Jay Blake

Owner, Follow A Dream

Jay is the owner and crew chief for Follow A Dream, a non-profit organization which deals in drag racing. He attended Phelps Academy and later the Carroll Center for the Blind. After an explosive tire accident during his time as a mechanic, he lost all vision, smell and taste. When relearning how to live without his sight, Jay discovered that he could still follow his passion of working on racing engines. He founded Follow A Dream both to pursue his lifelong dream of owning a professional racing team and to inspire others to accomplish their goals through positive thinking, self-determination, and hard work. Jay is NHRA drag racing's only blind crew chief, and his team won the Eastern US Championship in 2012.

Vision Towards Success Podcast Episode
Transcript

Speaker 1: Forward.

Speaker 2: Forward. Left. Find the door.

Speaker 3: There are over four million working aged, blind and visually impaired people in the United States. And over two million of these people are unemployed. This is a staggering statistic, but many people defy these odds and are happily and gainfully employed and we wish to share their stories with the world.

Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Vision Towards Success, the podcast that highlights stories of career development and lived experience. This podcast is brought to you by the Polus Center for Social and Economic Development. In our program, we feature employment success stories from visually impaired individuals for people with disabilities and their allies, in hopes of showing just how smart, hardworking, and capable this diverse community is. Hello, welcome back to Vision Towards Success. In today's program we will be learning all about Jay Blake, an entrepreneur, motivational speaker and mechanic. It is my pleasure to welcome Jay to the show today, and I'll hand it over to Chantale Zuzi to begin the interview.

Chantale Zuzi: Hi Jay, my name is Chantale Zuzi and I'm going to be your interviewer today. Thank you so much for being here.

Jay Blake: Thank you for having me.

Chantale Zuzi: First of all, can you tell us about yourself, like where you grew up and where you went to school?

Jay Blake: Yes. I grew up in Wayland, Massachusetts and graduated from the Phelps School in Malvern, Pennsylvania. I am currently 54 years old. And in May of 1997 I was the head mechanic for a transportation company and I had a forklift tire explode in my face, causing me to lose total sight, smell and taste. I started a company called Follow A Dream. I am the world's only totally blind crew chief from the world of motor sports, and I am a motivational speaker speaking on the power of positive thinking, self-determination and teamwork.

Chantale Zuzi: How old were you and how did you adapt learning to use new technologies and just your new life in general?

Jay Blake: At the age of 31, I was married, I had two children, and 5:30 on May 22nd when I had my accident, I lost total sight. I was flown to Mass General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts where surgeons worked for over 10 and a half hours to rebuild my face and eventually implant two prosthetic eyes. When I woke up from the accident, I had a near death experience, which was the most incredible, amazing, unbelievable experience, and I actually had the choice to live or die. And when I woke up from that experience I asked my brother, my older brother who was at my side, I said, "Am I alive?" And he said, "Yes." And then I said, "Am I blind?" And he said, "We believe so." They were trying to save my right eye, which they were unable to do.

So, hence started my journey of being totally blind and it was a definite shock to the system, a shock to me. Having that near death experience, I believe, gave me a bit of peace as I started learning to live life without sight. Then I call it the rollercoaster ride of life. It goes up and down and up and down. So in life we all have good days and bad days and we all have challenges and blindness has been just that, a rollercoaster ride. I am incredibly blessed to be alive. I am incredibly blessed to do what I do, and have the ability to do what I do. So I try and be thankful all the time. Blindness is definitely challenging and can be very frustrating at times, but it is what it is and I can't change it.

I was incredibly fortunate to go to the Carroll Center for the Blind very soon after my accident. My accident was at the end of May and by the end of August I was at the Carroll Center in Newton, Massachusetts for orientation and then was enrolled in the full-time program at the beginning of September. So I was incredibly fortunate to be able to go to rehabilitation so quickly and learn how to live my new life without vision. Well, actually not vision but without sight. And here we are today roughly 24 years later, which is unbelievable. And I've started my own business, I've traveled all around the country, I've been into Canada and Mexico speaking, and raced all over the country winning races and winning championships and been able to inspire many other people along the way. So it's been an incredible journey.

Chantale Zuzi: Did you continue to work in that field after the accident, and how accessible the industry was?

Jay Blake: The industry I worked in prior to my accident I was an automotive and truck mechanic and after my accident I was not able to continue in that role. Not being able to see you can't drive and you really can't get a job at your average dealership or mechanics garage. But I was able to learn the trade differently, without working with tools and things, without sight. So I was doing things on my own, and then when I started Follow A Dream, part of Follow A Dream is the race car and I physically work on the race car and the support equipment truck trailer and things that help support the race car as we travel around the country.

