Blind People

COURAGE HAS many definitions, but there is a particularly rare kind of courage now on display at the Philadelphia Library for the Blind's Touch Gallery: A solo debut exhibition by sculptor Carol Saylor. Saylor's show, "Hidden Spaces," is dedicated to the memory of her daughter Alice, who died in 2002, shortly after her 34th birthday. Alice, who left behind a husband and three young daughters, is the inspiration for much of Saylor's work. Saylor, 69, has had her share of sorrow.

Nazir Akbar Ali, 61, of Malvern, an electrical engineer who spent his career perfecting a device to improve mobility and independence for the blind, died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis on Feb. 2 at Paoli Memorial Hospital. In the 1960s, Mr. Ali went to work for Bionic Instruments, which had invented the LaserCane for the blind using infrared technology. By 1970, he had became the lead developer of the cane, and in 1978 he founded his own company, now called Nurion-Raycal, to continue the work.

For four hours after daybreak on Oct. 25, Phil McGrath perched a few feet off the ground by the woods, waiting, until a doe passed behind two trees split by 5 inches of daylight. "And boom!": three shots, to the lung, leg and heart, each probably fatal. Then he waited some more. When no one passed by for a half-hour, he lowered the ramp of the van and rolled into the underbrush, his rifle balanced under his right arm and a stick in his left. "I got hung up on a log," he recalled, but he made it the 85 yards.

Patrick Molloy devours words with his fingertips. So keen is the 11-year-old Newtown boy's ability to read and write braille that tomorrow he will compete against some of the country's best blind readers. Patrick is among the 60 blind and visually impaired students who scored highest on a test distributed by the Braille Institute of America, a nonprofit organization based in California that aims to help blind people achieve independence. Another local student, Karly Deitrick, 9, of Royersford, is also a contender at the National Braille Challenge.

In a small, drab office in Paoli, Nazir Ali, 59, has been working full time on the same invention since he was a 20-year-old student at Spring Garden College. His business, Nurion-Raycal, has almost no revenue. His only employee is Earl Bennett, a product engineer who has been working on the same device with Ali for 23 years. The LaserCane has been purchased by fewer than 400 people during the last two decades. But now, things are looking promising for their special cane for the blind, which uses lasers to detect obstacles.

Despite reassurances from family members that everything would be OK, Stacy Miller started crying yesterday even before she entered the courtroom. She was about to relive a trauma dating back almost two years when an illegal firework set off at a party in Warwick Township exploded in her face. The 24-year-old mother lost her left eye, her senses of taste and smell, and her independence. She became legally blind in her right eye and sustained permanent brain injuries. Yesterday, Charles Edward Klink, 46, of Philadelphia, one of two defendants, entered into a plea agreement that calls for a prison term of a year less a day to two years less a day followed by two years' probation.

Hester Laning Pepper, 95, of Gladwyne, an artist and founder of the National Exhibits by Blind Artists, died of heart failure Sunday at her home. Mrs. Pepper founded the organization in Philadelphia in 1976 to highlight the work of visually impaired artists. Every two years, the organization mounts an exhibit of the works of 50 artists who have been selected in a juried show. Vickie Collins, a board member of the organization, said the exhibit had been shown at art galleries and museums in Japan and around the country, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Despite months of preparation, the guests of honor were fractious. Daisy, a soulful bloodhound, sang off-key during the longer speeches. Paris, an imposing, playful German shepherd puppy, kept pawing Esther, a more diminutive shepherd, and the girls had to be separated. Perhaps worst of all was Eileen, a trying-very-hard-to-be-good golden retriever-yellow Lab mix. Sixth grader Lauren Udell loved cuddling her, but she couldn't hold back a comment: "Woo-hoo, this one's got smelly breath," Lauren stage-whispered, rubbing the wiggly 6-month-old's soft, floppy ears.

Feeling her way through the refrigerator's crowded case of cold soft drinks, she paused for direction. "Which one?" snack-bar operator Betty Hightower asked as her hand passed over the customer's iced tea. "Right here?" "It's in the middle of the top shelf to your left," the customer said, already geared up to guide Hightower. It was the lunch-hour rush at Betty Boop's Cafe in the federal court building in Camden, and the snack bar's peculiar exchanges had begun between Hightower and her sighted customers.

Children wrote stories, had a scavenger hunt and got their initials painted on their cheeks yesterday - all in braille. They were having fun, with a purpose, at a carnival held at the Philadelphia Marriott as part of the National Federation of the Blind's annual convention. "If you can't read and write, you will have trouble all the rest of your life," said Pam Dubel, director of children's services for the Louisiana Center of the Blind. "We're using braille in games so kids who know it can practice, and those who don't can learn.