Dare the Night

This memoir chronicles Mike Cross’s experience of losing over 90 percent of his vision as an eight-year-old and then attempting to live a normal life. Beginning in 1955, it tells the story of a Houston-area family raising a daughter and two disabled sons—one blind and the other with osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease)—and of the parents’ efforts to help their children obtain educations and build meaningful futures. Mike’s battle to adjust to blindness while pursuing a public education, despite its barriers for disabled students, culminates in his becoming co-valedictorian of his 1966 high school class, the only blind student among 530 peers. In the 1970s, he goes on to earn advanced degrees in mathematics at the University of Houston while interning at NASA, where he wrote computer software for the Apollo program and the upcoming space shuttle missions. Later chapters cover Mike’s roles as a husband and father, his career at IBM in Austin during the formative years of the personal computer, and the death of his son in the 2017 mass shooting in Plano, Texas. The memoir shows the impact of events on family members, presenting a clear picture of resilience and illustrating the transformative power of a good education and the will to persevere. Dare the Night aims to dispel gloom and inspire hope, even in the most challenging situations.