From: Harvey Heagy 
Subject: Re: Why the NFB
I agree with what you said, and as far as the Alaska problems are
concerned we could have dealt with them much better than we did
by simply putting a stop to what was going on.  I can only
comment on one Alaska problem.  While state president of the
affiliate, Sandy Sanderson was doing a lot of things that weren't
good for us.  He would arrange these so-called talent shows,
dance reviews Etc. and before anyone could perform or be a part
of them they were required to buy an associate membership.  This
was the very thing we fought and in fact sued over in Cleveland
when the Cleveland Society for the Blind attempted to require its
snack bar operators to give a day's profits to the United Way.
But Sandy was allowed to continue doing this until after several
years of wining the associates selling contest the national
leadership decided to change the method of holding the contest by
holding a drawing for the winning prize; the more associates you
sold the more chance you had of winning.  Interesting that Sandy
dropped out of the organization shortly afterwards and jumped to
the A.C.B. where he rapidly rose to the state presidency.  They
could have confronted him and let him know that they knew what
was going on and that we did not condone such behavior but as far
as I know they did not.
I happen to know also that the North Carolina affiliate lost a
great deal of money when he brought his Alaskan Dance Review
there as a fund raiser because it simply did not have the
audience he promised.  But it seemed that as long as money was
coming into the national coffers nothing was done until the
problem became so acute that there was no choice and even then it
was handled through the back door.
Harvey
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