1957

About a year ago while walking with his dog on a path beside Lake Tahoe, Jim Dalton was hit by a car going about 40 miles an our. A newly licensed young driver going much too fast on wet pavement lost control and launched Jim about 10 feet in the air and 30 feet forward.

It took about 45 minutes for Jim to regain consciousness. Incredibly, his only injuries were torn ligaments in one knee and some severe tissue damage. After a hospital stay and months of therapy, Jim says he's now in pretty good shape and feeling very euphoric about being alive.

"An experience like that gives you a little different outlook on life, quite a new perspective to say the least," Jim told me. "I am dedicating a large part of my life now to causes that I've wanted to be involved with but hadn't given much time to before. I've become a real activist in what I call the environmental movement, through the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and local organizations."

A Silicon Valley resident since 1961, Jim has been founding shareholder, active director, and occasionally (when all else failed) manager of a number of high technology companies.

He's winding down most of those associations, but one company retains Jim's undiminished interest. It designs and manufactures "enabling technology products for the blind. One product enables totally blind people to read. A tiny hand-held camera scans printed material and sends electrical impulses back to a microprocessor which then... [creates] the shapes of letters in braille characters by pushing up reeds that are sensed through fingertips. I've seen people read with this at the rate of 80 to 100 words a minute. We've put hundreds to work just in the computer field. The same camera scans the material on the monitor.

"We've found an even bigger market and just as gratifying in terms of impact on people's lives. There are very poor facilities for people who have some sight and who are still trying to use magnifying glasses for reading. We have a camera that scans what they're reading and magnifies it on a TV screen."

In India and other third-world countries, there's much higher incidence of blindness than in America and Europe; but funding and support systems for blind people are virtually nonexistent."We're working with Canon in Japan to try and bring the cost [of such equipment] down to an affordable level for those countries. As a result of the accident I've refocused my attention and am trying to push this along as fast as possible."

Turning from our previous class president to the incumbent, Jack Hall has just been appointed vice president for Federal relations of Johnson & Johnson. This is Jack's second assignment in Washington. In 1985, he took a year's leave from J&J to serve in the White House as associate director of the Office of Cabinet Affairs, mainly working on the Reagan administration's response to the Grace Commission report. Jack's wife, Joan, just finished her law studies at Rutgers in December and thus will also start a new career in Washington.

90 Tanglewylde Avenue, Bronxville, NY 10708