Jim Sayre: An Inspirational Dad and Author

Jim Sayre, a blind father and author, talks about his book 'Jimmy' that's all about his unique life. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
All kinds of songs about dad.Today we're going to be playing them throughout
Raw and also throughout What Matters,because it's Father's Day. To anyone listening
right now who is a dad,we say Happy Father's Day to you because
you deserve it. I think youdeserve more than just one day out of
the year, kind of like Mother'sDay. But this is your day,
so enjoy it. And right now, Boots, we are about to meet

(00:22):
a remarkable dad. At six yearsof age, he became completely blind,
and that didn't stop him from inspiringothers. He jumped out of an airplane,
he learned how to ride a bike, doing everything that little boys do
and then some, and just wantingothers to continue to live their life no
matter what adverse situation they go through. Jim Sayre, the name of your

(00:46):
book is called Plainly Jimmy. Welcometo Raw. Jimmy, thank you.
And I want to tell Boots,I rode a bicycle without a helmet too.
See. Uh oh, well,we got to ask you, is
that was that what happened? No, Oa, go home? Yeah,
I mean I got to tell you. I was just telling many on break

(01:07):
I had a good friend. Hisdad was lost his eyesight at five years
old, and he raised four orfive kids and was a great man and
worked at odot It was au cook. So it always amazes me that how
people can cope. I think thatwould be the hardest thing to deal with.
You're a better man than me,Well, thank you. I of
course didn't know what I was doingwhen I was doing it. I've made

(01:30):
it this far, and I've,by the grace of God and the others,
I've been able to do what I'vedone. And I actually worked as
a counselor with visually impaired two invocational rehabilitation, trying to help them do
stuff that I knew could be done. So, Jim, how did you

(01:53):
lose your eyesight? How did youbecome blind at six years old? Well,
of course, I was born along time ago, and the practice
then was the hold the baby untilthe doctor arrives. And they held me
and for half an hour or so, and the and my mom and they
speculate that the pressure on my headwhile they were holding me back did something

(02:16):
to damage the retina, retinal partof my eye, and I had a
diagnosis detached retina. But it tooka hell of a long time to detach,
so, which was good in away, But you know you guessing
you mean hold you from being birthedor hold you in his arms being birthed.

(02:37):
Really? Yeah, how stupid isthat? Yeah? Leave you,
leave you? Yeah, poor guy? How do you mind us asking?
How old are you? Like?You're talking how many years ago? I'm
eighty four, you're eighty four,You sound more like you're forty eighth.
Yeah. Sound good? Well,I feel good and I'm still able to
do bout anything I want to do. And I've lived the blessed life.

(03:00):
But I've had a lot of help. And I think my mother was probably
more instrumental than anyone else. Shehad a helmful lot of common sense before
long before her, long before herage and time and the practice then when
when when kids were blind, theywere enrolled at the Ohio State School for
the Blind, an institution. Itwas on the corner of Parsonson Maine West

(03:24):
East Main Street. When I wasthere and my mom most of the time,
most of the kids would go reportto school at the end of summer
and not go home again until Christmas, come back Christmas vacation, and not
go home again until the next summer, and my mom blessed her heart,

(03:46):
brought me home every weekend. Ihad to ride the bus back and forth,
and that kept me from becoming institutionalized, and it kept me, It
kept me in touch with the quotesided world end quote. I always had
sighted friends growing up. They themore or less accepted me for what I
was, and if I ran intosomething, they'd laugh and the same as

(04:08):
I would. You know. Infact, we went to the movie.
I went to the movie one daywith a bunch of guys and there were
cars these like this boots. Therewere cars jumping over the fire. Joey
chitwould I don't know if you rememberthat name back in the day. So
they would tell you what was happeningon the screen since you couldn't see it.

