A Christmas wish granted
Woonsocket rallies to help teen losing vision
A funny thing happened when Dr. Jeffrey Kenyon of Blackstone Valley Eye Care decided a dazzling display of holiday lights would be a great way to promote his business around the holidays.
The garden of glittery illumination outside the eye doctor’s clinic at 385 Mendon Road unexpectedly became a fundraising vehicle for Jalen Rodriguez, a Woonsocket High School junior who needs a special computer for the visually impaired in order to do his schoolwork. And it’s really taking off. “We’re very thankful, very honored to be around so many good people,” said Jalen’s father, Joseph Rodriguez, with a quiver of emotion in his voice. “I just want to thank you all.”
A laborer in the city’s Department of Public Works, Rodriguez was directing his comments to about 120 friends and municipal employees in Harris Hall Friday, including office help, police and firefighters who gathered for a
“dress down” day to pitch in for Jalen. The city has held many dress-down fundraisers for myriad causes over the years, but the event for Jalen brought in more than $2,000 – about a third of the cost of the BrailleNote Touch that Jalen needs – Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt told the gathering.
“We have never had a turnout so successful as this day,” the mayor said. “It’s extremely heartwarming.”
Jalen, 16, suffers from an inherited condition known as leber congenital amaurosis, one of the most common causes of blindness in children. In a pattern that’s typical of those afflicted, Jalen’s sight has been steadily deteriorating since he was a toddler, his father says.
“Once he hit his teenage years he pretty much lost all his vision,” said his father. “It pretty much got worse and worse as he got older.”
How the fundraiser went from Kenyon’s office in East Woonsocket to City Hall may best be described as a case of holiday magic, but as the optometrist tells the story, the trek wouldn’t have happened without the involvement of a fanatical creator of seasonal lighting displays, Tyler Horrocks of Coventry. Horrocks used to put up flashy, elaborate Christmas displays at his parents’ home in Coventry and he once competed on the ABC-TV reality show, “The Great Christmas Light Fight,” according to Kenyon.
After Horrocks’ family sold the house in Coventry, he began looking for other venues to ply his talents for creating flickering grottos of holiday trees and blinking electrical garlands. He ended up designing the display on Mendon Road after getting in touch with Blackstone Valley Eye Care through a mutual friend of Kenyon’s office manager, Christopher Tremblay.
Tremblay says Horrocks didn’t want to put up a display for purely promotional reasons.
“He said, ‘You’ll have to ask for donations’” said Tremblay. “He likes to have a cause for every display.”
The question was, what cause?
The search for a worthy one that was relevant to the eye care field and also local turned out to be more arduous than expected. He and Kenyon began making phone calls to professionals and support groups for the vision-impaired.
One resource they called on for leads was the Low Vision Clinic in Warwick. Staffers there put him in touch with Meredith Ma- honey of the Sherlock Center for Disabilities at Rhode Island College, a teacher who works with sight-challenged students. Jalen happens to be one of them.
After talking with Mahoney, Kenyon and Tremblay knew they’d found their cause in Jalen. In addition to setting up a donation area as part of the light display, they launched an online crowd-funding campaign on gofundme.com. To find it, just google the website and search for “Holiday Lights for Sight” to make a donation.
The gofundme goal is $5,495 – which is roughly the list price of a BrailleNote Touch. The campaign has taken in just $95 so far, but Kenyon says donors have given about $500 more at the eye clinic and through Facebook. He and Tremblay will keep plugging away as they try to come as close to the goal as they possibly can.
“It’s been an honor to meet this very special young man and it’s a pleasure to be able to do anything we can for him,” said Kenyon. “We’re really excited to be doing this – it gets our name out there a little bit, but more importantly it helps someone in need.”
One of the things that Kenyon did to promote the fundraiser was have some fliers printed up to spread the word. The fundraiser found its way to City Hall when Rodriguez approached the mayor to ask for permission to display a few in the municipal building a couple of weeks ago.
Baldelli-Hunt went a step further, getting all the various branches of city gov- ernment involved, including public safety. About $1,000 worth of the total generated on Friday came from the “Movember Men” of the Woonsocket Police Department – a group of officers who are permitted to give up shaving during the month of November to raise money for a good cause.
Sgt. Matt Ryan said the proceeds from “no-shave November” represent about half of the total raised by the temporarily scruffy cops – the rest will be donated to a worker at Landmark Medical Center whose child is suffering from cancer.
In addition to dozens of city employees and friends of the Rodriguez family, Jalen attended Friday’s fundraising festivities at City Hall with his mother, Yellenia, and two of his brothers. Jalen, who is planning on going to college to study creative writing and psychology, says he’ll need a good Braille-reader to help him with his studies for his remaining years in high school years and beyond. The BrailleNote Touch is basically a laptop-style device that’s equipped with a modified keyboard and other features that enable the visually impaired and blind to surf the internet much as anyone with normal sight.
Jalen seemed overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity.
“I’m just extremely honored,” he said. “It’s just amazing that all of these people have come out do this.”