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Out But Not Yet In continued

It was 1985, and, yes, I had come out. In fact, I had been out a long time. Jack didn't know that I had been taking workshops and courses every spring and fall since I had graduated from college in 1965.

But, he was probably right. I was unusual and incongruous. I was in management; I had a disability. Yet, the fact I was vice president of communication for Heartland Dairies didn't seem to surprise him. Perhaps he didn't understand me when I introduced myself.

It was five years before the Americans with Disabilities Act, and apparently more of us with disabilities were coming out all the time. I just didn't see them in the circles I frequented. And, apparently Jack hadn't either. That was not surprising because I considered just being "out" an accomplishment -- something many others with a disability had not yet achieved.

More than 20 years earlier, I remember receiving little guidance from the School of Journalism's placement office at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, mostly because I was probably the first journalism student with a severe disability to actually earn a degree.

"We believe you'll be able to work on a job," Professor Abernathy, my advisor told me a couple of weeks before graduation, as he stroked his black, narrow tie.

In one sense, that was reassuring. He was a former advertising executive who had blandly settled into academic life and wrote several stiff textbooks about advertising, promotion and public relations. But, he had, at least, been in the job market.

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