Page 6
University Daily Kansan, November 12, 1980
Professor Hallenbeck lectures to his psychology of sleep and dreaming class in Lippincott Hall while King takes a nap.
Sharing a quiet moment with King at home, Hallenbeck thinks his two-year-old German shepherd is more than just a pet or guide dog.
With Lippincott's steps behind them, Hallenbeck and King prepare to cross Jayhawk Boulevard.
Photos by CHRIS TODD
Story by VANESSA HERRON
Charles Hallenbeck, KU professor of psychology, is a person who cannot see. He is not a blind person. There is a difference. he said.
The dog walked slightly ahead of him, avoiding boxes, oranges and the cars behind.
In the cold October rain, a man and
a dog walk down the street near
bassington. Lampincock Hill.
When the two stopped in the shelter of Lippincott's front steps, students who huddled near them turned to stare briefly at the dog, the gray tinted glasses the man wore, and the sightless eyes behind them.
"There is an automatic devaluation when someone with a disability is regarded as a disabled person," he said. "It labels the whole person."
Hallenbeck said many people unjustly thought that a single disability, such as the loss of sight or hearing, affected the entire person.
For example, waiters sometimes ask his dinner companions to order for him in restaurants.
AFTER YEARS of such treatment,
they who serve are made to believe
by divine grace or intention.
"As a result, they often settle in life to much less than they need to," he said.
Hallenbeck did not settle for less in life. After serving as chief of psychology for a Cleveland, Ohio, hospital, he studied computer science and then came to the University of Kansas.
Hallenbeck, who now lives alone in a
King is two years old and is a recent graduate of training school. He's still too friendly with strangers, and sometimes on October 17, he was on a trip. That he led Hallenbeck in puddings and twice passed the entrance of their apartment.
Lawrence apartment, gets around with the help of King, his German shepherd
"Come on, King, this is no time to daily, for Chrissake," he said as the dog pulled him through another chilly puddle.
HALLENBECK AND HIS guide狗 have been together for less than a year. He had gone to the Seeing Eye Institute in New Jersey after a hearing loss in his left ear made it difficult to use a cane for direction. It was the same institute he'd gone to 34 years earlier, when he was 16 and had just been blinded in an explosion at an old cement company site.
At the time, he said, he thought his life was over.
"I was just crushed," he said. "God, I never even knew a blind man. All I could think of was tin cups and selling pencils and being poor."
He gradually became accustomed to his blindness. He learned to feed himself, find the bathroom without help, cut his own meat at the dinner table.
"When I did those little things, I
wouldn't have to die after all it
happened."
He learned to read Brille and went on to a college in New York, where his dream of becoming a physicist was
ended when the school's physics department chairman wouldn't let him use the labs, fearing they were too dangerous for a blind person.
UNABLE TO CONTINUE in physics, he switched to psychology. With the help of faculty members, he was able to go on to get his masters and doctoral degrees, after which he worked at High View Hospital in Cleveland. It was there that he developed a taste for teaching.
He eventually left the hospital, too off two years to study computer science, then accepted his position at KU.
Now he carries a full course load, teaching psychology of sleep and dreaming and neuropsychology He also advises graduate students.
Counselors sometimes try to keep students with disabilities from testing themselves. Hallenbeck said, because they are often advised against the very people they are advising.
"For example, rehabilitators have told blind students that law school is not feasible because of the reading involved," he said. "I know what they mean by feasible—piano tuning and basket weaving."
Students should remember that if even one disabled person can do a job, it proves that it can be done, Hallenbeck said.
"Usually, the question is not how you can get there," he said. "It's just a question of finding a way to get there, one way or another."