Cathy Brittain and Charlotte Leake might still be driving taxicabs if it weren't for Marion Lanham. But today the two women are back in college -- thanks to Dr. Lanham, they say.
Dr. Lanham, a Harford Community College instructor who is blind, doesn't take any credit for the women's pursuit of education. "They may say they were influenced, but nobody does it unless they themselves want to," she said.
Mrs. Brittain of Fallston used to drive Dr. Lanham weekly from Harford County to the Maryland Penitentiary in Baltimore, where she taught communications classes. Ms. Leake of Dundalk got to know the college teacher while she was a driver and dispatcher at a Baltimore County cab company.
It was during those cab rides that they began thinking about returning to school.
"She's such a wonderful inspiration," Mrs. Brittain said of Dr. Lanham. "Talking to her got me thinking about school."
Mrs. Brittain, who has a 15-year-old daughter, completed her studies at Harford Community College in 1993 and now is at Towson State University. "I will graduate in December '95," said the 36-year-old elementary education major who now works as a part-time administrative assistant at the community college near Bel Air.
"I told Marion in 1986 that I just wanted to take some bachelor's courses," said Ms. Leake, 47, chuckling. Now the former high school dropout, a mother of two and grandmother of four, is looking forward to graduating from the community college in December with an associate of arts in business management.
Beyond that, said Ms. Leake, a full-time secretary at the college, "I'm going to take fun classes, like geography."
As it so happens, Dr. Lanham, 51, was a cab dispatcher during her college days. She remembers telling Mrs. Brittain, when she was considering returning to school, "No. 1, don't do it because of being a cabdriver. . . . Do it because you want it for your happiness."
The college instructor's first job was with Jimmy's Cab Co. in Towson. "I would have been happy to do it for the rest of my life," she said.
But Dr. Lanham was so impressed with two of her professors at Towson State that she was prompted to continue her own education. "I wanted to be like them," she said.
One of those teachers, Marlene Cowan, a professor of speech and mass communications at TSU, keeps in touch with Dr. Lanham. Both affectionately remember the television incident during Dr. Lanham's undergraduate days.
"The television [production] class was the ultimate phase for her," Dr. Cowan said. "I pushed her, and she did it." Dr. Lanham said she had asked Dr. Cowan for a waiver from taking the class because she thought she would have difficulty using a TV camera. And she clearly remembers Dr. Cowan's response: "Marion, this course is part of your major. You will take the course, you will use the camera, and you will do it right."
Dr. Lanham smiled at the memory. "I learned not to accept anything less," she said. "You do things as everybody else does. It's not what disabilities you have, but what assets you have."
Marion Lanham grew up in Lutherville and, although she had been born blind in her left eye, she led a normal life, she said. She lost all her sight when she was 14 and just starting classes at Dulaney High School.
"It was diagnosed as acute glaucoma. It was extremely painful and was a quick loss of sight," Dr. Lanham said. "It was a difficult thing to deal with. I was going into the ninth grade and then nothing. . . . At the time, you have a grieving period for the person no longer there."
She attended the Maryland School for the Blind for a year, then decided to return to Dulaney High. "It was scary, but I felt good about myself," she said. So, with a Braille slate in those precomputer days, she went back to school as a junior and graduated the next year. "You have to play the cards you're dealt," she said.
She later earned a bachelor's degree in public address from Towson State, a master's in public address from Bowling Green University in Ohio and a master's in liberal arts from the Johns Hopkins University. She earned her doctorate in organizational communications and criminology at Bowling Green.
She said she chose the dual doctorate because she was teaching classes at the Maryland Penitentiary at the time. But in 1991, after 16 years, Dr. Lanham relinquished her course load there.
"I was trying to do too many things," said Dr. Lanham. She said she regretted giving it up but "would love to go back in the future."
She is teaching five public speaking classes at Harford Community College, where she has taught since 1970. "My kids handle it great," she said. "Many people don't know I'm blind. I wear glasses. I look at people. I don't have a cane or a dog; I don't have time for that kind of stuff."
But she does have time for computers and traveling. "I love it," commented Dr. Lanham, who said she would enjoy working for the airline industry, perhaps in consumer affairs or public affairs.
Dr. Lanham, who is unmarried and lives in Perry Hall, said she was surprised when an airline passenger once told her how impressed she was that Dr. Lanham traveled alone. "I don't see myself as an inspiration, but as an average Joe," she said. "I enjoy meeting people. And I go to many seminars so I can help my students."
She is working on a computer project involving long-distance learning. "I couldn't live without a computer," she said. "I can lose myself for hours."
Dr. Cowan said Dr. Lanham even assembled, by herself, a multipart computer that came in several boxes.
"That's the kind of self-confidence and determination she has," Dr. Cowan said. "She will not allow impairment to hold her back."