Category: News and Views
Teen receives glasses from 'Angel'
By Tyler Treadway staff writer
LAKEWOOD PARK - Despite the retinitis pigmentosa that's slowly taking away his sight, 13-year-old Charlton La Chase now can lie in his bed and watch the TV set across his bedroom.
Thanks to the JORDY glasses he recently was given, Charlton doesn't even have to be looking at the TV.
The Angel Donor Fund, which gave Charlton the $4,000 JORDY glasses, also gave him the 20-inch color TV. It has an outlet port that the JORDYs can be hooked to, sending the video signal directly into the glasses.
The only drawback: The new TV doesn't have closed-captioning, the service for the hearing impaired in which everything said on TV programs is typed across the bottom of the screen.
Charlton, in addition to losing his sight, already can neither hear nor talk.
"He lives off closed-captioning," Charlton's sister, Cassandra La Chase, said.
But Cassandra is more interested in how the JORDY glasses will help her brother at school, the Florida School for the Blind and Deaf in St. Augustine. Charlton got the glasses on a recent weekend visit home.
"They definitely help him," Cassandra said. "Without the JORDYs, in order to read type on a page, he had to hold the page right up to his face. Now, with them, he can read with the paper at a normal length. And now he'll be able to see the blackboard from his desk."
Via sign language, Charlton complains to his sister that the JORDY glasses are thick and unwieldy.
"Just wait," Cassandra replies. "In a few years, they'll get smaller - like computers have."
The JORDY 2.0 Digital Imaging System is a set of goggles that uses two digital cameras controlled by a miniature computer that changes contrast, magnification and brightness and replays the image on two built-in, postage stamp-sized digital television sets.
At this moment, Charlton is more infatuated with a T-Mobile Sidekick, which is a portable, palm-sized communication device that an anonymous donor gave him.
Charlton can use the Sidekick like a phone: It vibrates and flashes red when he gets a call - actually a text message across a small screen. With a tiny keyboard, he can respond to the caller.
"He doesn't go anywhere without it," Cassandra said. "All of his friends at school use them, so he can communicate with them."
Cassandra said a woman who identified herself only as "Kim" arranged for Charlton to get the Sidekick.
"She called and said there would be a gift card with Charlton's name on it at Circuit City," Cassandra said, adding that the card was for $300, the price of the Sidekick.
Cassandra thinks her brother will warm up to the JORDYs.
"Especially at school," she said. "That's where they'll come in handy.
Santa La Chase, Charlton's mother, knows why her son is having trouble accepting the JORDYs.
"My son refuses to be blind," Santa said. "Wearing the glasses is like accepting the reality that he's going blind. He's still having trouble accepting that reality.
"He's still dreaming that an angel will take care of him," she added. "And at the same time, he's a little angry, too."
~End
No comments? anyone?
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