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Biography
Billy Gene "Bill" Chapman (October 11, 1928 – August 26, 2007), known as Bill G. Chapman, was an advocate for visually impaired persons, principally in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The founder of Vision Loss Technology, Chapman, himself blind, authored in 2001 Coping With Vision Loss: Maximizing What You Can See and Do, with George H. Pollock as the illustrator. Coping with Vision Loss consists of thirty-six chapters, one devoted to macular degeneration. Chapman also wrote various journal articles and supplied aids to enable the blind to function as otherwise sighted individuals.
Chapman was born in Chickasha, the seat of Grady County in south central Oklahoma, to the late Helen and Talford Chapman. He graduated in 1950 from Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee. In 1954, he completed Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Kansas. Thereafter, he entered the United States Air Force and served in Louisiana, Labrador, Baffin Island, California, Oregon, Great Britain, and Texas. He was medically retired from the Air Force in 1969, having attained the rank of lieutenant colonel.
In 1973, then legally blind, Chapman procured his Ed.D. from Texas Tech University in Lubbock in the fields of "Rehabilitation Administration" and "Rehabilitation Counseling". Chapman was a member of Macular Degeneration International, the Council for Citizens with Low Vision, and the Association for Macular Diseases.
In 1951, Chapman married his high school sweetheart, the former Katherine Dutton, in Chickasha. They had three children: David Chapman and wife Jan of Austin, Melody C. Deaver and husband, Ricky, of San Antonio, and Jane C. Stubblefield and husband Michael of Lewisville, Texas. There were also five grandchildren. Chapman was also survived by a sister, Lawana Case, and husband, Charles, of Lincoln, Nebraska, and a brother, Richard Chapman, and wife, Mary, of Yukon, Oklahoma.
Chapman died in Lubbock. Services were held there on August 30, 2007, at the Second Baptist Church, of which Chapman was a member. Interment was at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery.