Working for the blind

Press, 8 January 1983, Page 14

Working for the blind

Working Blind. By Joyce Neill. Pegasus Press, 1982. 135 pp. $12.95. (Reviewed by Ralf Unger) Jim May spent all his working life devoted to the welfare of the blind in New Zealand. He had considerable effects on the understanding of this group internationally. Losing his sight as an army officer in the Desert during the Second World War when a mine exploded, his energy and administrative ability led to his appointment as the first Director of St Dunstan's in New Zealand, later widening out to the Foundation for the Blind and the establishment of the Homai Residential College for the education and training of young blind people. His sister-in-law has written this account of his life and times in a tone that

not only expresses her profound admiration for his achievements, but also gives details of the famous people with whom he had contact, such as the Freybergs and General Montgomery, no matter how fleeting. His family life and education up to his injury had few highlights, with such events as lacing a friend’s shoes together while he-sat in a church being given prominence as indicating a mischievous boy.. There is no doubt that Mr May deserves a place in the history of devoted workers for those born into, or cruelly plunged into a world of darkness and danger, but this book is simply a series of historical pegs on which might have been hung a much richer fabric of a man's life that could not have been internally as colourless as it here appears.