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Blindness can't stop woman from gaining doctorate | ajc.com
Blindness can't stop woman from gaining doctorate
Published on: 08/08/07
It's been said that there are four things you can never recover: a stone after it's thrown, the occasion after the loss, the time after it's gone, and a word after it's said.
Twyla Lyons-Gary can tell you about that last one. And about the joy of achieving goals in spite of hateful words.
At 29, she often remembers the insults hurled at her as a legally blind, bucktoothed little girl with thick glasses.
Listen to her voice crack, watch the tears well up in her eyes and you don't need to read the studies that show name-calling is more devastating to one's self-confidence than physical bullying.
Still, she was smart. She was determined. She was pretty. But no one on the school playground noticed that.
"You can see into the future," they screamed at her, twisting her name into the nickname "Twilight Zone." Sometimes, they took her glasses and ran, leaving her scared and crying.
She found herself in tears again recently as she sat in a sea of cap and gowns at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
"I cried the entire time," she said.
Unable to see the commencement speaker from six rows back, her thoughts strayed from the speech. She remembered every hurtful word. She mourned her late grandmother and her short, failed marriage.
"I wish they could see me now," she whispered to herself.
She remembered the good things, too, as she made her way from being born legally blind to earning her doctorate before she was 30.
Gwen Lyons said her daughter had been defying the odds since birth when she was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.
"Then we found out she couldn't see," she said. "We never thought she'd go this far because the only other blind person we knew hadn't."
The youngest of three children, her parents and big brothers doted on her. Although doctors thought she might fare better at a school for the blind far away from her home in Forsyth, in Monroe County, her family believed she could excel in a mainstream classroom.
Over and over again, they reminded her that smart people wore glasses.
You may have to work harder, but make your disability your strength, they told her.
Robert and Gwen Lyons didn't have much. On a paychecks of a truck driver and factory worker, they struggled to pay for braces and eyeglasses with thinner lenses, hoping to give her a "normal" life. The day they could afford hard contact lenses was one of the happiest in their life.
By high school, the name calling had stopped and Twyla excelled academically and socially. She was a member of Future Teachers of America. She was a cheerleader. She graduated in 1996 with honors from Mary Persons High School before going on to Fort Valley State University.
It was there, Lyons-Gary said, that professors encouraged her to pursue an advanced degree. A bachelor's degree in early childhood education was an admirable goal, but a master's would afford her more career choices.
Four years later, Lyons-Gary graduated from Fort Valley and was hired at Shadow Rock Elementary in Decatur.
Her third-grade classroom proved far different than the ones she created in her bedroom with her baby dolls on lazy afternoons. It was louder. It was for real. But she liked it and soon learned if you wanted a job teaching, third grade was almost always available.
"That was the burnout grade" for teachers, she said with a laugh.
In between developing lessons plans and teaching, Lyons-Gary pursued a master's degree in administration at Central Michigan University at Fort McPherson.
She graduated in 2002, and a year later married and transferred to Fairview Elementary in Stockbridge. She ended up divorcing in 2005 and headed to Lamar County Elementary in Barnesville, where she teaches reading strategies to staff.
On June 16, she was awarded a doctorate in organizational leadership from Nova Southeastern University.
"I was so excited," Lyons-Gary said.
They say that part of believing in oneself is finding something to praise. Maybe it's in the praise that one is apt to find purpose, too. Lyons-Gary believes she has.
"I want to use my life to inspire others," she said.
Blindness can't stop woman from gaining doctorate | ajc.com
