by Marcelle S. Fischler
(Reprinted from the New York Times' Long Island Journal, Sunday, July 23, 2000.)
(Editor’s Note: Celeste Lopes is a member of the American Blind Lawyers Association and Guide Dog Users, Inc.)
Celeste Lopes sang out as she galloped around the outdoor arena astride her chestnut show horse, Trocaire, whom she affectionately calls Pumpkin.
“One, two, one, two, that’s my baby,” she said, weaving her way between fences at the Red Barn in Old Brookville. Then, certain of her path, she pulled gently on the reins and slowed the horse to a trot. “Come on, it’s playtime, c’mon, baby boy,” she said. Trocaire jumped, sailing smoothly over a low-slung cross rail and, a few strides later, over a straight rail. Though Lopes could not see the maneuver, it felt right. Pleased, she rewarded her horse with a peppermint.
For an experienced equestrian, it wasn’t a particularly difficult jump. But Lopes is blind. Despite this, Lopes has been riding horses for 30 of her 42 years. Though she wears a walkie-talkie to keep in touch with her instructor as she canters about, she has learned to feel when she is at each ladder in the ring. She jumps and competes in dressage events at horse shows.
“I love riding,” Lopes said. “I really do. Riding is the thing that keeps me grounded or centered. Riding is very freeing. It gives me a chance to move in a way I normally can’t move, to go cantering around that ring.”
Blindness, Lopes said, is just a characteristic, like being blond or brunette. It’s an inconvenience, but not a disability to stop her from pursuing her favorite sports or achieving her dreams.
“People come to you with certain preconceived notions that if you are blind, you can’t possibly do the job,” she said. “I was always brought up to achieve my best and I do my best when I hit society’s stereotypes. I guess what inspires me is to show people that the societal stereotypes are totally wrong.”
Heading back to the barn, Lopes cooled Trocaire down. She unsaddled and groomed him and cleaned the tack herself, though full-service boarding is available at the barn. Then she sliced up an apple and carrots for his treat.
“I really spoil him something terribly, but he takes good care of me,” she said. She rides three times a week.
Ms. Lopes lost her vision to two hereditary diseases, retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative disease that affects peripheral and night vision, and macular degeneration, causing loss of central vision and color. By age 3, she was blind.
As a child, Lopes frequently rode bareback at the former Mrs. D’s Riding Academy in Melville (now a subdivision called Equine Estates), unafraid to jump the stone walls that she knew were there but couldn’t see blocking her path. As an adult, she has skied downhill in Vermont and out west and ventured to Norway five times to ski cross-country, accompanied by a friend from college, Robin Thomas, who indicates the twists and uphill inclines.
On a camping and kayaking trip in Alaska a few years ago, Thomas, an Episcopal minister, described the icebergs and cliffs as they paddled past, but Lopes could hear the bald eagle as it skimmed the water in pursuit of a fish and the sound of a whale breaching was unmistakable. And it was easy to imagine the bear family that hovered not far from their campsite. Lopes was almost thankful not to be able to see the bear tracks the next morning.
But overcoming the odds is just a part of daily life for Lopes. When she heads off on her hour-and-45-minute train and subway commute each morning from Plainview to Brooklyn, where she is the deputy bureau chief of the civil rights division in the District Attorney’s office, Lopes has her two-year-old black Labrador retriever in tow. The guide dog, whose name she won’t tell so strangers won’t distract him, helps her maneuver the mile-and-a-quarter walk from the subway station to her office. While she works, he relaxes on his red-cushioned bed under a window, chewing on a bone and bounding to her side when she dashes down the hall to use the copier.
At the office, Lopes investigates crimes that occur out of hate or intolerance, committed because of gender, race or religion, along with white-collar crime and immigration fraud. She supervises younger, less experienced district attorneys. But she also fetches her own coffee, types her own memos and reads her own e-mails, using a regular keyboard — not a Braille one — and a computer that translates text into talk. To wade through piles of paperwork, she scans documents into a computer.
“At the beginning of my career,” she said, “there was probably a preconceived notion that I wasn’t as good an attorney, that I wouldn’t be carrying a full caseload, that I wouldn’t be pulling my weight, that I’d be getting out of some things. That is no longer an issue.” She muses that someday she would like to be a judge.
Lopes is also president of the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind, a national organization based in Smithtown, where a recently acquired warehouse is being converted into an indoor training kennel for 260 Labrador and golden retrievers. The residence hall on the eight-acre campus is being expanded and renovated, with private rooms for 17 students and a computer lab with adaptive technology.
Lopes is on the national board of directors of Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic in Princeton, N.J., an audiotape education library, and is chairwoman of its national advisory council. The guide dog, Lopes said, is her constant companion, except when skiing or horseback riding, enabling her to walk fast and travel in new and different areas.
“I hate to come across looking as if I’m bumbling or insecure or groping,” she said. “So for me, one of my challenges is to always look like I’m totally in control of the situation — even when I’m not — to always look very self-assured and confident and knowing where I am going, just because I don’t like the stereotypical image of a blind person. My attitude about life is, you only pass this way but once. You might as well make the best of it. Play hard, work hard and have a good time doing both.”