“I was born with a visual problem.  I was cross eyed until I was six and I developed a lazy eye.  What I have now is macular degeneration.  It runs in the family and is hereditary.  I have two sisters.  It comes to the light eyes first and mine are blue.  The next sister it hit was green and my older sister has brown.  So all three of us suffer the same disease.

My career consisted of law enforcement.  I was a dispatcher before 911.  I was there when 911 was implemented.  I was a matron in the jail.  I worked a very strange shift, but I loved it.  I worked two swing shifts, two graveyards, and a day in that order for twenty years.  But I adapted to that.

It was a small county jail.  We had repeat customers.  The girls would come back every year for the same things either bad checks or drugs or driving while suspended.  But you could find year after year the same girls in there.  They memorized my birthday.  One time I was coming down the hall, and they could hear the jingling of my keys.  They lit a candle (a match) in the center of a cupcake.  That was my birthday cake from them with a card signed by all of them.  You’re not supposed to become that acquainted with the inmates, but these were local girls.  You know they made a mistake, but they are still human beings.  I treated them as such, and they liked that.

My children transplanted me.  I am from the West Coast.  I was perfectly content but there was nobody that was blind there.  So I was a minority and nobody understood my problem.  When I came here, there were so many blind people.  I envy all of their abilities.

I am learning so much from them.   Seeing people that are totally blind, I watch them and I think….if they can do it, I can do it.  There are things they are teaching me how to do.  I still can see enough to get myself in trouble, but I will be prepared if it totally goes away.

Totally blind people deal with it on a daily basis, and they deal perfectly.  It doesn’t matter what the challenge is, they will take it on.  If they can’t do it, they’ll just keep trying or get some help.  The one thing about it is they will ask for help, but they won’t ask for help until they really, really need it.  I think it’s taught me a lot.  Try everything!’