(04:30):
Yeah, more or less. Butthen if most of it you could,
you could tell what was going onninety percent of the time. But
we went home and build a rampon the sidewalk and build a fire,
and we were running over the rampwith they're on our bicycles. How did
you learn to ride a bike beingblind? I mean, half of the
battle is watching where you're going,looking out for things in your path.
Actually the lady that became my sisterin law later in life. She grew

(04:58):
up next to us. She helpme learn how to ride the bikes she
rode. She walked along with metoo, so I could develop my balance.
And you were jumping the ramp overthe fire though. Yeah, I
jumped. Well, we were.There were five or six of us jumping
this ramp. And I got backand it was on the sidewalk, so

(05:20):
I could follow the sidewalk. Ifigured, well, hell, I can
jump that too, And I gotback about thirty feet or so and started
peddling like hell, and I misseda ramp. Why don't your buddy's going
right right, right, left,left, left, right, right right.
I have a feeling Jimmy's one ofthese guys. We were talking earlier
at the beginning of the show.Jimmy drink kids riding these electric bikes.

(05:43):
There's no way Jimmy would have chosento an electric bike. You could never
have done that, Jimmy. Igotta ask you this. We didn't have
gear shifts, and we were likeboots. We had big calves and bikes.
Cazinzel's got some mountains too. You'refrom my neck of little wits.
So I'm going to ask you this. I growing up, I wanted to
tell you though I missed the ramp. Okay, I got back and hit
the ramp and try it again,and hit it and jumped over the fire

(06:04):
and everybody yelled and screened, andI thought I was kidding. Oh man,
I first, you don't succeed,try to track. I end up
with stitches. But no, Iwanted to tell in the fire. Yeah,
so let me ask you when Iget on elevators or I go to
a fast food and I see thebrail. A friend of mine is a
quadriplegic. May he rest in peace, and he would complain about the way

(06:28):
they think what he needed. Youbeing blind most of your life, do
you ever get frustrated with why ina world did they put brail there?
Or did it help? Is ithurt or one? The one thing people
forget when they're putting up the braillsigns there's no uniform placement. Okay,
that's fine. You don't know whereto find him, so what's the point.

(06:49):
Okay? I mean I could spendthe half a day feeling round the
walls and never find the darn thing. So we're there should be They should
have gone a step further and thereshould be a universal placement and they might
be a little helpful then, butright now they might as well not be
there. Well, we got togo to break, Tommy. I want

(07:11):
you to hang on the line withus, because there's so many questions we
still want to ask you. Wewant our daughters with me too, Mandy.
You send her a note. Shehappened to be in town and she's
on the other phone. Yeah,you know, we'll hang on because we're
going to talk to you both becauseI want to know what it was like
to jump out of an airplane.And we want to promote your book called
Jimmy. What made you decide towrite this book? You know what he
told me on the air. Well, Mindy, if you could do it,

(07:32):
anybody can do. If you canwrite a book, Mandy, anybody
can stay with this. We're goinggo to break, and when we'll come
back with you, we can talkto you some more. This is Rob
and Mini and Boots, brought toyou by the Undefeated America Mate Tattletale from
the Heart and Make Studios on NewsRadio six ten to TV and we are
talking to Jim Sayer of Zanesville,a man who is eighty four years old,

(07:55):
blind at six years old, butnever quit living life to the full,
so much so that Jimmy wrote abook called Jimmy Pretty original. Huh
Yeah, I like it. Ican spell it. I had to think.
It's not a long time for that. And he can't spell much,
but he can spell Jimmy. Jimmyabout Jimmy. Yeah, you were born

(08:15):
in nineteen forty You lost your eyesightnineteen forty six, so you know,
many and I are very curious.So when you lost you knew you had
the issue, but did you hityour head that caused the retina to break?
Loot? When six years later,just over time it went for some
reason, it went gradually, okay, okay, over five and a half.
Here they noticed something was wrong whenI was like six months or eight

(08:41):
months something like that. Oh okay, I wasn't focusing on things, okay,
But you know, my mom didthe old the same, the age
old thing. She took me tothis doctor and that doctor, and we
went to Johns Hopkins, which wasa big deal back then, and we
ended up with a doctor in Columbuswho is he told my mom that he

(09:03):
was sorry to tell her, butI was going to be legally or totally
blind, and if if he weremy parents, he would take me out
and enroll me into blind school.So that's what you did. But you
did everything little boys do, fromriding bikes to going to the movies,
jumping over fire pits on a ramp, and you jumped out of an airplane.
Why did you do that? Andwhat was it like? When I

(09:26):
went to Ohio State, I pledgedthe fraternity. I was a Phi Gamnadella
fraternity, and there were there weresome guys there. One time we'd had
a couple of pops and Boots wouldknow about that. Yeah, I'm pretty
good. And they decided they weregoing to go skydive, and there was
a place out by Hilliard that wouldlet you take a test dive. So

