North Country Association for the Visually Impaired Executive Director Amy Kretser tries on a pair of Tina Leonard’s eSight glasses on Nov. 18. Leonard, a Lake Placid real estate broker who died in September at the age of 63, used the $10,000 glasses for a short time until she lost all of her sight. Seen here at Leonard’s McKinley Street office are her husband Joe Leonard and daughter, Daci Shenfield. The family donated the glasses to NVACI. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

LAKE PLACID — Tina Leonard wasn’t physically in her tiny McKinley Street home office on Thursday, Nov. 18, but on this rainy day, with blue jays calling outside the screen door, you could feel her presence.

The former real estate broker died unexpectedly on Sept. 26 at the age of 63. A poster from the funeral with her image — wearing a pink coat over a black turtleneck and holding a white cane — leans against the wall. There’s a Bible passage from Corinthians 13 printed on it.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

To Tina’s left is her husband, Joe, his arm leaning against a forest green wall with several of Tina’s real estate awards on it. And there’s a wooden plaque: “Mom: A son’s first love, daughter’s first friend.”

A blue face mask barely covers Joe’s gray beard as he looks down at his daughter, Daci Shenfield, sitting in her mother’s office chair. She’s behind the nerve center of her mother’s business, with a computer and two monitors on a black desk. Wearing a pink face mask to match her multi-colored blouse, she presents her mother’s white eSight glasses in a black carrying case on the desk.

Tina Leonard’s family donates her eSight glasses to the North Country Association for the Visually Impaired on Nov. 18 at her McKinley Street home office. From left are NCAVI Vision Rehabilitation Therapist Pat Wilson and Executive Director Amy Kretser, Tina’s husband Joe Leonard and Tina’s daughter Daci Shenfield. Tina died on Sept. 26 at the age of 63. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

It’s a gift — a $10,000 one that the Lake Placid community purchased for her during a crowd-funding campaign in the spring of 2018.

Sitting to Tina’s right, in clients’ chairs, is Amy Kretser, executive director of the North Country Association for the Visually Impaired, and Pat Wilson, a NCAVI vision rehabilitation therapist who worked with Tina.

“I don’t know that people realize that nothing that’s adaptable equipment (for sight) is covered by insurance,” Krester told Joe and Daci. “Not a white cane. We don’t understand because a cane is like a wheelchair.”

Kretser isn’t sure exactly how the eSight glasses will be used. Perhaps they will be a “demo” model for people who are visually impaired to try them out, maybe even borrow them for a special occasion.

“There has never been anybody in the history of NCAVI that could afford this,” Kretser said. “It’s going to be helpful to so may people. … It’s just such a gift to have one of these.”

Joe Leonard leans against a wall in his wife’s office on Nov. 18 near a poster with her likeness, which was on display at her funeral. She died on Sept. 26 at the age of 63. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

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Tina’s experience

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It was in this office during the holiday season three years ago that Tina explained the pros and cons of owning the eSight glasses. She lost most of her sight due to complications from glaucoma in 2013, and the electronic glasses gave her a little bit of sight back for a brief period of time. She’d spent six months trying out the glasses, but even then she knew they weren’t the ultimate solution for her.

“I’ve gotten to see my granddaughter and I’ve gotten to see people’s faces,” she told the News at the time. “So for those reasons alone, I think they’re certainly worth it. I think I could use them for a lot of other things if I’m more patient and learn more with them.”

Tina Leonard shows off her eSight glasses for the first time at a Rotary Club of Lake Placid meeting in May 2018. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

The eSight glasses look like virtual reality goggles. They are bulky and heavy — essentially a computer — and they got really warm on Tina’s forehead.

“Sometimes when I go to a restaurant, I just don’t wear them because I’m just tired of wearing them,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like I just want to be me.”

Tina eventually lost all of her sight, rendering the glasses useless for her.

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The donation

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On Oct. 4, Kretser wrote a letter to Joe, inquiring about the possibility of donating the eSight glasses to NCAVI.

“We are in a position to be able to help others decide if glasses such as these would be helpful to them as well,” Kretser wrote.

Joe, Daci and Tina’s son Joseph were happy to give others a chance at trying the glasses. After all, they were initially a gift from the Lake Placid community, and this was a chance to pay it forward.

In a phone interview, Joseph explained how the crowd-funding campaign began.

“Something clicked one day (in April 2018), and I remember hearing about somebody on some television show being able to see for the first time,” he said. “So, of course, I got on Google and found out. Funny enough, it was the ‘Dr. Phil’ show, which my mother absolutely adored Dr. Phil for some reason. She actually watched the program. I did some research and found out about them.”

Joseph soon began filling out an eSight form for his mother.

On May 1, Tina and Joe traveled to Ottawa to try on a pair of the eSight glasses. They worked. She was able to read an eye chart and newsprint.

“That’s when Daci found out a way that we could get the fundraising done,” Joseph said.

