(soft music) - My superintendent of schools said, "Sally, just show me, you can do it.

I would love to have you back."

I didn't think I could handle third grade, but I kept hoping to someday get back into this dream job of teaching.

(soft music) I was 24.

I was living on the beach in California.

Really in love for the first time.

I was teaching third grade, when I saw this tiny black line, the size of an eyelash.

That little line would end up wiping out all my sight.

(soft music) My dad actually heard about this place called the Greater Pittsburgh Guild for the blind.

15 weeks of training for newly blind adults.

(soft music) My instructor, we called her Sergeant because she was barking at us all the time.

Hobart stop pounding.

You are supposed to touch with a cane not pound, but it was amazing to be with other blind people.

(soft music) - In the late sixties, the Guild was one of only two companies or organizations that provided these services.

The goal of the program was to help each person reach their highest level of independence, and that has not changed today.

(soft music) They would go to daily living training.

How do you know that your clothes match?

How do you cook?

How do you clean?

They would learn to navigate independently in their environment through the white cane.

They would learn braille.

(soft music) The goal was to be able to be as independent as possible.

That can be just as simple as finding an apartment and living independently.

- My mother was this kind of person who never cried.

When she said goodbye to me in that apartment, she started to cry.

I knew I was in trouble.

(soft music) I lay in bed at night hearing the city noises and was sure someone was climbing up the building into my apartment.

I mean, I really was scared to be alone, but what was sort of lovely is that Sergeant from the rehab, called me and came over to help me learn all the street crossings and just got me very oriented.

(soft music) And then I started having hearing problems.

And then boom, I was back in the hospital for tests.

I was losing my hearing, and there was no diagnosis and no treatment.

(soft music) People at first, when I became blind, were very tentative.

So Bob just seemed at ease.

(soft music) In 76, our son Joel was born.

Our daughter, Leslie came three years later.

when he was an infant, it was all easy, you just carry them in a front pack or a backpack and you plunk them down and they stayed there.

And when they started crawling, I began to get new strategies.

I put bells on their shoes.

I got this kind of child's harness and leash and held onto him so he could walk.

(soft music) - My name is Sherry Feldstein.

I am a long time friend of Sally's.

She's just a great mom.

She took Leslie to dance classes.

She makes great vegetarian food.

She just did everything everybody else did.

- Bob had a friend who had said to him once, "Oh God, are you kidding you're gonna have the baby?

You'll have to do all the work."

(laughs) So I went, yeah.

I proved him wrong.

By the time I was pregnant with my daughter, my hearing loss had gotten much worse.

I was carrying Joel in a backpack.

He was just talking and talking to me and I couldn't parallel the traffic.

- When a blind person is using a cane and crossing the street, they have to listen for the parallel traffic.

And when it stops, they can go.

- I just decided that I needed to get a guide dog.

Merritt just was like Nana from Peter Pan, the babysitter for the Darling children.

She absolutely thought they were her kids.

And she alerted me when they even stirred in their bed.

She came and nudged me.

(soft music) Blindness has made my life so much harder You know, I've never seen my husband or my kids or grandkids.

( kid laughs) But it's given qualities of better organization and made me a reader.

(indistinct) You know what happened to me just gave me much more perseverance and deeper values.

(soft music) Because they had very few books with braille and pictures, I started telling my kids stories.

That led me to a writing workshop that was held in Shadyside.

In 1990, my first two books came out.

So far I've published eight books for children and teens.

To, Sally Hobart Alexander, in recognition of your outstanding contribution to the field of children's literature.

(gentle music) Chatham wanted to begin an MFA program that would include a children's writing focus.

And so in January of 2000, I was asked to teach.

- My name is Emily Papale Bosser.

I am a middle and high school teacher and a creative writer that specializes in young adult fiction.

Sally is a storyteller through and through.

My memory of sitting in my thesis meeting with her, three years after I had sat in her first class, she said, "You came in here without any hopes of being a writer, but you turned into a writer."

And really truly, I turned into a writer because of Sally.

- I found that I had journeyed back to this teaching career that was absolutely so invaluable to me.

(soft music) When I went to Seeing Eye in 2015 to get Dave, a young woman just stood up and she said, "Are you Sally Hobart Alexander?"

And she said, "You got me through my blindness.

I read all your books."

And then that night, two more young people came and knocked on my door.

I would say to my 28 year old self, keep the hope alive.

You may think that you'll have a good career, but not marriage anymore maybe not children, but all that and more came.

I am a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a writer, a teacher and a dog lover.

And in so many ways you know I think, was this a godsend (soft music)