Blind but Independent

Blind but Independent
Cedar Rapids Gazette
April 16, 1950
By John Reynolds

Wellman--The fact that 75-year-old Aaron Shetler keeps house for himself and prepares his own meals wouldn't be unusual-- if you didn't know that he was totally blind.
The jovial, heavy-set man everybody in Wellman knows lost his sight 54 years ago, after he suffered an attack of the measles at the age of 21.
And for the last 25 year he has maintained his own house-hold establishment. It's a pin-neat little house, warm and comfortable.
There, almost any time of the day or night, you'll find Aaron Shetler. In the kitchen which has a bottled gas stove and an electric refrigerator he gets his own meals twice a day, saying it's no trick at all to prepare the common dishes a man wants for his breakfast and for his evening meal.
He takes his "dinner" at the noon hour each day at the Park hotel in Wellman--"because I can get a greater variety of food there than I can prepare myself," he explains.
Aaron Shetler is something of a tradition around Wellman. He's lived here fore 54 years.
He knows his way around Wellman the same as he knows his way around his own little house. He can walk to any place in town and tell you--any on of you with eyes to see-exactly where he is.
It's a fact that Shetler has, on more than one occasion, helped home some old befuddled person who could see--but became confused.
He helped a man out of a ditch on night. It wasn't night to Aaron--any more than all of the time is night. But he heard the man calling from the ditch into which he had fallen. Aaron felt his way to the side of the individual in distress.
Then Aaron's unfaltering steps directed the man to the sidewalk and to his home.
Voices don't often fool Aaron Shetler. "If a man tries to disguise his voice, or if he has a cold, he'll sometimes fool me.
"But he could have shaved off his beard, or become gray haired, or grown a mustache and I still would know him and remember him by his voice," Shetler will tell you.
And then he recounts some incidents wherein men who had once lived in Wellman returned--changed by the years. Wellman residents who knew the men when they were living and working in Wellman failed to recognize them because of changes in their appearance.
But Aaron knew them. The voices hadn't changed and Mr. Shetler put a lot of people straight on the identity of "strangers".
He attended the Iowa school for the blind at Vinton.
There he learned to tie off fly nets for horses and net for fishermen. He learned to weave carpet and make hammocks.
And from an old sailor, the late Pete Teets of Wellman, Aaron learned to splice broken ropes.
In about 12 years' time he made 35,000 to 40,000 feet of carpet. There was a time when he made 30 to 40 hammocks a year.
Back in the days when there were many horses, Aaron tied off scores of horse nets in a single year.
Most of these trade lines have gone out with the passing of years. There is no call now for horse nets. It's against to law to use the fish nets. Auto seats seem to be more popular than hammocks today. And the carpet business got a little too rough.
But Aaron still splices rope when called upon. Farmers come and get him, haul him for miles to splice a hay rope that's snapped at the height of the haying rush.
In times past he's spliced elevator ropes at Kalona and Iowa City, as well as at Wellman.
For a number of years Shetler maintained stallions and jacks and operated a stud barn for the Wellman area. During that time he took care of the barns completely, even exercised the animals.
How does Aaron Shelter do some of the things that you'd think demanded sight?
Well, he's memorized Wellman. With the aid of his apparently unerring sense and his cane, he can walk downtown and right into any establishment he may choose. He's learned to spot them by steps, by signs, by openings which his cane touches.
"I've got to take people's word when they hand me paper money that they've given me $5 instead of $1, when I have change coming from a $10 bill," Shetler will tell you. "But in all these years I've lost only a little money on a couple occasions. Most folks are honest," he'll say.
He can prepare a steak over the bottled gas stove in his little house with no difficulty at all. "I can tell by the sizzle whether it's done or not," he explains. "And I can always tell by the sound if it's frying right."
Shetler used to carry on quite a volume of correspondence. "Used to be able to hire a girl to write letters for me," Shetler says. "But their families give them so much money now it's hard to get them to work. Then I as older women to help me."
"But men--ha! Men aren't worth a dang when it comes to writing letters."

Photo--Wellman's Aaron Shetler...in blindness, an independency...