Chantale Zuzi: What inspired you to start Follow Your Dream?

Jay Blake: What inspired me to start Follow A Dream? After my accident and after the Carroll Center, a friend of mine invited me to Reading, Pennsylvania for an NHRA drag race. And drag racing was really my passion and my dream, and when I went to the races, I really didn't think I'd be able to enjoy them anymore because of the loss of smell, taste and sight. But I was encouraged to go and I did, and I realized when I was there that I could still enjoy the sport that I loved and dreamed of being part of. So that weekend I decided that realistically nobody's probably going to hire me to work on a race car, so the only thing to do would be start my own race team. And that's what I did. And fortunately it's worked out well and I'm very, very fortunate to have built a great team of people around me and we have been able to build and grow and do great things with Follow A Dream.

Chantale Zuzi: How did you deal with the negativity from people who are completely ignorant about what a blind person is capable of accomplishing?

Jay Blake: A lot of people I have found are more intrigued about what blind people can do. There are a group of people that are just convinced blind people cannot do things and that can be very frustrating and aggravating at times. And the way I try and handle it is, I try and show them that blind people can do things, that I can do things, and try and tell them about other blind people, because I'm amazed by what other blind people can do. I can't read Braille. There's a lot of things... Blind people, we're like everybody else, we're all different. So we all have our different strengths and our different weaknesses. My strengths are working on mechanical things and doing that kind of thing, so that's what I'm good at. I just try and educate people and show people by example what can be done.

I have actually worked with people that still can't totally realize what people are capable of without sight. You just have to accept it. Everybody's different and you just have to accept some people aren't going to get it. And then other people, they're going to worry and they're going to try and help, because the natural instinct of a person is to help people and sighted people, I believe, just are looking out for... When they see a blind person, their intention is to help, not be rude or ignorant to the situation. They're just trying to help, and sometimes we have to have a little bit of patience trying to teach them the right way.

Chantale Zuzi: Could you talk about overcoming adversity and how you got to pursue your life goals?

Jay Blake: Overcoming adversity is something I believe we all have to deal with all the time. Everybody is faced with challenges and you can let those challenges stop you or you can build strength from those challenges. Nothing about life is really easy and success is definitely not easy. But one thing I can guarantee you is, if you sit in a chair and do nothing, you will never overcome adversity and you will never overcome your challenges and you'll never be successful. You have to get up and fight through that, and we don't have to do that alone. Everybody needs help and there's nothing wrong with reaching out and asking for help. I learned this way back at the beginning when I very first started Follow A Dream. I realized nobody that is successful does it alone.

You look at Bill Gates and Microsoft, he didn't do that alone. You look at Tom Brady and the New England Patriots and all the Super Bowls they won. They did not do that as one person. Tom Brady didn't do that alone. Success happens with teamwork and overcoming adversity. It takes a team, so you can't be afraid to ask for help. And I learned this after going blind and realizing we do need help to do certain things. Not being afraid to ask for help, because people, if they offer to help you, they're doing that because they want to, not because they feel they have to. And there were days that I definitely don't feel like getting out of bed in the morning, but you get up and you fight through the day when you're having a bad day, but you wake up and you try and remember all the positive things and how fortunate we are in this great country we live in and how fortunate we are to have the technology we have and the abilities, and you wake up and attack the day.

Chantale Zuzi: You also believe in five tools of success, which is positive attitude, education, passion, determination, teamwork. Why do you believe that these five tools can help everyone reach their life-long goals?

Jay Blake: Five tools for your life's toolbox have been the tools that I have used to go from a hospital bed to speaking with you today. I was in a hospital bed just losing my sight, rebuilding my face, and then I went through a divorce, I started a nonprofit called Follow a Dream, the race team, the speaking program, all of that. I have used the five tools, a positive attitude, education, passion, determination and teamwork. I have used those tools to create and find success and reach my goals and continue to pursue my dreams. It is the fact that those tools do work. You can have tools but the key is you have to use the tools that you have.

Chantale Zuzi: How has your life experience has changed your view of the world?

Jay Blake: I have always been a pretty positive person. Since my accident and building Follow A Dream and traveling I have, I've experienced so much more than I did prior. I lived locally and had kids, and the world is different today than it was 25 years ago, but with that all said, people are people and most people are good people. We live in the greatest country in the world and we're just very fortunate If you want something and you're willing to work for it, you can achieve that. Not like saying, if I wanted to be a quarterback of an NFL football team I could do that because I can't. But as we pursue our goals or reach for our goals, sometimes that journey gets diverted and we go a different direction. But it's all part of the learning experience.

