1,500 Community Members Band Together to Drive Blind Man to Work Every Day
Imagine for a moment that you are legally blind and can’t get a license. You live in Cabot, Arkansas. The local Walmart offers you a job as a janitor on the night shift, but there’s no public transit to take you five miles in to work, and five miles back home. What do you do?
I would like to think I’d find a way to work. But I don’t know that. Most folks would be tempted to give up, sit at home, and collect unemployment. Bill Moczulewski is not most folks.
Moczulewski decided to walk to work every day, no matter the weather. Even though that means a 10 mile hike, which usually takes him two hours total. What about winter weather? “I don’t call out,” Moczulewski said. “I want to work.”
One day Christy Conrad spotted her neighbor walking and offered him a ride. She listened to his story and enjoyed the drive. She resolved to pick him up whenever she could, especially in bad weather. She said, “He’s going to go to work no matter what…I picked him up in nine degrees the other morning.”
Because Conrad couldn’t give Moczulewski a ride every night and morning, she started a Facebook group seeking other volunteers. She named it Mr. Bill’s Village. And fueled by the generosity of the people of Cabot, it exploded. The group now has 1,500 members.
A group member said, “Now it’s like everyone is competing to give Mr. Bill a ride.” Members even make it a game, going for a drive to find Moczulewski. Conrad said it’s “just like, ‘Where’s Waldo,’ but where’s Mr. Bill…It’s nice to see.”
Today, Moczulewski almost never has to walk all the way to work. He said, “It’s never the same person from one day to the next…There’s a lot of good people in this world, all over the place, you know.”
I 100% agree. I grew up in a small town and have seen how people help one another out. We don’t need apps such as Uber to connect folks with cars to folks who need a lift. In fact, this Facebook group is a fantastic way to verify the identity of the driver and the passenger and stay safe.
That said, Mr. Bill’s Village highlights how badly we need better public transit in the U.S. Not everyone has the privilege of being able to drive, and folks like Moczulewski deserve the freedom to work and move around town. We’ve built a world beyond the scale of the human body, which is great as long as no one gets left behind.
Next, read about the 64 semi-truck convoy that paraded to an 8-year-old’s birthday, or see what the folks in Cabot think about Mr. Bill’s Village in the video below:
