How Ray Charles overpowered his disability to become a pilot
While having a disability shouldn’t stop people from chasing their dreams, it inevitably closes some doors. For example, if you’re deaf, then a career as a professional musician becomes increasingly unlikely. Or, if you are blind, then a dream to become a pilot seems destined for failure — but nobody handed that memo to Ray Charles.
During the early years of Charles’ life, he had some vision; however, it quickly started to deteriorate. By age seven, he was completely blind and had his right eye removed because it was extremely painful. His mother, Retha, was a crucial figure in Charles’ life and passionately urged him not to view his disability as a step back, and once recalled: “When I got to feeling sorry for myself, she’d get tough and say, ‘You’re blind, you ain’t dumb; you lost your sight, not your mind.’ And she’d make me…see, I could do almost anything anyone else could do.”
As he was educated alongside deaf children, Charles was not just fluent in braille, but he also knew sign language. However, learning music through braille was a task he found difficult, and instead, he’d memorise a song in full before performing it.
Charles wanted to avert the stereotypical blind tropes at every avenue and once said: “Now it’s important that you understand that there were three things I never wanted to own when I was a kid: a dog, a cane, and a guitar. In my brain, they each meant blindness and helplessness.”
Instead, Charles went out of his way to do everything which was usually off the cards for blind people. In 1997, the singer opened up about his wild lifestyle to US News and World Reports and shockingly revealed he could land an aeroplane. “I done all kinds of nutty things,” Charles boasted. “I don’t recommend it because I don’t want other blind people to say if Ray Charles did it, I can do it, because I don’t want to cause anybody to get themselves killed.”
In the same interview, Charles also revealed that he had also ridden a motorcycle on the old Mike Douglas television show in Philadelphia, and they blocked a street off for him. “I know if I could see, I’d have me a Harley for sure,” he explained. Charles saved the biggest revelation until last and added, “I know how to fly an airplane, too. I always had an attitude that anything that can kill me I want to know about.”
In the 1960s, Charles purchased a five-passenger Cessna 310, piloted by Black Air Force veteran Tom McGarrity, who taught the singer about the workings of aeroplanes. It’s alleged that occasionally Charles would take control of the plane instead of McGarrity setting it to autopilot, and he’d follow the tones of the radar. Charles overcame adversity at every hurdle and showed anything was possible if one puts their mind to it.
