Mid-Atlantic Regional Group

Blinded Veterans Association

Venders Company Name:

George Brummell

Sale Rep. Name:  George Brummell.

Contact Phone Number:  (301) 890-1564 or (301) 651-8402.  

Contacts Email Address:  monkeymet@verizon.net

Company Website Address:   www.GeorgeBrummell.com.   

Item or Products Name:  Shades of Darkness.

Item or Products Catalog Number:   ISBN:  0-9788917-0-8.  

Description Of Product: Book   (Approx 347 pages).

An area Vietnam War veteran who was blinded in combat in 1966 and spent decades helping fellow disabled soldiers has written an earthy, unblinking memoir of growing up black in rural Maryland, the African-American military experience, and reinventing his life after a long recovery from battle wounds.

George E. Brummell, retired Director of National Field Service for the DC-based Blinded Veterans Association, was a 20-year-old sergeant on a search-and-destroy mission when a landmine detonated a few feet away. He lost his sight, and his left arm was badly damaged.

“Shades of Darkness: A black soldier’s journey through Vietnam, blindness, and back” begins in the cucumber fields and tomato canneries of Maryland’s Eastern Shore (Federalsburg) where Brummell was raised by his grandmother and learned to make his way in the still-segregated South of the 1950s.

He joined the Army at 17 and, after a rowdy tour of duty in peacetime Korea, found himself in the 25th Infantry Division on the front line of a major counteroffensive against the North Vietnamese in which many of his men were killed or injured. After his luck ran out, he spent months at Brooks Medical Center in San Antonio getting patched up, and then many months more at the VA’s Hines Blind Rehabilitation Center near Chicago, learning to live in the dark.

“I was sustained through it all by the words of my grandmother, Miss Susie, who scolded me whenever I whined or moped: ‘Quit your belly-achin’, child! Lords knows, there’s plenty o’ poor souls in worser shape than you.’”

Brummell went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from University of Akron, and became an advocate for other vets whose vision had been impaired by combat or advanced age. He won millions in back benefits for hundreds of forgotten veterans, and helped find them resources and support. He returned to Vietnam in 1998 with bicycling champ Greg LeMond on a goodwill tour, perched on the back of a two-seater, with other wounded vets from both sides of the conflict.

Today he continues to visit wounded vets at DC-area hospitals where he talks to injured soldiers who, “like I had many years before, sit in darkness at an Army hospital wondering if their lives are over or, if not, how they could ever hope and laugh and love again. I try to give them a spark of optimism that they, too, could have a full life in spite of their injuries.

“I tell them that I can’t say I enjoy being blind, but I have enjoyed the challenge of it.”

One of the biggest challenges he faced was how to write a book with no sight and one fully-functional hand. “I started writing in 1977, after being inspired by a book, ‘If You Could See What I Hear,’ by Tommy Sullivan, a blind Harvard student who described with humor how he overcame his limitations. I started with a tape-recorder and friends to transcribe, then computers came along that could ‘speak’ the words back to me. I sat pecking with my one hand, telling my story to the hard drive. Many nights I only got down a sentence or two. All told, it took me about fifteen years to get it done.”

Brummell has just published his book independently and will be appearing at public events to talk about his experiences and his take on the current wave of casualties coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

AVAILABLE FOR MEDIA QUOTES and SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS.

End of Document

Back to Vender's Corner

Back to Home