My Story: John Geter

Even as a young boy, there wasn’t too much that I thought I couldn’t do. Even now, it’s nothing that I feel that I can’t do. If I hear somebody say that a blind person can’t do this, I’m out here to prove them wrong.

At the age of five, I remember, my mom, she worked at Arlington Memorial, and I had my eyes crossed, and she told me to stop crossing my eyes. When she saw I wasn’t doing it on purpose, since we were already in the hospital, she took me to the doctor, and they found out that it was a brain tumor pressing against my eyes. Once they took the tumor out, it damaged the optic nerve, which controls the eyesight, which left me blind.

I felt bad about not having a job, I had a lot of time on my hands and I had to find something to do with my time. I found out through my sister, she told me how she heard that they were starting a good system down in Tyler and they were helping a lot of people with disabilities. She knew about me losing my job, and she felt like that would be the best situation for me.

It has been a pretty good situation because I ended up with a job and got to meet a lot of new people and mentoring to other peers at Goodwill®.

We were in this program called WAT—it’s Work Adjustment Training—to get people ready for fields out there as well as to train you in new skills. You would work with a lot of donations, and it helped build confidence. Stuff that I’d never done, such as polishing shoes and stuff like that, I never thought, especially with not having any vision, I would even polish any shoes. It was a good experience for me there.

At Wal-Mart, I’m a zoner. It’s a form of stocking.

Some of the goals that I have for myself are—I plan on putting out another book. I have two books already published, and I plan on putting a third book out. As well, I plan on putting a CD out in stores in the near future.

The message that I’m trying to give them is that you can do anything as long as you put your mind to it, no matter how big or small, no matter what may come your way. You just have to believe that you can do it and put your all into it.