When David Anderson got a pamphlet in the mail asking for a donation to NewView Oklahoma, he thought it was a scam.
Anderson lost his eyesight in a nail gun accident when he was 18 and had never met another blind person, let alone heard of a nonprofit specifically designed to employ people with low vision. Anderson immediately hopped into the car with his son, determined to expose the operation asking for his money.
It wasn't until he stepped foot in the Oklahoma City warehouse and heard another blind person coming down the stairs that Anderson was convinced that NewView was real.
Anderson applied for a job on the spot. He's been at NewView ever since, even moving a mile away from the warehouse so he can walk to and from work without relying on anyone for a ride.
"There's so many things here I can do," Anderson said.
At NewView, formerly the Oklahoma League for the Blind, employees manufacture a wide variety of essential goods. They build aircraft wheel chocks, industrial shower curtains and disaster relief kits. They assemble the hand sanitizer and soap dispensers that end up in state parks and buildings.
Revenue from fulfilling state and federal contracts is used to pay blind and low-vision employees a livable wage and fund the nonprofit's free clinics, camps and eye care services.
For more than two decades, the majority of NewView's revenue has originated from a contract with the U.S. Forest Service to supply fire hoses, under a federal program that prioritizes employment for blind and visually impaired individuals. Since 2002, employees have assembled more than 2.5 million fire hoses for the Forest Service – enough to wrap around the Earth one and a half times.
But last fiscal year, fire hose orders dropped 63%, along with significant reductions in other federal contracts, and Avery Oden, the vice president of business development, said NewView is struggling.
"Over the last couple of years, the federal marketplace [has become] highly unstable," Oden said. "What we used to be able to rely on, we can no longer rely on, and it's a scary reality."
The steep loss in contract revenue forced NewView to furlough eight blind and low-vision employees.
"Furloughs and layoffs are the last thing that we want to do," Oden said. "But we can only absorb it for so long. And this is the most challenging period, probably, in NewView's 75-year history."
Fewer fire hoses for the U.S. Forest Service
NewView is the sole provider of fire hoses for the U.S. Forest Service. Employees cut hose jackets to length, add couplings and pressure-test them for safety. Then, the fire hoses are packaged and shipped for firefighting efforts nationwide.
Anderson, who is now the production supervisor at NewView, said his floor employees are good at what they do.
"We can build hoses," he said. "We test them very well. We're very strict in what we do, and all of our guys are proud of what they do."
Before he went blind, Anderson had big plans for his future. He wanted to become a police officer, get his law degree and retire as a judge. He said working at NewView and making fire hoses helps him and other visually impaired Oklahomans fulfill their dreams of doing something that makes a difference.
"This is an opportunity for our guys out there to be able to give back and put back into places they can't be," Anderson said. "It would be nice to go, 'Hey man, I'd like to go out and fight these fires too.' But this is our job. This is our job to make sure we're sending something to them that they can use and that it's not going to fail on them."
Jessie Lester, another NewView employee, said he gets satisfaction from knowing that he's helping people.
"You look at what you're doing, and you think about a fire … and you know you're saving lives, property," Lester said.
Working at NewView also helped Lester afford a truck and a new tractor for his farm.
Oden's primary concern is how the nonprofit will support blind and low-vision Oklahomans if the fire hose contract doesn't pick back up. Still, he can't help but worry about how fewer hoses will affect the Forest Service's national firefighting efforts.
"My concern is that there's been so much restructuring, instability, turnover, lack of institutional knowledge, that they may not know what they typically need and when."
NewView employees used to package up eight to ten pallets of 95 hoses per day. Now, they are lucky if the Forest Service orders ten pallets in a month. Oden said NewView has never experienced such a sharp decrease in fire hose orders in 20 years.
"The number of fire hoses the Forest Service orders fluctuates from year to year based on several factors, including current inventory levels, the condition and refurbishing of existing equipment, projected fire activity, and overall operational needs," a spokesperson for the agency said in an email. "These shifts aren't uncommon and aren't tied to changes in administration — they're part of routine supply and equipment management."
The U.S. Forest Service did not respond to follow-up questions about fire hose procurement practices. The agency has been the target of major reorganization efforts by the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, last winter was the hottest ever recorded across the Western U.S., leaving the mountains in the west, where Forest Service lands are primarily concentrated, with the smallest snowpacks in recorded history, which a study from Western Colorado University found is intimately linked to fire danger.
"There's nobody actively trying to hurt NewView, and there's nobody actively trying to sabotage the Forest Service," Oden said. "What I see is likely a byproduct of just lots of chaos and lack of clarity."
Oden said if the companies that make the specialized materials that NewView uses to assemble the hoses fail to survive, the supply chain will falter.
A capable and ready workforce
Preston Fenton has been working at NewView for eight years. He first learned about the opportunity through the nonprofit's OWL Camp, which gives kids with vision impairments a chance to rock climb, ride horses, and swim.
Fenton said people might be surprised to learn how much he and his coworkers can get done.
"We do work with, you know, big saws, machinery," he said. "All of it has been altered in any kind of way that we can to make sure that it's blind-friendly and that anyone can operate it."
Modifications have also made tasks easier for people with perfect vision, Anderson said. Instead of watching to make sure a fire hose meets a certain pressure threshold, he created a beeping system that eliminates the delays that come with following sighted cues.
"As soon as it beeps the pump, you immediately react, instead of watching the gauge, and then doing it," he said.
Oden said small changes are often all that's needed to meet contract needs, and the payoff is exponential.
"The alternative is we'd have people that are highly capable, highly motivated, but they would just be sitting at home collecting, you know, some government check and not being able to contribute and not being able to provide for themselves or have that self-sufficiency to make decisions on how they want to live and how they want to spend their money," he said.
Some employees wake up hours early to take the bus to work. Others, like Anderson, relocate their lives so they are close enough to walk.
"We have a workforce that's ready to go," Oden said. "We just need more contracting opportunities. We want to work with local companies; we can do commercial work; we can subcontract … We're way more capable than people think and we're way more dedicated than people think."
'Regular Joe'
Blindness can be isolating.
"You wind up stranded, sitting at home a lot," Anderson said.
He's outgoing, but at restaurants, on the street or at the grocery store, he's gotten used to being treated like he isn't normal. It's at work, surrounded by people who understand what it's like to be visually impaired, that Anderson feels the most at ease.
"Here, you have a life," he said.
He and his coworkers don't spend their time talking about what it's like to be blind, save for exchanging tips on using their cellphones during lunch. Instead, they are focused on the job they're there to do.
"I got new guys coming here; some of these young guys come in that's never had a job," Anderson said. "Never worked anywhere, never done anything. And they're just loving having a job, being able to go to work and be able to pay taxes and stuff, you know, to be a regular Joe."
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
