Blind businessman works to make entrepreneurs of other blind folks.

You might not see a rebel or a reformer when you watch Pat Wallace tapping down the street with his white cane, but that’s what he is.

Blind since he was 10 years old, Wallace has started and runs a string of businesses during the past 40 years. Now he’s two years into a push to help other blind folks start businesses of their own.

Born two months premature near Olympia, Washington, Wallace gradually lost his sight when he was five years old. Due to imperfectly formed retinas, his world went dark when he was 10.

That, however, was just the beginning of his story. He’s run a dozen businesses since then.

“I have the advantage of once being able to see,” he said. “So I know what the world looks like, and what the issues are for the blind.”

Working on limited funds, including $1,000 a month in Social Security disability payments and a few extra bucks from selling coffee by the pound, he has founded two fledgling organizations: Blind and Disabled Business Owners of America, and Blind Entrepreneurs of America.

His goal is to help a few of the 70 percent of the blind Americans who are unemployed to make new professions of their own.

Some 6.7 million Americans are visually disabled in the United States, according to the National Federation for the Blind — including some 83,500 in Oregon.

“I want to help other blind people and I’m so passionate about self-employment that I feel that I can really help,” he said. “I don’t have all the answers but I’m a great networker and I like working with people.”

“Blind people do teach themselves to ‘see’ things others can’t,” he said. “It’s easy to underestimate us.” A lot more blind people could be self-employed, he said, but they need help getting started.

“I’ve experienced Pat Wallace to be a person of vision,” said the Rev. Tom Disrud, associate minister of First Unitarian Church of Portland. He noted the irony of a blind person having exceptional foresight and insight. But Wallace, himself, said he doesn’t mind being seen as a visionary. In fact, he loves to joke about blindness, putting sighted people at ease where he can.

“Pat Wallace has a clear imagination of what he hopes to do in the world — to create something that empowers people living with disabilities to live out their dreams,” Disrud said. “He may just have the determination and imagination to make that happen.”

Wallace, 56, has been employed himself since 1975. He was the first blind Eagle Scout in the nine western states in that year. He’s worked as a veteran’s aid provider and a janitor’s assistant.

But in 1976, he started his own business, purchasing and dismantling vehicles and selling the parts.

Since then, he’s run concession stands, stacked boxes, worked in a senior center. But he also created thrift stores, purchased contents of storage units and sold them online and in garage sales from Tacoma to Spokane to Eureka, California.

Currently, he runs a nationwide telephone chat line to encourage blind people to start businesses such as piano tuning, massage therapy, Braille transcription, dog sitting, and telephone calling.

He has worked for government agencies to develop jobs for people. He has done multilevel marketing for Amway, Watkins, Shackley, Tupperware, Fuller Brush, AL Avira and Sprint. Right now he’s selling coffee for Mount Hood Roasters and Gano Coffee.

He has sold car window replacements by telephone. He created a demolition business to hire men to tear down buildings for remodeling and cleaning up and landscaping them.

He has been a member of Rotary, Kiwanis and Lion’s Clubs, an officer in the Federation of the Blind and the American Council for the Blind and president of a nonprofit called Sight. He’s held seminars for people with disabilities seeking small business opportunities.

“Pat Wallace works hard to open up self- employment opportunities for persons who are blind,” said Randy Hauth, who himself is blind and president of Portland-based Blind Employment Services of Tomorrow.

“Pat is passionate and committed in helping to make a difference for those who are blind, one job at a time. He has a vision that far and exceeds most who have sight. My hat is off to Pat for all he does within the blindness community.”

“I think he’ll do all right,” said Sue Staley, 65, a blind Portland entrepreneur who used to run a Braille transcription service. “Small business takes years to develop. I couldn’t do some of the things Pat is doing. But I think he’ll succeed.” Staley is vice president of Portland’s Centennial Lions Club where Wallace is president.

Wallace’s life partner, Teresa Christian, is a computer expert herself, and also blind. She’s learning to design Web pages and to use Microsoft Office despite her disability.

“He’s working very hard at this effort for blind entrepreneurs,” Christian said. “He’s just going for it, all out.” An entrepreneur herself, Christian has worked as a massage therapist, a social worker and a life coach, and now is moving further into technology for the blind.

“I wanted something fresh and exciting, and I found myself in the

blind community in Portland and I saw people were not getting help from the government or from anyone to do self-employment,” Wallace said.

He was like Paul on the Road to Damascus, he said. It was a revelation. “There it is. That is what I want to do!”

“You don’t do it alone,” he said. “You’ve got to network. You’ve got

to work with other people.”

He stands on the threshold, networking one day at a time through his travels around town, his telephone chat lines and his Website: blindanddisabledbusinessowners

ofAmerica.org.

“We’ll just keep on going,” he said. “It’ll happen. I’m in a hurry, but I’m patient too. It’s just going to take time.”
Source: http://www.pamplinmedia.com/pt/239-business/240963-101966-blind-businessman-works-to-make-entrepreneurs-of-other-blind-folks