had. I have to say, 'No, I wouldn't.' "

Footnote: When chips implanted behind the eyes to re-create vision are perfected, Salem will get in line.

For fun: He might not tell anyone for at least six months.

[Last modified October 11, 2007, 07:36:40]