Confronting the reality that he will soon be completely blind, Arthur Warren says he continues following his passions, including football and baseball, by listening to games and painting pictures of the action on the field, in his mind, from his wonderful memories.
“I’m a tough guy to say ‘you can’t do that’ to,” said Warren, sitting on a couch inside the home he shares with wife, Marion Lapham, at Greenleaves Retirement Community as he lets his German shepherd guide dog, Zeke, run off leash around the living room and kitchen.
A mainstay on the sidelines at University of Massachusetts football games in the 1970s and 1980s – so much so that he has two commemorative rings inscribed with his name – attending a dozen Super Bowls, and going to numerous baseball games at Fenway Park, Warren, 81, said he feels fortunate that he can hear sports on the radio and recordings of books and magazines on a device provided by the Perkins Insitute for the Blind.
Warren’s physical and mental journey over the past 26 years has taken him from Amherst, where he once was director of auxiliary services at UMass, to the Southwest United States and California, a period during which he lost his right eye, was declared legally blind and then briefly recovered sight in his remaining eye following cataract surgery in 1994 that gave him the opportunity to again read the newspaper and watch television.
For now, Warren is still able to differentiate between light and dark objects, pointing out that he can see Zeke’s mostly black fur standing out against the off-white carpet.
“The difference between darkness and some vision is immense,” Warren said. “I can see light and dark, and so I can see where things are.”
He demonstrates this by navigating his way, without Zeke’s help, from his seat to the kitchen counter, where he can use the Keurig to make a cup of coffee and can reach into the refrigerator.
While he can no longer drive, Warren said Zeke, who arrived Dec. 8, 2014, has helped give him a sense of independence. When walking outside, Zeke leads him to the curb and street crossings, and when inside, the dog gets him to and from the elevator in the hallway outside his third-floor home.
“He’ll bring his nose right to the elevator buttons,” Warren said.
Seemingly Warren’s only lament is that he can no longer join his friends in playing pitch, his favorite card game, or gamble at the casino.
“In some ways that’s a benefit. I haven’t lost my butt down at Mohegan,” Warren said.
The relentless progression toward blindness marks the second time Warren is facing permanent loss of eyesight.
Warren first realized he might have problems with his eyes in the mid 1970s, when he would look in the mirror and couldn’t see the part in his hair.
At the time, he was diagnosed with glaucoma in both eyes and was prescribed various treatments, including eyedrops, to protect his eyesight. But he might not have done enough.
“It’s a rather insidious disease because there’s no pain with it and you can get casual with the medication,” Warren said.
In 1985, he suffered his first retina detachment while living in New Mexico. “It was like a curtain dropping down on the eye,” Warren said.
A successful surgery restored the functioning of his eye for six months, but then the retina detached again. He went to the UCLA eye hospital, where doctors attempted to re-attach the retina again, keeping it in place with silicone and gas. But a congenital weakness of the eye, and three more surgeries, couldn’t save it, and the eye was replaced by a prosthesis in 1988.
Warren was first declared legally blind in January 1990, and then got his initial guide dog, Venus.
“I just had one working eye,” Warren said. “It was like looking through wax paper.”
But he exhibited his stubbornness. “You fight against it, pretending you can see,” Warren said.
“Because it was gradual, when I first heard the right eye was finally gone and the doctor said ‘you are legally blind,’ that was a shock,” Warren said. “Plus, I was on my own, I didn’t have a support team.”
He was told to learn to read Braille, but refused.
“The technology today is such that what do I need Braille for?” Warren said, demonstrating this by picking up his cellphone and asking “what time is it?” The device quickly responds, “It’s 3:50 p.m. on St. Patrick’s Day.”
An Amherst native who grew up on East Pleasant Street as one of 11 children, Warren returned and married Lapham, herself born and raised in town.
“It’s a really difficult thing to deal with, but I like to be positive about it,” Warren said. “I had 60 years of good vision.”
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com
