Dick and Lorraine Evensen, January 12, 1987
On a bitterly cold night Monday January 12, 1987, Dick and Lorraine Evensen and Dick's guide dog were on their way home from dinner.
Dick was 50 years old and his wife Lorraine was 60 -- they had met when she was a teacher at the Perkins School for the Blind and he was a student.
Dick worked at the Library of Congress and was Immediate Past President of our AER chapter, and Lorraine had retired and taught braille at the Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind.
They got off the bus and prepared to cross Georgia Avenue where there is no stop sign or traffic signal. I assume they thought it was safe to cross there, because they were not adventurous risk-takers (although at our O&M picnic at my home the previous summer they tasted their very first S'mores, and were the only ones interested in going on a Scavenger Hunt in the woods around my home!).
Dick was totally blind and, according to the bus driver and people who worked at that intersection, he often crossed there alone even though there was a traffic signal a block to his left and right. Lorraine had albinism and probably could see headlights approaching from quite a distance.
We know what happened that night because a little girl saw them and pointed them out to her mother, who said, "yes, dear, blind people can travel independently. Let's watch."
They crossed the first half of the street and then stood on the median strip where my daughter-in-law is standing in the photo here. As they crossed the second half of the street, a car that was in the middle (second) lane slowed down for them. The driver in that car and the driver in the car behind it had been playing leapfrog since they left the bar, and so when the first driver slowed down, the second driver pulled around into the last lane and hit Dick, Lorraine, and the guide dog. All 3 were thrown over the car and were dead within a few hours.