Leonard Dowdy, with black gloves, using shop tools. After leaving Perkins, he worked at the Industrial Home for the Blind in Brooklyn, NY, where he worked from June to December 1948. After working at his grandfather's chicken farm in Sedalia, Missouri he went on to work at a broom factory in Kansas City. In 1954 he began working at the Peterson Manufacturing Company in Kansas City, where he worked for many years assembling safety lights for trucks and trailers.
