Elizabeth Sammons
Columbus, Ohio
Second Term – 3 years to expire in 2009
Discovering that Elizabeth’s congenital eye condition rendered her completely blind, a doctor told her parents to institutionalize her when she was six weeks old; she would be “retarded and uneducable.” Her parents ignored this advice, believing in the ability of mind and spirit to approach life with meaning and wonder. By fifth grade, before mainstreaming laws were in place, Elizabeth entered a normal school classroom after several years in blind and visually impaired classes.
Elizabeth took three years to double major with honors as an undergraduate in French and Communications. Afterwards she earned an M.A. in journalism at The Ohio State University. She developed her international interests by spending an exchange year in Switzerland, and immediately after the end of her education, by becoming a guide in the U.S. Information Agency’s ongoing citizens exchange exhibit to the then Soviet Union. She continued for the next decade as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in Hungary, a nonprofit manager of a news advocacy group in Central Asia, and a teacher, interpreter, marketer and cross-disability advocate in Novosibirsk, Siberia. In 2000 she returned to the USA and worked as a claims representative for Social Security until her interest in doing more encouraged management to promote her into public affairs. In 2005 Elizabeth began her current job as Legislative Liaison for the Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission.
Elizabeth currently serves in her fifth year on the Ohio Governor’s Council on People with Disabilities. As needed, she volunteers her interpreting and teaching skills in several languages, contributes occasional articles to a variety of publications and speaks on issues related to cross-cultural communications and events in Russia and Eastern Europe. She serves as secretary for her Lutheran church council and leads a book club.
Elizabeth is peacefully married and has one daughter, Sophia, age 11. She still lets her sense of wonder guide her to some tiny beauty along the path every day; to her, this is what makes the difference between the ordinary and the miraculous.