On May 2, Daci created a giving page on the eSight website, and by May 4, they had raised $10,447 from 87 donors. The donations ranged between $25 and $1,000.

“It was so nice to see the support,” Tina said in May 2018. “All I kept thinking was, this is kind of like when you die, and at your funeral your family would say, ‘Where were all these people when she needed them?’ And it’s like I got to see it before I died. These people were there, and they were there before I died to help me.”

Come to find out, after Tina lost the rest of her sight, she was already thinking about donating the eSight glasses to someone.

“Before Mom passed,” Joseph said, “we had a long chat about what to do with them. And I had thought maybe we could find someone in the area and donate them because the community helped purchase them for her. … It was kind of her wish to pass them on and hopefully help somebody else.”

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Living with vision loss

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Before Kretser tried on the eSight glasses in Tina’s office, she shared stories with Joe and Daci about how people deal with being visually impaired.

“I think that there is something to be said about people being at different places with their vision loss,” Kretser said. “There are people who have grown up with it and it’s part of their life, and there are people that have lost it suddenly and they’re in a very, very different place. It’s actually a lot like the grief process. There’s a layer of mental health and wellness that comes, and it’s a little bit different for everybody.”

Daci reiterated what Tina told the News in 2018. After losing most of her sight, she was in denial. She found it difficult to accept that she was legally blind because she was so independent.

“Oh my god, what am I going to do if I can’t drive?” Tina recalled in May 2018. “I can’t go anywhere. I can’t go shopping. I sell real estate; that’s my job. I rent apartments. How can I do it without driving?”

It took Tina a couple of years before she agreed that she was going to be blind.

“My mother did not want a cane,” Daci told Kretser.

“She would not use her cane,” Joe added.

Tina initially thought that losing the ability to drive a car would be the hardest part about losing her sight.

“As long as I got to work early when it was light out, and I left when it was light out,” she said, “I thought, ‘Well, I can see well enough.'”

Then reality set in when Tina left work a few times at dusk.

“All of a sudden, there are lights pointing at me, and I couldn’t see, and I thought, ‘This is scary. I can’t see anything around me,'” she said.

The last time Tina was behind the steering wheel of a car, she headed to a Rotary Club meeting, work and then home. That was it. Her driving days were over.

“Now, driving is the least of my worries. I don’t care if I drive or don’t drive,” she said in May 2018. “The more I lived it, what bothers me about my independence is not being able to see to walk to the bathroom by myself, to ask somebody, ‘Would you take me to the bathroom?’ To have to wait to go to the grocery store. And when I go to the grocery store, I can’t even see what’s on the shelves.”

When Tina finally accepted her blindness, Pat Wilson taught her how to use a white cane.

“She was very concerned about knowing stairs, where stairs were in the houses she went into,” Wilson said.

Tina wasn’t alone in her denial. The white cane as a stigma is a real thing, according to Kretser.

People say, “I don’t want to be seen as a blind person when I have this.”

“I don’t want to minimize it, but what it’s become over my time, and what you’ve always taught me, Pat, is that it is a symbol of independence,” Kretser said. “To me, every time I see somebody out walking with a cane, I think, ‘You go.’ … They’re blind in the world and guess what? They’re still in the post office, and they’re still at the grocery store and they’re still going in the town hall. To me, it’s a symbol of independence and strength and pride, and it doesn’t have to be a stigma.”

Wilson said Tina was an ambassador for people with vision loss, “a great spokesperson.”

On Sept. 14, in her first and only blog post, Tina wrote, “I may be blind but my name is still Tina Leonard. I’ve learned to be blind and therefore I can help people understand things like being patient, learning to be detail oriented and learning to listen amongst many other things.”

She wanted to show the public what it’s like for her to live a normal life with blindess “and to help people understand how to treat others with respect.”

Sometimes, in her house, Tina could still see things better than her family.

“In the back of the closet, there was something and she would be like, ‘No, you’re not finding it,'” Daci said.

“And she’d say, ‘Let me get it for you,'” Joe added.

“And she was like, ‘Tell me how a blind person can find something more than you. You have two eyes,'” Daci said. “She knew where it was.”

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Paying it forward

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As Kretser and the NCAVI team in their Plattsburgh office figure out how to help people with the eSight glasses, Tina’s family knows how important they were to her — even for a short time — to see people’s faces, including her granddaughter’s.

“It was an hour after she was born and we walked in the hospital room,” Tina said in December 2018. “I had my glasses and said, ‘Where is she?’ My son was sitting in the chair holding her, and without my glasses, I wouldn’t have been able to see her. I focused on her, and I zoomed in so I could see her face up close.”

The hope from Tina’s family is that others in the North Country will also get to see the faces of the ones they love.

“It can even be the little things, right?” Daci said. “Like somebody watching their kid graduate high school. It’s going to be those moments I think that make the most sense.”