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Such a Special Guy
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Fifteen years ago, when he was still in college, Ralph Charles Mora, otherwise known as “R.C.,” knew something was wrong with his vision. “It wouldn’t be strange to put my hand on somebody’s shoulder, for guidance, especially at parties, because otherwise I’d knock into people,” the San Diego-area native recalls. “If my friends felt a hand on the shoulder, they knew it was me. Emily was the same.”
“I didn’t know what RP was,” explains R.C., “and he couldn’t understand why I was so calm. So he told me he’d told someone else the same news, and the next day, the guy jumped out of a window.” R.C. chose, instead, to scour the Internet, where he found the Foundation Fighting Blindness, which helped educate him on RP and the latest curative research. He worried, however, about passing his “bad gene” along to the children they’d planned to have. So Emily arranged for genetics testing, which came up negative for more than 10 RP-specific genes. Plus, no one else in the Mora family is afflicted. “So we decided to take the chance,” R.C. says. Their eldest child, 2-year-old Fisher, is named for his dad’s passion for rod and reel. He shows no signs of the disease. And the Moras are active in the San Diego VisionWalk, FFB’s annual 5K fundraiser. Since 2008, their team, RC vs. RP, has topped itself each year, raising $5,000 in 2010. Emily says they got friends and family involved to raise awareness of the disease, which, in R.C.’s case, mostly affects his peripheral vision. “No one knew exactly what the problem was,” she explains. “We had to say, ‘Hey, look through this toilet paper roll—that’s what R.C. sees.’” “If you saw my legs,” adds R.C., who spends most of his time in shorts, “I’ve got scars up and down my shins, because I run into things. I have to be conscious of where I’m going. Benches are bad for me.” R.C. punctuates just about every sentence with a chuckle. But a year ago, he struggled to find the humor in his decision to stop driving. “It wasn’t safe anymore,” he says, and the decision forced him to resign from his job as a truck-route traffic manager for a plywood importer. Now a “house dad,” he keeps his eye on RP research and has put his name in for a couple clinical trials, his greatest fear being that he won’t be able to see his kids “play sports, or whatever they choose to do,” in high school. Meanwhile, Emily, who works full-time for an insurance company, sees it as her responsibility to pick up the slack, whether chauffeuring R.C. or clearing his path of low-lying objects. “He’s such a special guy,” she says, “and whatever he needs, he’ll get it.” That includes fishing. R.C. still goes on camping trips, out on boats, and to the lake. “You have to keep going,” he explains, “and do what you do.” |
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