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A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

I MEET RA Y CHARLES

Several years ago Happy Jack and 1 were sitting on an airplane outside the Jacksonville Air Terminal,
awaiting takeoff on a trip we had looked forward to Las Vegas. This was about 8:00 in the morning, or
maybe a little later, and we were scheduled to arrive in Las Vegas at about noon, Las Vegas time.

After we had been sitting for a while awaiting take off, an announcement came over the PA system that
there were some mechanical difficulties regarding that particular plane, and that we would be taking off
as soon as those difficulties were resolved.

After about 30 minutes, another announcement came on the PA system that the difficulties could not be
taken care of in time for that flight to go out, and everyone was instructed to disembark from the plane,
and go back into the terminal, which we all did.

They divided the crowd into three categories, and the group that Happy jack and I were assigned to were
placed on a twin propeller-type plane, and we were told that we would take that plane to Miami, and
then change planes to a jet aircraft which would fly us to Santa Cruz, California, where we would again
change planes to go on into Las Vegas. That enables us to finally get to Las Vegas at 4 P.M. The twin
engine plane on which we were going on the first leg of our flight to Miami, had three seats on one side
of the aisle, which were one window seat, a center seat, and an aisle seat. The center seat of those three,
1 was somewhat surprised to see, was occupied by celebrity Ray Charles, and the window seat was
occupied by his attendant who traveled with him, inasmuch as he was blind and had to have an attendant
with him at all times. I was assigned to the aisle seat, thus enjoying the company of Ray Charles from
Jacksonville to Miami.

We struck up a conversation, and since I already knew that Ray Charles was born and raised in
Greenville, Florida, during our conversation I asked him if he ever had any desire to someday revisit
Greenville. He jokingly replied, “Well I wouldn’t mind going over there and seeing some of those
folks”. That was his way of telling me, since he was blind, that there would be very little point in his
returning to Greenville.

Later in the conversation he told me that when he was at the beginning of his teenage years, he began to
lose his eyesight, and if his family or a friend had been able to afford it, his sight could have been saved.

That being in the heart of the depression, and since no person of means in Greenville felt like going to
the trouble of spending a good bit of money on a poor black boy’s eye sight, nobody ever bothered to try
do anything about his eyes, and he soon completely went blind.

I enjoyed the conversation 1 had with Ray Charles, as he was extremely outgoing and friendly and one
thing he said to me has stuck in my mind. He said that in a way his being blind was a sort of blessing to
him, because when he played the piano, the keyboard was all in his mind, and he never saw anything at
all connected with the keyboard. His mind just showed his fingers where to go, and he told me that
being blind enabled him to have his instrument with him at all times, and that he could play it anytime
that he wanted to in his mind, and whatever notes or chords he would play he heard in his mind just as
vividly as if he had actually played those notes on an instrument.

The true meaning of that dawned on me, and if you are playing a keyboard instrument, and all of the
sounds which your ears would hear, and all of the keys which your eyes would see, if those things
became ingrained enough in your mind where they were there at all times, then Ray Charles would be

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