Mark Craft is a remarkable volunteer. Just ask the people he works with.

“He’s always upbeat and just wonderful to work with,” said fellow volunteer Tina Graves who works with him at the Salvation Army’s thrift shop.

“Marks has always been available to help the community,” said Capt. Srikant Bhatnagar, who heads the local Salvation Army center. “He’s here whenever we need him. He can’t donate money, so he donates his time. He’s a role model for people, especially young people. He shows that you can contribute your time to help others.”

And there is one more thing that makes him special. Mark is blind. He was born with retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary disease of the eye that is marked by night blindness and “tunnel vision,” a lack of peripheral vision that eventually leads to blindness.

“I had nothing but tunnel vision, like looking through two straw holes,” he said. “I had no peripheral vision, but I was able to go to high school. I went to Porter’s Chapel Academy. I graduated and I played football.

“I was a four-year letterman, playing middle guard. The coach knew about my eyesight, and he told me to take care of what was in front of me,” he said. “As long as I could find somebody to hit, I was OK.

“That was the reason I never could drive a vehicle. I was all right, but if something came up on the side, I had to turn my head. When I did that, it would hurt me and get other people hurt.”

In 1982, his left eye, “which was always my weakest eye, went out and then I went another 31/2 to four years with my right eye, and then it went out.” He has been totally blind since 1987.

A Vicksburg native, Mark and his family moved to South Carolina in 1979, and he worked for the South Carolina Commission for the Blind as a licensed blind vendor from 1981 to 2006, where he operated a food stand and vending machines in state offices and at rest areas along highways.

“I had a stand in Greenville County, S.C.,” he said. “That was a doozy. I had a snack bar with food service people preparing meals, serving breakfast and lunch, and about 30 vending machines. That one gave me a headache.”

When he returned to Vicksburg after retiring, he said, he tried to find work through handicap rehabilitation centers and the Mississippi Rehabilitation for the Blind in Jackson.

“I knew that would be hard, and I would try and get with the vending program, but Mississippi doesn’t have as many vendors as South Carolina has,” he said.

Unable to find a job, he began looking to volunteer work in the community.

“One day, I called up several places to do some volunteer work,” he said. “The Salvation Army was the last one I called, and the only one to tell me, ‘Yes sir, you come on down here and we’ll find you something to do.’

Everybody else, when I told them I was a blind person, really didn’t want to have anything to do with me, which I can understand,” he said. “People didn’t know me, and some times, a blind person has to educate people to let them know what we can do. I’ve got certain limitations on what I can do, and what I cannot do, I make sure to get someone to help me.”

Mark has been a Salvation Army volunteer for seven years, working at each of its thrift store locations, helping out by hanging the clothing donated to the organization.

“You see all these clothes behind me?” he said pointing to a long metal rack well-stocked with clothes, “They’ve been hung up by me.”

When the clothes come to the store, he said, the women sort them to get the clothing suitable for sale and put them on a table, where Mark puts them on hangars and moves them to the racks.

“I work four hours a day from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If they need me any other day, I try my best to get down here,” he said.

When he first started working at the Salvation Army, he said, people wanted to know how he managed to get around the shop, “But now, they all know me, and now I get around with a cane.”

Mark said his positive attitude comes from working with other handicapped people.

“I’ve been around other handicapped people who have been in wheelchairs and have to have somebody wait on them seven days, 24 hours a day, and they don’t complain, and here, with me, it’s only my eyes. Tell me, do I have anything to complain about?” he said. “Another thing that keeps me going and in a good, positive attitude, is having a strong faith with the good Lord. If we didn’t have a strong faith with the good Lord, we’d be in bad trouble.”

He has tried to pass his positive and can-do attitude to other handicapped people.

“In South Carolina, I was state president of the South Carolina Physically Handicapped, and tried to start one in Vicksburg, but it did not succeed,” he said. “Once, I tried to teach handicapped people their limitations. What they can do, what their limitations won’t let them do, and when they reach their limitations, when they need somebody to help them.

“My daddy, he was a good one to teach me,” he said. “His philosophy was, if he could get out of that bed every morning, everything was going to be  all right.”