Stuart M. Seeley


The tape recording is only one of Seeley’s moonlighting activities. Another is his volunteer work in the rehabilitation of alcoholics, for which non-paying work he has earned the friendship and respect of police, sheriffs and welfare officials. “Why shouldn’t I give a little time to help these people?” Seeley asked. “There was somebody to help me when I needed it.

As for the new task of reading books onto tape for blind students, Seeley said:
“I get a little pay for that. Not much, but who cares? I feel that I’m doing something worth while.”

It just happens that Seeley’s wife, Ruth, is also engaged in humanitarian work. A graduate of the first vocational nursing school in California – Pasadena City College – she was also the first licensed VN in the state and was appointed to high commissions by governors Earl Warren and Goodwin Knight. She was later president for two terms of the California License VN Association, and traveled the country in that capacity. At present she is employed at two Nevada County convalescent hospitals.

Seeley got into the tapes for the blind when Ed Fellerson, superintendent of Nevada County schools, heard a recording of his voice and took him to see Fred L. Sinclair, consultant in charge of the Clearinghouse Depository for the Visually Handicapped at the State Department of Education in Sacramento.

The project is federally funded through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Sinclair, himself a blind man (though Seeley did not know it at the time), was impressed with the clarity of Seeley’s delivery.

Since then the former Pasadenan has been recording many books – state textbooks, world and U.S. history, adventure, the U.S. Constitution, science, poetry, anthologies. The tapes are filed at the Bureau for Physically Exceptional Children, for use in schools and by organizations.

Thus the man who has been a roustabout oil rigger, steel plant foreman, safety engineer and security officer for Caltech and for aircraft companies, realtor, antique dealer, special policeman, Red Cross disaster control coordinator, Navy rocket guard, gold course manager, and many other things, sits on his high porch overlooking a wooded northern California valley, projecting his voice into schools and institutions wherever the visually handicapped might be.
Star-News, (Pasadena) Thursday, September 17, 1970, Page C-3

Go back to Page One