Albuquerque Journal

Chalmers Named to Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce Top Spot
By Susan Stiger, Journal Staff Writer

In a historic move Thursday, Lobo Lucy attended the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce luncheon, along with the Lobo cheerleaders and chamber members in red Lobo T-shirts, all on the floor of the Pit.
      
 It may be the first time more than 400 people have ever simultaneously eaten chicken Caesar salads in the University of New Mexico's famous arena.
      
 Oh yeah, and Ford man Don Chalmers took over as chairman of the chamber's board of directors.
       
Chalmers listed education, economic development, transportation, crime and safety as issues the chamber will address during his term.
       
“We're against crime; we're for safety,” he deadpanned.
       
Chalmers, a proud Okie, happily introduced fellow Oklahoman Jim Stovall as motivational keynote speaker.
       
Stovall is not one to listen to the excuses of those whose dreams have not come true.
      
 At 17, he'd planned a career playing for the Dallas Cowboys. It turned out, though, that macular degeneration was slowly blinding him.
      
 By the time he was 29, he couldn't see his hand in front of his face.
       
The diagnosis did not instantly shoot him out of a canon into national prominence.
      
 He confessed to creating a world inside a 9-by-12-foot room with a radio, phone and tape recorder until one day he walked 50 feet to his mail box and realized that from his street, he could go anywhere in the world. So he did.
       
Stovall, author of “The Ultimate Gift,” which has been made into a movie starring James Garner and Abigail Breslin, is a national champion Olympic weightlifter and president of the Emmy Award-winning Narrative Television Network, which makes television accessible to the country's 13 million blind and visually impaired people.
       
Stovall thought his first book, “You Don't Have to Be Blind to See,” would be his last.
      
 “I'd written everything I knew and a few things I only suspected,” he said.
      
 Now he's published 12.
       
Between jokes and anecdotes, Stovall offered two messages to the business people and entrepreneurs listening across the Pit floor: “You are where you are because of choices you made.”
       
And, “You change your life when you change your mind.”
       
Before he became blind, Stovall had never finished a book. He's now writing his 13th.