(09:50):
they they kind of well, youknow, how, guys are, I'm
gonna come on. Anyway, Theycalled me this and that, and ended
up going along for the ride.And I got out there and they called
me chicken and all that, andshame into jumping I did. And of

(10:11):
course they have this on what theycalled a uh. They had the line
in my parachute connected with the linein the plane and it pulled the shoot
automatically, which is a good thingbecause I was so scared. I probably
wouldn't have been by yourself though.You're by yourself, not tandem. No,
No, there were guys in frontof me and guys in back of

(10:35):
me. I was by myself.Nowadays they tandem you right right, Yeah,
just start talking down with a walkietalkie. Let's talk about your book.
How do people where do they goto buy it? Because I think
it's awesome. Hey, you canbuy it at Amazon, to Amazon or
Mars and Noble. Is it justabout your life just simply Jimmy, Yes,

(10:58):
huh, I mean all my life. Yeah. I do these dumb
things and people say I'll be ina book. So you you retire and
you sit around. This is thetrouble with people retiring. They sit around,
they don't have a damn thing todo, so they write. We
learned about you because your daughter Maryreached out to me through Facebook and she

(11:20):
kind of briefly, she kind ofbriefly told me your story and she's like,
we would love to share Dad's storyand about his book. I'm like,
we would love to do that.We would love to help spread the
word about the book. Jimmy,about your dad, jim Sayer, is
Mary with you right there? Shehappens to be what are you. I'm
so glad that you reached out tome because we love telling these type of

(11:43):
stories. Tell us something about yourdad bonding. We're very, very excited
and very happy that that we coulddo this and that you had us on
your on your show. So thankyou. Well, it's Father's Day,
So tell us something really significant aboutyour dad and why you reached out.
White people should learn more about thebook. Jimmy, Well, you know,

(12:03):
it's it's my I grew up withthree older brothers and we just always
saw dad as dad, you know. We we didn't think that all of
the things that he did were incrediblebecause we were just exposed to it at
such a young age. We didn'tthink anything of it. And as I
as we've all gotten older and we'vebeen around, you know, other people

(12:26):
with varying degrees of abilities, we'verealized, you know, Dad is a
pretty exceptional guy. I mean,and when he wrote his book, it
was it was kind of eye openingexperience for us because a lot of those
stories we didn't hear about his kidsand and so it just made us realize

(12:46):
that, oh, yeah, Dadis a pretty pretty cool guy, and
he's done a lot of things thatthat people with his impairment can't or wouldn't
do. And to us, youknow, my brothers and I have just
always thought that he was a prettyawesome dad, but he's also a pretty
awesome person, and we just wantedeverybody else to know what a cool guy

(13:11):
he is. So how about discipline. Let's talk about Dad's disciplines, because
my buddy I was talking about alittle bit ago his dad was kind of
strict, and I said, well, how did he catch you? He
goes, he just knew his otherinstincts were so good. Did you have
that same issue? Very much?Okay, being the youngest by the time
I came along, there with noway you could sneak out of the house.

(13:35):
Wow, because he knew where everycreak in this stair and every groan
in the floor was. And Ijust didn't even try. I think I
tried one time to go visit mynext door neighbor and he heard me and
he was like, Mary, whatare you doing downstairs? Just getting a
glass of water? Dad? Thenhow come you're trying to open up the

(13:56):
front door. Wow, you havebeen blessed to have a dad like that
in eighty four years. Young Jimmy, We're so glad that we were able
to talk to both of you,and this is what Father's Day is all
about. Seriously, bless you both, and just thanks for sharing your stories
with all of our listeners today andeverybody listening. Please go check out Jimmy

(14:18):
on Amazon or wherever you get somebooks. Thank you, thank you.
I just ordered your book on Amazon, so that's awesome. Happy Father's Day.
Jim Sayer from Zanesville and Mary,I'm so glad you reach out.
Yeah, you guys are rock.This is what are we rob Indian Boots.
I need so many shows I can'tsee straight. That's raw Indian Boots.
We're brought to you by the UndefeatedAmerican made Tattletale from the heart of

(14:39):
Maang Studios on News Radio six'ten WTV in