So I try and go through life... And as a blind person, when I was at the Carroll Center, they told us that we're going to have to educate people about blindness. And again, I was very, very new to blindness and I said, "I need to educate myself. I don't need to worry about educating others." But I have really learned that they were 100 percent correct, that as a blind person or visually impaired person, you do have to educate others, and that's okay and it helps everybody when you do that. And I was worried about looking like an outcast with my cane, I call it a stick, but just trying to walk around, and I've learned in my opinion that people do watch but they watch in amazement, not in disgust.

So you have to have some patience and understand that as a blind community we know each other and we understand the blindness, but we're a very small minority of people in the country and in the world. So not a lot of people frankly have seen blind people and seen how blind people maneuver and work and do things. So you do have to have some patience and some understanding with it and it can get irritating at times too.

Chantale Zuzi: Thanks so much for sharing that with our listeners today. Speaking of [inaudible 00:20:33], how has COVID affected your work?

Jay Blake: COVID has basically shut my work down as a motivational speaker. The speaking engagements that I had booked, all canceled. I do a lot of speaking at schools, and schools, one, they all went to virtual, and then things were so kind of construct them along the way that any extracurricular activities they stopped doing. And then as COVID lessened we did some virtual presentations and I've done some now speaking in person, and the racing industry was very unsure of what was happening. You couldn't have spectators and you couldn't travel very easily.

So we had lost our sponsorship for the race car prior to COVID and due to COVID we were not able to get a new sponsor for the race team. So we are currently now searching for corporate sponsorship and donations for the race team and for Follow A Dream so we can continue spreading the message of the five tools for your life's toolbox, and we continue racing and marketing to tomorrow's next customer. So COVID Has been a major issue and hopefully COVID is calming down and... Well, it is calming down and hopefully it continues to calm down more, and we can secure a corporate sponsor and funding for our 2022 season and we'll be back speaking at schools and corporate events and sales groups and we'll be back at it. But right now it's put a huge hurt on my business.

Chantale Zuzi: Wow, you are such an inspiration and it was really a pleasure to speak with you today and thank you so much for giving us the time.

Speaker 1: You are listening to Vision Towards Success. Today's guest is Jay Blake, former industrial automotive mechanic and creator of nonprofit Follow A Dream. Through this organization Jay works as a motivational speaker and is the first blind person to head a pit crew in competitive drag racing. We had a chance to catch up with Jay after the interview to discuss his feelings on blindness and to get more information on his nonprofit and its mission. As heard in the first part of this episode, Jay lost his sight in a workplace accident involving a tire blowing up in his face. As you may imagine, losing sight, taste and smell all at once would be very difficult to adapt to. Here are some of Jay's thoughts about his blindness and some of the obstacles he has had to face in losing his sight.

Jay Blake: Yes, I've been blind 24 years and I think you're always coming up with new challenges and, I don't know, maybe not new challenges but you're coming up with challenges and things all the time. Partly because of what I do and how I do it. I'm not stationary, but working on a computer is very, very challenging to me. Incredibly challenging. I don't do it a lot, I'm not good at it, and because I'm not good at it I don't do it a lot so I don't get a lot better. And I attribute a ton of my acceptance due to my near death experience and I really do believe that having the opportunity and just the whole experience is... I trip over words trying to explain it because it's so hard to explain, but it was such an amazing experience and I do believe it helped in the acceptance and I'm so lucky to be alive.

In my accident I got hit in the head. Basically my head was ripped open and my face was torn off, kind of. So to not have brain damage and to have my face back, and I am so incredibly lucky, and I believe I lost total vision because it's easier for me to accept. Most of my life I fixed things. That's what I did for a living. It's kind of what I do now with the race car. And I know that I have literally no eyes in my head so I know I can't see. So either I accept it or I don't go anywhere and I was not willing to give up on life.

Speaker 1: Jay mentioned how this love of fixing things helped him accept his blindness. We asked him to elaborate on how he got into the field of automotive repair and what spawned his love of tools.

Jay Blake: Tell you a story. There's a picture in front of me when I was three or four years old and I have a pedal tractor tipped over and a toolbox next to me. Now I was sighted, I was three or four years old. Me and tools have had a long-term relationship. I love tools. There's a company called Snap-on Tools and I used to buy them. They have tool trucks that drive around for the profession, and I used to meet the Snap-on truck on my bicycle when I was a kid. And my toolbox when I went blind was roughly seven feet tall and say five feet high.

