Iowa Department for the Blind director resigns amid cancer battle

The director of the state agency that oversees services for blind Iowans is resigning following a year-and-a-half battle with kidney cancer.

Gov. Kim Reynolds on Tuesday announced the retirement of Emily Wharton, director of the Iowa Department for the Blind. Wharton’s last day is Thursday.

Wharton has led the department for seven years and previously served as its technology director. She is a former client of the Department for the Blind and graduated from its Iowa Blindness Empowerment and Independence Center.

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“Emily Wharton has dedicated her career to serving the blind,” Reynolds said in a statement. “She has long been a passionate advocate, empowering blind Iowans to live independently, work, and fully contribute to their communities. She has made a difference in the lives of many Iowans, and I am grateful for her service.”

Reynolds said she has appointed Sarah Willeford, library director at the Department for the Blind, to serve as interim department director while the state conducts a search of candidates.

In her resignation letter to Reynolds, Wharton said she has been battling Stage 4 kidney cancer since January 2023. She thanked Reynolds and her staff for allowing her to take time needed for treatments and healing.

“However this is a battle I most likely will be continuing to fight for the rest of my life,” Wharton wrote. “Treatment side effects and the chronic conditions they create have greatly reduced (my) stamina and tolerance for stress. While my love of public service and passion for empowering blind Iowans to be gainfully employed and live independently has not diminished, I am afraid I can no longer continue to put forth the high level of energy and effort our citizens deserve.”

Speaking with The Gazette by phone Tuesday, Wharton called Willeford “an outstanding leader” and praised her work leading the library.

“She’s the kind of person who really leads by example,” she said.

Wharton expressed gratitude for her leadership team and agency staff, whom blind Iowans “expect a great deal from … and will not tolerate anything less than excellence and equality.”

A critic of Reynolds’ government reorganization, Wharton urged the governor in her letter “to select a new director in an open and public manner with the full engagement of blind Iowans.”

“I would also strongly encourage you to select a Director who holds high expectations for those they serve and is dedicated to providing real, meaningful vocational rehabilitation and true independent living services,” Wharton wrote. “History has repeatedly shown that IDB Directors who do not meet these qualifications (or are not perceived to have met these qualifications by the public) experience a great deal of failure, frustration, and misery.”

Wharton and Blind Iowans expressed their concern with how the realignment of state government will affect them and the state services that help them.

The realignment, Senate File 514, enabled the governor to appoint the director of the state agency that provides services for the blind, subject to confirmation by the Iowa Senate. It also eliminated the authority of the Commission for the Blind to appoint officers for the commission.

Wharton and blind Iowans expressed strong disagreement with the legislation during subcommittee meetings, saying the moves would politicize the department. They worried services that Iowa provides to blind residents could become less valuable if the agency is directed by someone without the proper expertise.

An official from the governor’s office who attended the hearing said the proposal to make the department head a gubernatorial appointee matches with the philosophical approach to Reynolds’ broader state government reorganization, which is that agency heads within the executive branch should be accountable to the governor.

“In seeing her news release and the information the governor’s office put out, I am very confident they will have an open and transparent process, and will have the best interest of blind Iowans at heart when they proceed with this,” Wharton told The Gazette.

Wharton, who grew up legally blind in a small town in northwest Iowa without access to blindness skill training or positive role models, said she had no belief she would be employed or independent.

“I was so scared and hopeless that I attempted suicide one month before graduating from Drake University,” she wrote in her retirement letter. “The skills, positive attitude toward blindness, and self-confidence I gained in my training in the IDB center made me understand that the amount of eyesight a person possesses has nothing to do with their worth, competency, or potential. … I have been blessed by this rare opportunity to pay forward such a profound gift.”

Wharton received a salary of roughly $103,000 last year, according to the state's salary database.

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com