[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] Blind ambition: Dreama Crawford still has an eye forbeauty.

[Shelley L. Rhodes]

Flower arranging is a definite art.


Roanoke Times & World News
Sunday, December 19, 2004

Blind ambition: Dreama Crawford still has an eye for beauty.

By Donna Alvis-Banks

Dreama Crawford lost her sight and has diminished hearing because of Usher 
syndrome, but she still has an eye for beauty.

With December's sky spitting snow outside The Flower Shoppe, Dreama Crawford 
works in concentrated silence.

The only sounds are the soft whirring of a tiny electric heater, the 
rustling of nylon on the sleeves of her winter coat and the 
snip-snip-snipping of a paring knife as she slices through stems of cedar 
and pine.

The room where she works - nearly as chilly as the temperature outside - is 
washed in color: emerald greenery, roses with the complexion of a rich 
Beaujolais, carnations striped red and white like peppermint sticks, ribbons 
of sparkling gold.

For a moment, the cloudy December sky parts and light flows through a 
greenhouse window into the room where Crawford works. Suddenly, she's bathed 
in a glow that is for her only a faint glimmer.

"I can see a little bit of light," Crawford says, her hands dancing lightly 
around the arrangement of Christmas carnations she's putting together.

Crawford calls the flowers "tarnations," a pronunciation derived from her 
hearing impairment.

"I did not know I had Usher's syndrome. I was born with it, but I didn't 
know it," she explains. "From 1995 on, that's when it really hit me. I got 
to the point I couldn't tell my colors too good. Gradually, it got worse. 
Now, I can tell that a white tarnation is lighter than a red tarnation."

"When you're blind," she adds, deftly molding ribbon into a bow, "you learn 
to use both hands."

Usher syndrome - an inherited disease related to retinitis pigmentosa - 
causes the loss of hearing and vision. For Crawford, 49, sound began to fade 
at an early age.

"I always wore a hearing aid since I was in first grade," she noted.

She was robbed of her vision more slowly.

"She started dropping things and couldn't find them," explained Joe, her 
husband of 30 years. "The sunlight would bother her when she would go 
outside. Little things like that. Wethought maybe her glasses needed to be 
changed."

Crawford was 28 when her disorder finally was diagnosed by Dr. Scott 
Brandau, an ophthalmologist who had just opened a practice in Pulaski. 
Retinitis pigmentosa usually begins with night blindness, followed by a loss 
of peripheral vision.

"Dr. Brandau knew what it was. He sent me to Roanoke and then to Duke 
University in Durham, N.C. They explained what I had and sent me to Boston, 
Mass."

"It's hereditary but it could have been three or four generations back in 
the family, or it could have been a common gene with my parents," she added. 
"Mama said she remembers a great uncle when she was little that was blind."

Crawford's parents were devastated by their daughter's diagnosis. She was 
the pride and joy of her father, who died in 1999. He had named his 
business, Dawn's Florist, after his little girl.

"It was called Dawn's because that's my middle name," Crawford said, 
explaining that her father opened the shop in 1961, the same year she 
started to school. She grew up in that shop, surrounded by flowers and 
ribbons that she practiced tying into bows.

After her father had a heart attack in 1981, Crawford and her husband took 
over the business and operated it until 1998, when Crawford's own medical 
problems forced her to sell.

The woman who was used to being an active wife and mother to Jason, her only 
son, found herself in a world of helplessness and fear. Her vision was 
completely gone by the time she sold the shop.

"It was just so sudden," she recalled. "I couldn't understand why it was 
happening to me. I couldn't accept it. I was fighting it."

Fighting, Crawford soon discovered, left her bruised and exhausted.

"I realized one day that it was up to me what I did in my life," she said. 
"It was up to me to give up or not give up."

With her husband's encouragement and the support of her church, Crawford 
decided she would walk in faith, not in darkness.

"With my church family and God in the midst, I made the determination that I 
could do anything anybody else did but in a different way."

Crawford spent five weeks at the Virginia Rehabilitation Center for the 
Blind and Vision Impaired in Richmond, where she learned Braille, 
specialized computer skills, cooking and housekeeping techniques, and ways 
to maneuver with a cane. She also learned to laugh again.

She was practicing cane-walking with her newfound friend Lynette, a woman 
who had lost her sight after blood vessels ruptured in both eyes,when she 
stopped for a rest. The problem was that she plopped into a seat that 
already was occupied.

"I sat down on a guy's lap," she groaned. "We laughed and laughed."

