They swept their way to success in life

Published 7:00 am Saturday, April 16, 2005

Blindness was no obstacle for former islanders Ben Smith and Don Donaldson.

It’s hard enough knocking on doors peddling brooms, but Don Donaldson and Ben Smith did it blind – literally.

Donaldson’s recently published autobiography, “What’s in a Name,” includes many vignettes and humorous episodes from the escapades the two men shared as broom-selling blind kids living in Seattle during the Depression era.

“I’ve always surmounted my difficulties by being bold,” said Donaldson, who credits his boldness to selling brooms with Smith, a former summer resident of Bainbridge Island.

Donaldson credits his door-to-door sales experience for carrying him through life and giving him the drive to accomplish great things later in life.

Both he and Smith went on to become school directors, Donaldson at the Washington State School for the Blind in Vancouver, and Smith at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Mass.

The book tells how these friends and “partners in crime” might never have met if they had not both been blinded as children, while playing with dynamite caps.

Although the two boys had severely impaired vision, they made their way around Washington State through their high school and college years selling brooms.

Their wares were made at Seattle’s Lighthouse for the Blind. Mops and brooms at that time cost 60 cents – equal to 10 loaves of bread – and sometimes as much 95 cents each, and the seller got to keep 50 percent of the sale.

“We did so well, it put us both through college,” Donaldson said.

Meeting up

Son of the well-known Seattle City Light engineer Glen Smith, Ben Smith and his family summered at Agate Pass on Bainbridge Island. The family owned five acres there, and some descendents still live in the neighborhood.

Used to earning money after taking a paper route at age 6, Smith was looking forward to making money again when he transferred to WSSB his junior year and met Donaldson there.

Smith still recalls the pair’s first outing as salesmen.

As would become their practice, each took one side of the street.

Although he was nervous at first, Smith’s first sale of a whisk broom and kitchen broom to a friendly housewife in a robe broke the ice.

“We went downtown and sold the whole bunch in three hours,” Smith said, “and got lost from each other.”

Luckily, the boys met up again on the way back to the school. They split their spoils, and each bought a quart of ice cream.

Donaldson fondly remembers his times staying with the Smith clan on Bainbridge Island, where he was treated as “one of the boys.”

One of the pair’s early sales expeditions outside of Seattle was a trip by boat from the Smiths’ Bainbridge house to Bremerton – “a broom-selling paradise with virtually no unemployment,” Donaldson writes in his book.

Donaldson eventually regained vision in his left eye in 1932, and had it for the next 60 years, allowing him to drive a car. That extended the pair’s sales reach to points all over Washington.

He had a brush with fame when he wrote an article for Reader’s Digest about what it was like to regain his sight at age 21 after being sightless for 15 years.

Grateful for being able to see again, Donaldson changed majors from pre-law to education. After graduation, he received a scholarship to Harvard University and then a teaching position at the Perkins School for the blind.

Smith, a few years younger, followed in Donaldson’s footsteps and the friends were once again in the same school.

Donaldson later married and returned to Washington to teach in public schools and was eventually asked to be the director of WSSB, a position he held for 20 years.

Today the WSSB educates students in its K-12 school, while also providing materials and instructors for other visually impaired students in their hometowns as well as distance learning programs and braille resources.

Donaldson’s 94 years have been full of adventure, including encounters in Boston with Helen Keller, the Kennedy family and Life magazine photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White.

The experience selling brooms, though, remains the foundation of their friendship.

“It was,” Smith said, “an enduring partnership.”

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Seeing their way

“What’s in a Name” by Don Donaldson (AuthorHouse, $21.75) is available at local bookstores. Book royalties benefit the Washington State School for the Blind.