When I came home from the hospital, it was probably two or three weeks after I came home. So, I had my accident, I was in the hospital for about three and a half weeks, and probably two or three weeks later, I walked into my garage, and my toolbox had been brought home from work, and I walked over to my wrench drawer and I opened it up and I pulled out a combination wrench and I put it in my hands and I could tell what it was, and I smiled. And I put the wrench back in the drawer and I bent down to the bottom drawer, which was the junk drawer, and I literally turned my head away so I couldn't see, although I couldn't see anyways, and I reached in and I grabbed something, whatever it was, and I grabbed a GM distributor module and again, through touch I could tell what it was, and my smile got bigger.

And I told myself at that point that I would learn how to do what I used to do again, just differently. At that point I was determined to learn how to work on cars again and adapt to my situation. Just realizing that I could see with my hands and slowly realizing that I could do what I used to do differently, but I could still do it. And I use power tools and I use all kinds of tools without sight and it's just amazing that you can do it. But it gave me the determination to keep going. I met a gentleman that rode tandem bikes. He was in Plymouth, Massachusetts. I met him before I went to the Carroll Center. He was kind of the person that told me that, "You know, this is different, but you can do things." And I had a mobility instructor named Rich Roper who was just amazing in helping me move forward.

Speaker 1: Oftentimes sighted individuals don't realize what we can do as blind people. Like how a newly blind man could stick his hand in a toolbox and know exactly what tool he was holding with just a quick feel, or how we can tell who's walking towards us by the sound of a person's gait and their shoes. There are so many things we can do as blind and visually impaired people that the world thinks are extraordinary, but to us they're just a part of our normal lives. You may think it's fascinating that a completely blind person can identify you by the way you walk, but for us it's just as normal as recognizing a person's face. After his accident, Jay was determined to work on cars again, and he set out to learn his craft in a new non-visual way. There are not many blind mechanics out there and we were wondering if Jay got some advice from other blind members of his field.

Jay Blake: Since I have gone blind, I have connected to more blind mechanics and we're trying to create a group so we can talk to each other and share ideas and stories. And as I have traveled the country and spoken to hundreds of vocational schools, I have had teachers reach out to me that have had visually impaired students who want to pursue the automotive career, automotive mechanics, and that's been really cool to try and reach out and help them.

Speaker 1: Jay has such a phenomenal outlook on life and will certainly impact the lives of many young blind people contemplating the field of mechanics. Along with his insights to the field, he gave great insights into blindness and what it can add to your life. So many people think of blindness and vision loss as a horrible, insurmountable thing, but there are many good things to celebrate about blindness as well.

Jay Blake: A new perspective of life. Sometimes it helps you get through a crowded area pretty well because you got your stick swinging out there. Good seats at a concert. I've met a lot of interesting people. I've been able to help people because of blindness through my experiences. Without blindness, I probably never would've started Follow A Dream and been able to do what I do now. So blindness has given me an opportunity to do something that I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to do. And if I did, it would have a very different look on it than it does as Follow A Dream.

Speaker 1: There are so many pluses we can bring to the table as blind people. One of Jay's pluses is his five tools for success. These are five tools that Jay informs people about so they can achieve their dreams and live happy and fulfilling lives. He tells us how he used these tools to adapt to his blindness when he first lost his sight.

Jay Blake: Well, if we go down the list, having a positive attitude. A positive attitude really can generate energy inside you where a negative attitude takes energy away. So a positive attitude, it gives you energy to pursue and move forward. And then education. When I went blind, I had no idea how to live without sight, and through education, I have learned how to do everything without sight. Mobility, the computer, the phone, just activities of daily life. And then passion. I had a dream of NHRA drag racing, and having the passion for something gives you a goal, a drive, it gives you a purpose, and that passion can help keep you motivated. The determination is just that. It's determination that you're not going to let the blindness stop you. You're not going to let people stop you. The determination to finish a project that you have to do for your education or... It's just the determination not to give up.

And teamwork is, we can't find success by ourselves. Everybody that is successful does it with a group of people. And just because we're blind, and personally, I can be incredibly determined to do it on my own, there are certain things we need help with and the teamwork makes it possible. And I could not do what I do without a team, without other people helping me. I don't have the knowledge, I don't have the ability, I just don't have it all. And it has nothing to do with blindness, it's got to do with all different kinds of things. So teamwork is truly what makes things happen.

Speaker 1: In teaching about these five tools through his organization, Follow a Dream, Jay is changing the lives of both blind and sighted people alike. Everyone can learn from his story of education, determination, passion, a positive attitude, and teamwork. Everyone has difficult times in their lives, it's inevitable, and knowing how to push through them and get help is crucial. This is just one of the messages Jay Hopes Follow A Dream can help people with.

