"Visually impaired" - Google News - Thursday, December 20, 2018 at 4:00 AM
Couple retires from Pa. Blind Association | Local News - Sharonherald
[Blind Association]
Husband and wife, Jonathan Fister and Ann Peterson, of Keystone Blind
Association, will end more than 40 years working at the agency on Dec. 31.
Peterson is Keystone’s vice president of services, and Fister is CEO.
ERIC POOLE | Herald
HERMITAGE — When Jonathan Fister and Ann Peterson started working — on the same
day, July 10, 1978 — at the Mercer County Blind Association, they barely knew
one another.
The association had six employees and an annual budget of about $80,000.
On Dec. 31, more than 40 years after they arrived together, Fister and
Peterson, now husband and wife, will retire together. Fister, CEO of what is
now Keystone Blind Association, and Peterson, the agency’s vice president for
services, leave behind a legacy of success in service for the blind community
across Pennsylvania.
“Here, there is no unemployment for people who are blind,” Fister said after
citing a nationwide unemployment rate of about 70 percent among people who are
legally blind, defined as someone whose vision cannot be corrected to better
than 20/200.
As Fister and Peterson prepare for their final days at Keystone, the company
now employs more than 700 people, most of whom have visually impairments,
across Pennsylvania and Ohio, and a budget of more than $26 million.
That expansion stems from Fister’s aggressive pursuit of government contracts
for services and manufacturing facilities staffed by visually impaired
employees. Keystone provides cleaning and maintenance services for 34 rest
areas along interstate highways in Pennsylvania, and also has workers at
schools and military installations in the state.
Keystone also manufactures construction tools, such as sledgehammers and
shovels, for government projects. Fister said the agency has outfitted sailors
on three Navy aircraft carriers with blue hardhats.
The success of Keystone on Fister’s watch was born partly out of opportunity,
partly from necessity.
He arrived at Keystone, then called the Mercer County Blind Association, in
1978 after working at the United Way of Mercer County, which had been one of
the association’s largest benefactors. But it quickly became apparent to him
that depending on donations from charitable agencies was becoming increasingly
unsustainable.
As the Shenango Valley’s industrial base deteriorated during the 1980s with the
closure of manufacturers like Sharon Steel and Westinghouse, Fister saw that
donations to the non-profits that supported the blind association were drying
up.
“We had to constantly change and evolve, recognize that if you don’t change,
you cease to exist ...” he said.
Peterson finished her husband’s thought.
“... If we’re just going to sit tight and wait for the money to come in.”
Keystone took advantage of government regulations designed to help blind and
visually impaired people find work. Under federal law, if a company had at
least 75 percent of its workforce legally qualified as blind or visually
impaired, offered its goods and services at a fair market value, and provided
quality that matched that in the private sector, then government agencies are
required to contract with Keystone.
Although Fister admits there have been “a few clinkers,” the hits have more
than outweighed the misses. Keystone manufactures 5 million rolls of toilet
paper a year for the state corrections system, and provides services for the
U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s national background investigation bureau.
The investigation bureau has a space at Keystone’s offices on State Street in
Hermitage. Fister is prohibited from entering that section of the building he
oversees because he lacks proper security clearance.
Keystone also has taken over other agencies that assist sight-impaired people,
which has expanded Keystone’s reach, and its ability to help people, Fister
said.
There is a circular efficiency to Keystone’s operations. The business ventures
provide not only jobs for the visually impaired, they also help pay for the
agency’s services.
Those services — including mobility training, occupational education and
rehabilitation — help prepare the visually impaired for employment.
“It’s very synergistic,” Fister said. “Services will identify people who want
to work and Industry will put them to work.”
When he first arrived at the agency, Fister said he anticipated that it would
be a “good stepping stone job.”
But it became so much more.
“We fell in love with the people and the job,” Fister said speaking for himself
and Peterson.
And each other.
She said the process of transitioning from co-workers to husband and wife was a
gradual one. Both had been divorced from prior marriages.
“We started out as co-workers and friends, and we were friends with all of our
co-workers,” Peterson said.
Fister said their marital coupling was hardly unique among the staff at
Keystone. He and Peterson estimate that at least a half-dozen marriages began
among agency employees.
“This is the Love Boat, by the way,” he said. “A lot of couples have met here.”
But Keystone’s first couple — in more ways than one — are heading into their
final days at the agency.
Priscilla Earhart, who started in October, will replace Peterson as vice
president of services. Laurie Staph, now Keystone’s chief financial officer,
will move into the CEO office that Fister has held for more than 40 years.
Shortly after Jan. 1, Fister and Peterson will escape the cold winter — and all
the cold winters to come. They own a home in Florida that will, in retirement,
become their permanent abode.
Fister and Peterson both said they will miss helping blind people throughout
Pennsylvania. But they leave with a sense of accomplishment.
“That’s a good feeling for us, that over the course of our careers, literally
hundreds, perhaps thousands of people are able to live independently,” he said.
“That’s very satisfying.”
https://www.sharonherald.com/news/local_news/couple-retires-from-pa-blind-association/article_1c5a5e20-0403-11e9-a7b1-7f1b4bfefc06.html
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