HSV Lions ready collection to support White Cane Day

HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE — Both the Hot Springs Village Breakfast Lions and the Evening Lions will be out April 7 to collect donations for White Cane Day. These funds help enable the clubs to continue their work with those who are blind or visually impaired.

Area residents are encouraged to show support by making donations to further Lions efforts.

Locally, the FOCUS program of the HSV Breakfast Lions can assist the blind and visually impaired to order white canes with a red band as identification or as a walking stick. Free white mobility canes are available upon application to the National Federation of the Blind, then require a lengthy training program to learn about using them for getting about independently.

The white cane has an interesting history. During 1921 in Bristol, England, a photographer became blind after an accident. He felt uncomfortable when outside in the noise and traffic, so he went home and painted his walking stick white to be more visible to others on the streets.

In 1930, Lion George A. Bonham, president of the Peoria Lions Club in Illinois, introduced the idea of the white cane with a red band as a means of assisting the blind with independent mobility. The club approved the idea, and white canes were made and distributed to the blind.

The Peoria City Council adopted an ordinance giving the bearers of the white canes the right-of-way to cross the street. News of the club’s activity spread quickly to other Lions clubs throughout the U.S., and their visually impaired friends experimented with the white canes. Overwhelming acceptance of the white cane idea by the blind and sighted alike gave cane users a unique method of identifying their special need for travel consideration among their sighted counterparts.

In 1931, French resident Guilly d’Herbemont recognized the danger to blind people in her country’s traffic, and launched a “white stick movement” for blind people. She donated 5,000 white canes to people in Paris.

In modern times, white cane laws are on the books of every state in America and in a few other countries, where they provide people who are blind a legal status in traffic. The white cane universally acknowledges that the bearer is blind or visually impaired. The Arkansas code states, “Pedestrians who are walking with a guide dog or using a white cane have the right-of-way in all circumstances.”

In 1963, the National Federation of the Blind called upon the governors of 50 states to proclaim Oct. 15 as White Cane Safety Day. On Oct. 6, 1964, a joint resolution of the Congress, HR 753, was signed into law. Within hours, President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed Oct. 15 as White Cane Safety Day, which then became International White Cane Safety Day in 1969.

Marc Maurer of the National Federation of the Blind referred to that proclamation as “a culmination of a long and serious effort on the part of the Federation.” The white cane with the red band is now a symbol of independence and self-reliance of blind people across America and beyond.