Jay Blake: I hope people that come in contact with Follow A Dream or hear about Follow A Dream, they realize that having a dream is okay and that you can pursue your dreams. And the five tools, a positive attitude, education, passion, determination, teamwork, those five tools really work, but the most important is having a positive attitude, being able to enjoy the opportunities that we have in our daily lives and being thankful for what we have in our daily lives. We are just so lucky. There's always something to be thankful about.

Speaker 1: We also wondered what was next for Follow A Dream after COVID. This is what Jay had to say.

Jay Blake: Our next steps for Follow A Dream is one, to find the funding and the corporate sponsorship to keep us out on the racetrack and traveling the country and bringing our message of the five tools for your life's toolbox to kids in school. I mean, that's... The nonprofit side of Follow A Dream is to motivate kids to believe in themselves, to educate them about the five tools for your life's toolbox, and that they, with a positive attitude and determination and teamwork, can pursue their goals and their dreams.

Speaker 1: Going back to his career, we were wondering what kind of pushback and comments he had gotten as a blind man working in a vastly sighted field.

Jay Blake: Most people in the field, frankly, are amazed at what you can do without sight. I had very little pushback about it. And part of that is, I think, my attitude and I try and make other people at ease about it with jokes and just trying to make them more relaxed. But most people are amazed at what can be done without sight. Now I work for myself, so the pressure of a retail auto repair business is not one that I deal with, and the time constraints are different, because I am able to do a lot of things working on cars and things mechanically, but it does take longer. And frankly, there are just things that you can't do because of colors or diagrams or reading gauges. So there are just some things you can't, but we keep trying to overcome those obstacles and learn new ways to do them.

But most people are intrigued at what I can do and how I do it. So I'd say a lot of people look to be educated on how I do things simply by going, "How do you do that? How do you do it without seeing it?" And I explain that I just look at it differently. Instead of my eyes, I use touch and sound. And I have no smell or taste, so I lose those senses as well, and sometimes in this industry, a smell, not so much taste, but smell can give you a lot of signs as well that I don't get.

Speaker 1: Because of his blindness Jay has to answer many extra questions about how he does his job. These are mainly out of intrigue, and Jay loves to answer them, but sometimes he gets uncomfortable questions that can affect his confidence and ability to work and function. These questions can add pressure that is unnecessary. An example of these questions could be, why are you out alone? Can you do that? Why do you eat like that? And many, many others.

Jay Blake: And you get that pressure. I know personally, sometimes you get nervous and it's harder to do things when you know you're under a bunch of eyes and they're staring at you. For me personally, eating is... At the very beginning, was the most frustrating thing in the world to do, and at times is still frustrating. To be totally honest, last night I was out to dinner with my family and I put my roll down off the plate and my nephew next to me goes, "You know, you put that off the plate." And I'm like, "Yeah, I know. That's where I wanted it." He's like, "Oh, okay." And then my other nephew from the other side of the table made a comment about something different.

And honestly, it's very frustrating and it's aggravating, and you want to tell them, "Why don't you worry about what you're doing, not what I'm doing," but I think it's... They're intrigued on how we do things. So I'd rather work on a car with somebody watching me than eat.

Speaker 1: The added pressure from society and others in our lives can be a lot to handle, but to get through it, we can listen to Jay and his five tools in your toolbox to push through and to be successful. For more information on Jay and his nonprofit Follow A Dream. You can go to www.followadream.org. And now a blindness tip on the keys to success from entrepreneur, Jay Blake.

Jay Blake: Don't give up. Whatever you do, don't give up. And ask for help. And when you wake up in the morning, grab the biggest glass you have and fill it full of patience and drink it.

Speaker 1: He also puts a strong emphasis on education.

Jay Blake: You know, just the more education you get and the more experience you get, the more comfortable you will get.

Speaker 1: Being comfortable with who you are and your situation is important. So if you follow Jay's five tools for success, it will make finding that comfort a lot easier. I'd like to thank Jay for joining us today, and I invite all of you to join us next time when we investigate another blindness success story on Vision Towards Success.

Thank you for tuning into Vision Towards Success. This program has been recorded and produced by Elena Regan and David Gonzalez from the Trades Win audio podcast team, in association with the Polus Center for Social and Economic Development. Funding for this program has been provided by the Libby Duane Award from the Fielding Institute, the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, and the Berry Savings Foundation. Additional episodes of this podcast can be found at www.poluscenter.org/tradeswin, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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