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State Official Rises Above ExpectationsBy Amy Halloran 
It is easy to understand why Peter Crowley, assistant commissioner with the New York State Commission for the Blind and Visually Handicapped, is invited to speak at so many functions. He inspires by being down-to-earth. He talks about summating Mount Kilimanjaro as if climbing 19,000 feet can be done by most anyone – at least anyone who works very hard and accepts life as a challenge, not a set of limits. Crowley was born blind. That was his limit, but he chose not to accept the cages people put around the people without sight. He is very practical about how he achieved his athletic accomplishments, which also include kayaking solo across the English Channel, and many adventures in New York state, such as kayaking 130 miles on the Hudson River and circumnavigating Manhattan and Long Island. “If I were to focus on what I can’t do because I’m blind, I’ll become paralyzed and miserable,” Crowley said in a recent telephone interview from his Albany office. “If I focus on what I can do, I can do a lot. That’s how simple it is. The trick is knowing you can do more than you think you can. People put artificial ceilings on themselves. If I had told people when I was growing up that I was going to climb Kilimanjaro and get a black belt in martial arts and kayak the English Channel, they would have said, ‘No way.’ People are entitled to their perceptions, but when you use your perceptions and stereotypes to deny people an opportunity, that’s a problem.” Crowley, 50, has two older brothers and a younger brother with no disabilities. His eye problem, as he described it, wasn’t properly diagnosed until he was about 5. His parents did not treat him differently from his brothers. “They just told me to do stuff,” Crowley said. “I think you’re better off telling people to do things than not do things. I felt frustrated, but I believed I could succeed. I was the first blind person in my town to go through the public schools in Manhasset, on Long Island.” Crowley was very physically active and won a slew of awards for his sports achievements. He graduated with honors from the College of St. Rose in Albany with a degree in special education, but he had trouble finding a job teaching. He ended up working for Albany County and then for New York state. As project manager with the state Dormitory Authority, he worked with architects designing construction projects. He was in charge of building a community residence for developmentally disabled adult men and worked on projects that had nothing to do with accessibility, such as the State University of New York College at Cobleskill campus and the State Education Building. Crowley considered his experience with the Dormitory Authority good preparation for his current position. “I think that working with architects, contractors and
clients juggling the three different perspectives for the common goal in
getting the project done was a great training ground for negotiating with
people without them knowing that you are negotiating with them,” he said.
Crowley, who has been the assistant commissioner with the NYS Commission for the Blind and Visually Handicapped for a year and a half, supervises people all over the state. He is the director of the Business Enterprise Program, which oversees newsstands and convenience stores run by blind people in government buildings. The Randolph-Sheppard Act of 1936 gave priority to people who were blind to get such jobs in federal buildings. “Over time, the states piggybacked,” Crowley said. “We provide training and over 90 jobs in the state. I want (the operators) to have responsibility. I am a firm believer in treating adults as adults. The mistake we make often as a society is that we think we have to protect and make decisions for people who are disabled. It is very exciting to be involved with providing the services with people who are blind in this state. I feel fortunate to be involved with it.” Other projects he is pursuing include a Request for Proposals for a pre-college program with students who are blind. But his energies for helping people extend beyond his job. His speaking engagement schedule is impressive. In 2005 he organized a humanitarian mission to bring educational equipment to the Helen Keller School for the Blind in Panama City. Crowley and his wife of 23 years met at a day camp for blind children on Long Island. He was the only blind counselor. At the same camp, he met another person who also strongly influenced his life. “There was an 8-year-old boy who came to camp happy as could be every day,” Crowley said. “He was blind, had cerebral palsy, and he was developmentally disabled. He was born with none of these symptoms. His father beat him and made him that way. The day I knew his story I knew I had nothing to complain about. If he could be happy every day, I sure as hell could be happy.” Crowley and his wife have three children, a girl and two boys, who range in age from 11 to 20. One of their sons teaches snowboarding at Gore Mountain in New York, and the family was headed to their camp in the Adirondacks for the weekend on the day Crowley was interviewed. He was eager to ski and hoping for snow. A listener could hear that same enthusiasm in his voice when he was asked about leading a party of four blind climbers (including himself) from the Albany area to the summit of Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro in 1994. “We exceeded the ratio of non-disabled people who make it to the top,” Crowley said. “Less than 50% make it. There are two trails up, and our philosophy was if you take the easier trail, you always wonder if you could have made the harder trail.” Only one person didn’t make it to the top, he said, solely “because the altitude was wreaking havoc on her diabetes.” While planning the trip, Crowley and the others knew that altitude would be a great challenge because when the air is thinner, a climber gets exhausted more easily. Talking would take too much energy, so he worked out a non-verbal communication system for climbers and their Tanzanian guides, whose backpacks the climbers held onto. Once they got to an altitude of about 12 thousand feet, everybody became less talkative, and Crowley’s silent guide system – blind climbers can be very chatty – proved successful. The four Albany-area climbers brought a sighted support team from home that included a physician and an EMT. In preparation, they hiked in the Adirondacks and the Berkshires and did extensive cardiovascular training. “The highest mountain in New York state is Mount Marcy (at) 5,000 feet,” Crowley said. “Yet, there is really nothing on the East Coast to prepare you for altitude. You vigorously train, but your body is not prepared. Some of our support team were having trouble adjusting at 8 thousand feet. It is luck that the altitude did not bother some people.” Once he got to the peak, Crowley said, he felt “a temporary euphoria, satisfaction and accomplishment. As you go higher and higher up the mountain, you feel different things. You go from a tropical rain forest to a sub-arctic condition. There’s no plant life, no animal life. You feel this openness around you. It’s terrific. I’ll never forget it. If I think about it enough, I still feel that sensation and that overwhelming feeling of success, like when I landed on the beach at France.” Asked if he was always interested in extreme sports, Crowley said, “I don’t consider what I do extreme.” His reaction was similarly pointed when asked to comment on the word “supergimp.” “I think the term is condescending,” he said. “I look forward to the day when Peter Crowley or anyone else disabled climbing a mountain is not a big deal, the day that the blindness or paraplegia doesn’t even make it to the headlines. I look forward to that day.” |
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