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Big Strides for Eagle Eyes
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Throughout her life, Martha Steele has successfully met most of the challenges of hearing and vision loss caused by Usher syndrome. As a young child with severe hearing impairment, she received special training to read lips and communicate verbally. Hearing aids helped her make the most of what little hearing she had. Martha went on to become an accomplished student, earning an undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont and a master’s degree in public health from the University of Michigan. It wasn’t
But Martha’s vision loss progressed more slowly. For the next 30 years, she was able to live independently with few accommodations, and established an impressive career in public health. She currently serves as deputy director for the Bureau of Environmental Health at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. She and her husband, Bob Stymeist, lead active lives, enjoying bird watching, traveling, and all things Boston. But a year ago, Martha began to have difficulty with central vision, which is critical to her career and activities of daily living. “It was a wake-up call,” she says. “Vision loss started to impact my work, because a large part of what I do is read.” Martha decided to get a cane to not only aid in navigation, but also let people around her know that she has limited vision. “With the cane, they apologize to me rather than me apologizing to them when we bump into each other,” she chuckles. While Martha had been acquainted with FFB for several years and had participated in VISIONS conferences and various local gatherings, new challenges with vision gave her a sense of urgency to do more. While attending FFB’s Boston Vision Seminar last April, she learned about VisionWalk. Martha had some apprehension about fundraising, but helping to drive the research was exactly what she felt she needed to do. “I decided I couldn’t be complacent any more,” she says. Martha and her team, Strides for Eagle Eyes, have already blown past their original $10,000 goal for the October 24 VisionWalk in Boston, having raised more than $13,000 as of September 22. She and her husband are using VisionWalk’s Web-based tools to fundraise, while Martha’s 84-year-old mother is sending out letters through the U.S. Mail. Her mom is also matching gifts to further motivate people to contribute. “The support we’re getting is very heartening. I am also surprised by the size of the gifts, especially given the current economic situation,” Martha says. “Two of the larger gifts came from people who knew others with vision issues like macular degeneration. They actually thanked me for letting them know about FFB, because it was exactly the type of organization they wanted to support.” Some people thought that Martha’s fundraising goal of $10,000 was out of reach, but she was intent on setting the bar high to maximize donations. “I can be a little competitive,” Martha admits. “I am determined to meet my goal. My philosophy is to reach out to as many people as I can. If they don’t want to donate, that’s fine. But I need to let them make that decision.” As someone whose career involves science and health care, Martha is very intent on understanding the science funded by FFB so she can communicate it to potential contributors. “FFB is the one nonprofit that is really driving the research forward,” she says. “There’s a lot of very exciting progress being made, like the gene therapy trials that are restoring vision, and I want to make sure everyone knows about it.” Click on Boston to track the progress of Strides for Eagle Eyes and other Boston-area VisionWalk teams. |
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