“It was the journey of a lifetime,” says Jason Romero of his 60-day-long run across the United States. “I’ll never do it again.”
Romero was the first and still only legally blind person to complete the feat, which involved running 50 miles a day supported only by his 70-year-old mother, a borrowed 12-year-old minivan with transmission problems and a great many buckets of ice.
“The hardest thing was waking up each day and knowing I had to do another 50 miles,” he says. “The pain for the first two weeks was excruciating, I thought I was going to die. My mom would get two trash cans full of ice each morning for me to stand in so that gradually I’d be able to stand, walk, then run. But the physical pain subsided. The emotional part of it never did.”
A decade on, Romero (56), a veteran of high-level management positions at General Electric and Western Union who left the corporate world to spend more time with his children after getting divorced, still gets emotional when he recounts the moment the notion occurred to him while volunteering in a homeless shelter. “I texted my mom,” he recalls, “and said I’m going to run across America. Within a couple of minutes, she texted back to say, ‘I’m in.’”
Romero, an attorney and now author after writing a book about his journey, was told aged 14 that he would lose all of his sight by the time he was 30, and advised he should “learn to do something with his hands”. Now, he says his calling is to tell his story, to inspire others to “accomplish their dreams or die trying”.
He was in Dublin on Thursday to tell that story at a conference on the challenges facing people with disabilities who are trying to work for themselves. The event heard of the many challenges that have been faced – and overcome – by thousands of people, including employers.
The data is thin, acknowledged Prof Thomas Cooney of TU Dublin, but the event heard from entrepreneurs, academics, advocates and the Northern Ireland Minister for the Economy, Caoimhe Archibald, on the many hurdles to be overcome and the fragmented range of supports available across the island of Ireland.
Olivia Kitterick, enterprise and social enterprise officer at South West Mayo Development Company, said there was an “information gap” where entrepreneurs with a disability are concerned.
“It’s a confusing landscape. There is a lot of good stuff out there in terms of supports but it needs to be enhanced and there needs to be more awareness around training and skills.
“What we don’t need, though, is another agency where we are confused about what they do and don’t do.”
Self-employment can be a career option for those with disabilities
Cooney, who organised the event, said there was widespread frustration with current structures. “We need one department, one agency to take the lead on this issue, to take responsibility.”
Padraig Mallon, chief executive of Crann, which supports people and families with disabilities, said while the level of State spending on disability had grown substantially in recent years, a lot of it is focused on frontline services. Such funding did not go far enough in supporting employment and self-employment initiatives.
“There’s a reason we have some of the lowest rates of employment of people with disabilities, and self-employment,” he said.
Cooney, and several others at the event, said role models were important to show would-be entrepreneurs what can be achieved.
But Emilie Conway of disabled artists’ and academics’ campaigning group Dada expressed reservations. Speaking during a panel discussion about role models generally, she warned against “inspiration porn”, where people were put forward as examples to follow without properly dealing with the challenges that exist.