The Power of the White Cane
November 5, 2025
Interview with Judith Danaher for the Torch!
The newsletter for the Central Blind Rehabilitation Center, Edward Hines Jr., VA Hospital, IL
What was the process of publishing your book and how long did it take to complete the project?
We decided in October 2019 to write the book. We had been telling the story to the local third grade school children for two years. The future looked like we would have to tell the story every year to that grade level. That would be good for the local students, but no one outside of the local community would hear the story. We needed a bigger audience.
We wrote SEVERAL drafts of the story. Every draft had to be read to Jim as he needed to see his story. His wife, Linda, would take Jim's dictation to correct the language of the story. As the sighted-person, I might say that Jim walked with a friend. When in fact, Jim rewrote the words to reflect low vision, “Walking with a human guide helped me cross the street safely.”
By November 2019, we asked Alex Portal to be our illustrator. Alex had been the reporter from the local newspaper who interviewed Jim about his first White Cane Day in 2018. As the illustrator, Alex took both inside and outside pictures in Spearfish. He didn't have Jim in the pictures as Alex would put the Grandpa caricature on the page. From November to June, Alex worked to have character have confidence!
In June 2020, we talked with Tad Brewer, President of the Spearfish Lions Club to have the use of the Lions symbol on the book. We wanted to partner with an organization that already was very involved with vision needs of blind and visually impaired individuals.
In July 2020, Dee Sleep, copy and layout editor from Chicken Creek Communications, helped me format the book so that I could upload the files to Amazon. On August 1, 2020, the Kindle version became available. On September 11, 2020, the paperback version was available. This was when Jim said he could not read his own book. Our drafts had all been on 8.5”x11” papers. Looking at the small paperback, we decided to publish the title as a large-print, hardcover book. Dee worked with me to resize the files and we published the book through Chicken Creek Communications. When the books were delivered, we listed the hardcover book on Amazon on December 7, 2020.
With the paperbacks available on Amazon, we asked the Spearfish Lions to be our first group to support the learning about the community of the visually impaired by providing all the local third grade students at Creekside Elementary School with copies of the book in October 2020.
We wrote and published the book in one year.
How did you get the National Library Service to make it available on BARD?
Now that Jim could not read printed words in books, he listened to talking books. The stories were being read to him. Then one day, he decided that we needed to have our book as a talking book.
We contacted Josh Easter at the SD Braille and Talking Book Library. He said he would record the book for us. His first recording was placed in the South Dakota State Library. We had to direct the requests for the recording to the SD State Library.
Josh Easter sent his recording to the national recording office in Chicago. Just as we had to rewrite our book many times, Josh had to re-record our book three times before it was accepted to be a BARD recording. On December 21, 2023, we received word that the book was accepted as DBC 6000. This book was the first recording that Josh had accepted at the National level. It was also the first South Dakota book to be accepted at the National level.