Ron worked in San Francisco. He had to take a couple of buses to work, or a commuter train and at least 1 bus, to get to work and back every day. He did it, though, and enjoyed his job.
He started out as a receptionist but was so good at getting answers for people he became the information and referral specialist. Battered lesbian support group? Liability insurance for a motorized wheelchair? What happens if I don't claim my friend's body? Ron would find out for you. He was very good at it and the customers and coworkers loved him (some of them, a little TOO much).
He also did some tech support with the help of the office assistant, who later moved on to a tech support job making 4x what she did at the agency. They would do upgrades, install software, etc. His director once told them they had saved the company over $10K. The only time he drew a line the director wanted Ron and his friend to teach her husband how to do it, and they said no.
In the meantime I was sick of living in California. When we had visited Houston, I'd picked up a paper and looked at the classifieds. I also picked up those free "Apartment for rent" magazines they had at grocery stores and such. I realized Ron and I could get a NICE apartment for $500 (half what we were paying in the dot com boom) and the jobs paid about as much.
He wouldn't budge. He had a satisfying job and he knew blind people had a 90% unemployment rate. We had seen how reluctant people were to hire him.
But one day at work in San Francisco the boss announced "they" would be marching in the gay pride parade, on their day off, without pay.
Ron was always very outspoken even before his accident and he said something along the lines of "Hell no I'm not doing that on my day off! I have flat feet and it hurts to walk a long distance. I don't think we, as an agency, should get behind this. I will serve any client, and have, but if we get behind this we are going to lose a lot of very conservative donors".
And the lesbian said "I don't want to do it, either" and everyone else agreed. They actually had some gay rights agency come in during the next staff meeting and "do a training on tolerance" but now that Ron had stuck his neck out no one was budging. They started writing him up for every little thing and he knew they were working their way to firing him.
We moved 2 months later. As it turns out it was pretty easy for me to get a job in Houston. Ron got involved with the blind vendors. The agency marched in the parade,and as Ron predicted, lost a lot of donors who specifically referred to that. The director was fired.
When Ron was in the trauma center there was a shock trauma icu nurse, a man, who didn't hide his orientation. Ron would have been horrified to have this man handling his naked body so I would watch and see every night before I left, and they always assigned him to bed 3 (Ron was bed 2). That's really as far as I have ever gone. Because I know Ron would have been very unhappy to wake up to that. I don't know what I would have done if they had assigned him to Ron but it didn't come up.
That's it for now.
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