LITTLE ROCK — Decades ago, an elderly blind woman spotted a need in Arkansas’ Baptist community, and decided to meet it.
Glenn Kirkland had long been active in her Plumerville church as a Sunday School teacher. She’d been a college teacher in Conway, too, and although her sight had gone by 1940, she remained relatively independent, recalls longtime members of Plumerville First Baptist Church.
“She was a very knowledgeable lady” who wanted to help all Arkansas Baptists feel connected, member Bobby Bean, 69, said.
Like the rest of her family, she was frugal, saving money “to help people who were in need,” recalled Bradley Thomas, 85, another member of the Conway County church. “They felt like God had blessed them, and they were going to return the gifts.”
So it didn’t surprise the church that Kirkland donated money in the early 1980s to help blind Arkansans stay informed through cassette-tape recordings of the Arkansas Baptist News.
Kirkland’s father, who had pastored the church in the late 1800s, had also gone blind, Thomas said. So had her brother.
Glenn Kirkland gave $5,000 for the cassette-tape project in 1981, shortly before she died at age 86.
Another $5,326.04 was contributed the following year.
Roughly three decades later, the tape ministry Kirkland started is still going.
Indeed, the trust fund, invested by the ArkansasBaptist Foundation, had grown to $20,500 by mid-February. It funds tapes and manila envelopes that are sent back and forth between Park Hill Baptist Church in North Little Rock, where the tapes are duplicated from the master version, and the legally blind recipients’ homes in Hensley, Alexander, Sheridan and North Little Rock, said Becky Hardwick, business manager of the Arkansas Baptist News.
Annual costs are kept to less than $900 by reusing the materials. The lower-quality tapes for copies are recorded on seven or eight times, Hardwick said. Also, the U.S. Postal Service delivers material such as Braille and sound recordings for free to blind Americans.
Still, the ministry’s reach has waned.
Years ago, 35 people received the tapes. Many of them have died, or developed dementia, and by late last year, only three remained, Hardwick said.
Two more have since signed up thanks to recent notices in the Arkansas Baptist News, sent twice a month to about 24,000 subscribers statewide, but Hardwick wants more.
The 108-year-old periodical includes articles about local churches’ ministry programs, obituaries, church-related classified ads, and international ministries. Pat Ratton, one of at least 15 volunteer readers from Park Hill Baptist Church, said her favorite part is the commentary section in which local pastors preach life lessons based on Scripture.
Ratton scans the periodical before reading it, looking for unfamiliar and foreign words she may need to look up to pronounce correctly. “I hate toget right up on it and stutter and stammer. It takes longer than just the actual recording time.” When the retired preschool consultant began volunteering more than eight years ago, she recalled spending nearly six hours to read all 16 pages in an issue.
She’s been able to cut that down to three hours by targeting statewide, national and international news and sometimes skipping sections like want ads and local church activities. Ratton also said she no longer stops and rewinds every time she makes a reading mistake - “I just say, ‘That should have been,’ or ‘I’m sorry’” afterward. And during her early morning recording sessions,typically held four or five times a year, she no longer worries about the Audubon singing bird clock above her dining table. “I used to take it out of the room, and then I thought, ‘Oh, they shouldn’t mind hearing a robin sing or an owl hoot.’”
One of the Arkansans for whom Ratton records attends church with her. Sandy Edwards, 56, said she’s used the free service for at least 25 years. She generally takes an hour to listen to the recording in her bedroom, though occasionally she takes her tape player to the Pulaski County Assessor’s Office, where she works the switchboard.
Edwards reads a Braille Bible, but said some printed material that she wants to read isn’t put into a format accessible to the blind. Soshe uses two types of machines designed to analyze the material she inserts into them. They either transfer it to separate sheets with raised surfaces she can feel, or “read” it slowly with an artificial voice. Either way, it’s a lengthy process, and Edwards appreciates the tape ministry, as it makes keeping up with Baptist news easier.
It’s “one less thing I have to scan.”
The ministry involves a recording ritual every other week, Hardwick explained. After recording the most recent Arkansas Baptist News issue, the volunteer reader drops off the master tape at Park Hill Baptist Church, where volunteer Glenda Hamman, who heads the church’s tape ministry, copies it. Then Hamman puts the tapes in padded envelopes, marked “ABN” in raised letters, along with return slips that recipients can stick on the envelopes, and mails them.
Despite technological advances since the early 1980s, audiocassette tapes are still preferred by readers and listeners alike, Hardwick said. Still, Hardwick said she is considering using CDs, or other formats, as it becomes harder to find high-quality, master cassette tapes.
No matter the media, and despite fluctuations in the number of recipients, one thing endures through the blind tape ministry - Glenn Kirkland’s vision of a betterconnected Baptist community in Arkansas.
More information on the tape ministry is available by calling Hardwick at (501) 376-4791, Extension 5156.
Religion, Pages 12 on 02/27/2010