Council Bluffs, Iowa — The man who founded the first school in Iowa for blind students has been inducted into the Hall of Fame for Legends and Leaders of the Blindness Field.
In 1849, Samuel Bacon established a state school for the blind in Illinois. Steve Gettel, the superintendent of Iowa Educational Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, says Bacon had studied math at Kenyon College in Ohio.
Gettel says by 1854, the school had moved four times to accommodate increasing enrollment.
Bacon lobbied the legislature to pay for the construction of a permanent school for blind students, but he objected to the selection of a site in Vinton. Bacon left the state a year before the Iowa Institution for the Education of the Blind opened in Vinton in 1862. The institution closed in 2011.
Gettel is also superintendent of the Iowa School for the Deaf in Council Bluffs. He plans to retire at the end of June.
Gettel was superintendent of the Montana School for the Deaf and Blind before taking a similar position in Iowa seven years ago. He started his teaching career at the Idaho School for the Deaf and the Blind in 1981.