When she returned home, Crawford applied the things she had learned. Her 
house is equipped with special devices for the blind, including a talking 
computer. She used the computer to make her own business cards - Dreama Dawn 
and Joe's Creations, a business she and her husband operate on weekends at 
Flea Masters, the newly opened flea market in Pulaski. The couple sell gift 
items, Teddy bears and original silk flower arrangements.

She also decided to go back to work, taking a part-time job in 2000 as a 
florist at The Flower Shoppe owned by Doug and Sallie Steger.

"I've had people say to me, 'How nice of you to hire Dreama,'" Sallie Steger 
said. "Dreama was not hired out of pity. She works as hard or harder than 
anyone. She's very good at what she does. We tell our customers about her. 
I'm very proud of her. I'm proud of the talent she brings to our product and 
I think she's just amazing."

Steger helps Crawford by lining up the supplies she needs for each floral 
arrangement and critiquing her work.

"If there's a place in an arrangement where there's a hole, I just grab her 
hand and stick it in there," she said. "She's got a mind like a steel trap 
and she's very bossy. She wants everything yesterday. Sometimes, we have to 
tell her to slow down."

Crawford is just happy to spend her days working with flowers - whether in 
fresh bouquets she creates at The Flower Shoppe or silk arrangements she 
makes at home where all her supplies are labeled in Braille.

"My house is just like a flower shop," she said. "I've always loved flowers, 
always. I know the different shapes of them and arranging them isn't hard. I 
think it's just a gift from God that I have."

Crawford's gifts to God include providing flower arrangements for services 
at New Hope Baptist Chapel and playing the piano for those who worship 
there, something she has done for the past 17 years.

"I guess your memory becomes stronger when you lose your sight and hearing," 
she noted. "All my music, I'm doing it by memory. I've played the piano 
since I was 7. ... I am going to start Braille music. I'm real excited to 
learn to read music again."

Life, of course, still challenges Crawford.

"Every once in a while, I have a pity party," she admitted. "That's when I 
can't hear. I can accept being blind more than not being able to hear good."

But she believes many blessings have come from her challenges.

Her faith in God - and her marriage - are stronger.

"She's really a special person who'll do anything for anybody," Joe Crawford 
said. "I guess that's why I've stayed with her for 30 years. We both take 
care of each other, I reckon. She takes care of me as much as I take care of 
her. It is, as people say, a match made in heaven. The Lord brought us 
together for a purpose."

Joe Crawford said he believes that his wife's purpose is evident to all who 
can see and hear - provided they look and listen.

"She proves that we aren't just eyes and ears. ... Her spirit is 
uplifting.""I realized one day that it was up to me what I did in my life. 
It was up to me to give up or not give up."

What is retinitis pigmentosa? Retinitis pigmentosa is the name given to a 
group of inherited eye diseases that affect the retina, causing its 
photoreceptor cells to degenerate. The cells, which capture and process 
light to help us see, degenerate and die in the eyes of a person who has RP, 
leading to gradual vision loss.

Symptoms of RP are most often recognized in children, adolescents and young 
adults. The advancing nature of the disease continues throughout the 
individual's life with varying patterns and degrees of visual loss.

Retinal cells are among the most specialized cells in the body and depend 
upon a number of unique genes to create vision. A disease-causing mutation 
in any one of these genes can cause vision loss. Researchers for the 
Foundation Fighting Blindness have discovered more than 100 genes that can 
contain mutations leading to RP.

Retinitis pigmentosa is rare and difficult to accurately diagnose. An 
ophthalmologist who specializes in retinal degenerative diseases is trained 
to detect the disease.What is Usher syndrome? Usher syndrome is 
characterized by moderate to profound hearing impairment, which is present 
at birth or shortly thereafter, and gradual vision loss because of retinitis 
pigmentosa. It's the major cause of deaf blindness with about 10,000 to 
15,000 affected in the United States. Researchers believe that the hearing 
loss in Usher syndrome is caused by a problem with the sensory cells in the 
cochlea, a structure in the inner ear necessary for transmitting sound to 
the brain.

Usher syndrome is passed to succeeding generations through the autosomal 
recessive inheritance pattern. In this type of inheritance, two copies of an 
Usher syndrome gene - one from each parent - are required for a person to 
have the syndrome. If a person has only one copy of the gene (a carrier), he 
or she will have no symptoms of the disorder.

Where to go for help

Virginia Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired
Joseph Bowman, Commissioner
397 Azalea Ave., Richmond VA 23227-3623
(800) 622-2155
SOURCE: www.blindness.org
See more photos online at www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/


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