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                          October 24, 2003

Facing challenges

Story by Kathy Eastwood
Staff Writer

All of us have found ourselves complaining at one time or another. The car won’t start, the job is stressful, the children unappreciative, life too hard. But sometimes we need to step back and consider the challenges life throws at others.

John Morgan, a mathematician in West Point’s foreign language department, knows those challenges well. He faces them everyday in the form of simple tasks like dressing, cooking and working.

John Morgan is blind.

"A person who just lost their sight must learn how to dress, how to prepare meals, how to perform the most basic functions," he explained. "Once they get a job, they must learn how to get there."

Morgan said just getting a guide dog isn’t enough. Disabled people must become oriented to the place they work or live.

"A guide dog can’t tell me where the mess hall is," he explained. "When I first moved here seven years ago, I hired someone to take me around post to get me used to where everything was located."

The learning wasn’t over, Morgan said, he now had to learn to work with James.

"I went to a training center with James, my guide dog, for a month and learned to work with him and vice versa," he added.

For all those complaining about the lack of parking on post, consider this. Morgan lives in Highland Falls and he and James walk to work everyday. He said it takes him nearly a half hour to walk from Thayer Gate to his office at Washington Hall.

"I am an athletic person and I think that has been what has kept me motivated," Morgan explained. "I lost my sight in 1980 working on some exercise equipment when a couple of springs flew off and hit me in the head.

"It took me awhile to get adjusted, but athletics helped a lot and I went to college to learn to deal with my situation," he added. "I just had to learn different ways of doing common things."

Morgan swims everyday and competes in sporting events. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California in Irvine and a Master’s degree from University of California at Berkley. He helps develop programs to assist cadets with speech recognition.

"The programs help the cadets with speech interaction, which is converting text into speech, for computer language learning," he said. "They don’t get much practice in that area."

Morgan said he initially came to West Point as an intern. He liked the area, as well as the learning facilities here, so much he gave up his graduate work to teach.

"It was the best decision I ever made," he said.

Col. Steven LaRocco, DFL professor and Morgan’s supervisor, said the mathematician’s disability doesn’t affect his work ethics.

"I’ve never seen anyone like Morgan; he’s a work-a-holic," LaRocca explained. "He is the first one here in the morning, goes swimming at lunch time and is often the last one to leave at night.

"We’re real fortunate to have him as a member of this department," he added.