(Reprinted from the Fort Myers News-Press, August 13, 2024.)
On a muggy Southwest Florida summer morning, before the sun crested over the tops of the buildings surrounding the courtyard pool at Gulf Coast Village in Cape Coral, Doreen King asked those who had gathered around the pool not to point, but verbally direct her to where she could put her sunscreen and towel.
At 87 years old, Doreen has been legally blind for 30 years with only 5% of her vision. She can’t see anything below her nose, and she has no peripheral vision. It makes the everyday activities that most people take for granted, like scooping cereal onto a spoon, feeding the dog or finding a place to set down her cane, a daily challenge.
But nothing can stop Doreen.
Once she settled down into a patio chair at a table beside the pool, she opened a folder filled with papers from the eye doctors, newspaper clippings from 80 years ago and a photo of her holding a check for $1,200 after she floated in a pool more than a decade ago for more than six hours without stopping. “People pledged 10 cents a minute,” she laughed. “They told me they’d double it if I didn’t talk the whole time.” She’d kept quiet and the money from that six-hour, silent float was donated to a blind student going into higher education.
The idea of a floating fundraiser was born more than a decade ago from two of Doreen’s passions: advocacy for the blind and swimming. It was one of Doreen’s many blind friends who first suggested that she float for money. She’s been an avid swimmer for most of her life, and once floated for a mile down the Mississippi just for the fun of it. “I think it’s the easiest way to make some money for a charity,” she said.
Her advocacy for the blind began long before she ever started to lose her own vision. More than 80 years ago, in elementary school, Doreen’s neighbor, and close friend, was legally blind. She would walk him home from school, serving as his “eyes.” It was when she was first introduced to blindness, and it gave her unique insight into the day-to-day struggles that the blind community faces.
That was when her personal mission to make a difference began. She wore a shoebox around her neck to collect donations for Tag Day in her childhood hometown of Ontario, Canada for years, determined to win and collect the most money. She did, many times, and proudly displayed several newspaper clippings of her picture in the paper.
Unbeknownst to young Doreen in the photos, 50 years later she would develop ischemic optic neuropathy – the sudden loss of vision due to an interruption in blood flow to the optic nerve. She showed pictures of that, too. Two mostly black circles, divided into fourths by a thin white line, represent her vision. The lower half of both circles are completely black while the upper half is a shade lighter with an almost white dot in the center, representing the 5% vision she still has.
Once caught up on Doreen’s past, it was time to get down to business. The sun was now shining, and the poolside clock at Gulf Coast Village showed 8:05 a.m. Since moving into her independent living apartment at the life plan community in January, she has spent quite a bit of time in the water, but never as much as she was preparing to do as she entered the pool that day.
With sunblock applied and Crocs ditched by the stairs, Doreen pushed off the pool bottom and onto her back effortlessly to begin her second floating fundraiser, and first in more than a decade.
Doreen floated for a total of seven hours and 10 minutes that day and raised $4,500 with pledges from her friends and neighbors at Gulf Coast Village, Canada and an anonymous check for $1,000. The money is going to the SWFL Council of the Blind, which Doreen has been a member of for 25 years, to fund scholarships for blind students going on to higher education.
Doreen hopes that her floating fundraisers will also help spread awareness. Her cane, and any other white cane with a red tip, is a worldwide symbol for blindness. In Florida, there is legislation protecting the blind community, but Doreen says many people are unaware of the White Cane Act. It states that traffic must come to a complete stop and yield the right of way to pedestrians who raise a white cane with a red tip so that they may cross the street safely.
For more information on the SWFL Council of the Blind, visit https://swfcb.org/.