IGX

When I was on the Toledo School Board, an 8th grader placed in the state chess champtionships. The remarkable thing about it was that he was legally (though not completely) blind.

I’m not a bad chess player, and so I asked him if I could play him. I went to his house in a very modest working class neighborhood, and sat down to play him. The only adjustment he asked for (which apparently he could do in competition as well) is that from time to time he needed to touch the pieces to figure out the board. About 45 minutes later, we were down to a duel of pawns, five minutes after that I was playing for stalemate, five minutes after that he mated me.

I asked him and his dad how he learned. His dad told me he taught him, and that they played every day, and that his dad beat him every game for three years. Then one day Ernie won a game, then another, and then he gradually became a chess champ. I became Ernie’s friend, and still am today. While his lifestory is too much to tell, I can say that his life is the closest I’ve seen to Job’s. On top of his blindness, he has also had to deal with a painful mysterious disease that is crippling him.

He has never complained or doubted himself and now is working in a professional job after having attained a master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Toledo that included all sorts of awards and fellowships.

This book, vanity-published, is his story. It is remarkably inspiring. He’s also an evangelical christian, and the book is very heavy on his evangelical views. He wrote it to inspire others.