A Life On The Edge

Some people are surprising, unpredictable. I don’t mean they take your breath away by giving you a present. They just happen to have a plethora of life experiences for their age and they seem relatively unfazed and humble about it – as if everyone else has the same types of stories. Longview native, Catherine Harrison is one such woman. While she has shared her story before to large audiences, they may not have heard the whole story. As interesting as she is glamourous, Harrison knows how to live each day to the fullest and she takes it all in stride. Things that may seem risky and unpredictable to others don’t scare her at all. She likes it that way. In fact, she prefers it that way. Harrison enjoys living on the edge... it’s exactly where she aims to be.

Perhaps if you have met Catherine you will remember her as the striking blonde with a bob hairstyle and chic shoes. (She may also be carrying her “stick” as she calls it.) She maintains that becoming visually impaired has offered her many freedoms. “I don’t have to try and be something I’m not anymore... I don’t have to; I don’t care. It gives you clarity. It gives you the ability to determine what’s important.”

Her story begins in Longview, Texas where she was born and raised by a Christian family. Her father, a dentist, taught Harrison and her two sisters the Texas basics. They all knew how to ride horses, and she is an excellent shot. “I grew up riding horses. I’m not fancy, I’m just me. I can’t pretend to be something I’m not,” she explained with a smile. “He taught us how to change a tire, put oil in the car, work power tools, shoot a gun … you had to be able to do [things] for yourself. We were not princesses by any stretch.”

One of Harrison’s early passions (apart from target shooting and riding horses) was ballet. Through involvement with the Longview Ballet Theatre, several students were awarded scholarships to study with the School of American Ballet (SAB) under the direction of George Balanchine. She received scholarships and was able to live in New York for two summers while attending school. “It was a great opportunity as a young person to get to pursue that. My parents let me do it... that was back when the SAB was still a part of the Julliard school of performing arts,” she recalled. The first summer of her ballet studies in New York, was right after Mikhail Baryshnikov (one of the greatest ballet dancers of the 20th century, also a film actor), came to America and danced with the New York City Ballet. “He didn’t speak English, he still spoke Russian and it was just wonderful,” she recalled. “I had a lot of great experiences and I did that for a season, retired and went to nursing school.”

Catherine attended Baylor University to pursue a career in nursing and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree. With an independent spirit, she decided to move out of the dorms at nursing school and get her own apartment. “My dad said, ‘Great! You’ll have to pay for it.’ He had three of us at Baylor University at one time,” Harrison explained. “I had a friend who was a model and she said, ‘Hey, come with me to the agency and maybe you can get a job.” Harrison signed with the Sarah Norton Modeling Agency in Dallas working in print, runway and convention modeling. “I [was in] the Dallas Morning News, I did the Sears catalog, I did Radio Shack... the very first walkman that Radio Shack put out, I was the girl on the box,” she reminisced. “I had really big hair and it was the ’80s.

“I did [modeling] and was still in nursing school at the then time and that’s when I met my husband (Dr. Craig Harrison),” she said. “We met in the emergency room. I was working in the emergency room and he was in residency.” [I remarked that it sounds like “Grey’s Anatomy.”] “It’s the very classic doctor/nurse thing,” she laughed. “We dated for a few years, then after we married we moved to Longview for three years while he got his (boards in plastics and general surgery).”

With both their medical careers ahead of them, the Harrisons both enlisted as medical missionaries and took an assignment with the International Mission Board and moved to Nigeria. They worked at a hospital where Catherine was an OR nurse and Craig trained other surgeons. She maintains their experience in Nigeria was exciting, adventurous and often scary. Almost every time they left their house on the medical compound, it was looted by locals. There was often no electricity and on several occasions their life was in danger.

Their two children also traveled with them and lived in Nigeria. “[When] I was pregnant with the third child and the mission board wanted us to come home and have the baby – that is how we [came] to Tyler,” she recollected. Shortly after the birth of their third son, Catherine began to realize something was wrong. “I began to notice things were just not right. I was trying to drive and something just wasn’t right. I [would] run into things,” she recalled. The situation became serious when Harrison began tripping and falling in her own home. “I fell down the stairs with the newborn baby,” she said. “I didn’t know why. My husband thought maybe I had MS or something. So, I went to see a specialist.”

At the specialist, Harrison was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa. “It is not necessarily very common but, at the time it was the No. 2 blinder in adults of people in my age group (No. 1 was Diabetic Retinopathy),” she explained. Harrison was born with the genetic condition, but it progresses at different rates in each case. So, those with the disease typically are not aware until they show severe symptoms. “Looking back... I was symptomatic of the disease as early as 16. Not being able to drive at night, I had poor acuity my whole life, wearing thick glasses... things like that,” she described.

Her doctor explained that Retinitis Pigmentosa, or RP, is a type of retinal degeneration. There is currently no cure. “It destroys the retina from the outside in,” Harrison says, resulting in tunnel vision. “It’s as if I look through a tunnel. So, by the time I was diagnosed it was like I was looking though a toilet paper tube. Now [16 years later], I see through less than a straw. So, as the years progress [my field of vision] just gets smaller and smaller. Blindness is the prognosis for everyone that has this,” she expounded. Harrison explained that at the time of diagnosis she was in shock. “As I sat, literally holding my newborn the doctor said, ‘You better take a good look at his face because you will never see him as a man.’” It was a tough reality. Straight from the mission field in Nigeria, with three young children they had no jobs, no car and no house… “We had dedicated our life to serving the Lord, and then the mission board would not take us back because of [my diagnosis]. We could not return to the field – which is totally understandable.”

Harrison maintains she is still lucky to have any sight at all, even thought right now it is very minimal. Some patients diagnosed with RP are completely blind by age 16. Still, the doctors made it clear that total blindness would be inevitable for Catherine – and the timespan would be unpredictable. “We didn’t know how long I had,” she recollected. “They said ‘You could have a couple of years, you could have a couple of decades. There is no way to know...’”

After the diagnosis, both she and her husband decided to shift gears and stay in America. Craig opened his own medical practice in Tyler. Catherine was forced to retire from her nursing career due to her diagnosis and obvious liabilities in the operating room.

Less than a year after the diagnosis, Harrison went to a seemingly regular check-up at her eye doctor – except this time was different. Harrison was declared legally blind. She recalled the scenario that day: “[Dr. Becky Jones] literally took my driver’s license out of my wallet and called Craig to come and get me. [Jones] said, ‘The last time you will have ever driven is to my office.’ And that was the last time I ever drove a car – that was 16 years ago.”

Always the independent spirit, Catherine said, “My first thoughts [at that moment] were, ‘How am I supposed to get my kids to school tomorrow?’ I knew it would eventually come … but you don’t realize how much you cannot see.” Immediately, a new reality set in. No more driving. Reading became difficult. It took her about a year to adjust and try to figure out how to live in her new world. “I tried the ‘staying at home and being depressed about it’ thing,” she said with a chuckle, “That didn’t work very well. You know, my kids were at home dependent on me [and] my husband had only had his practice [for a year]...”

Overcoming the challenge of not knowing how long she would keep the vision she had left was a struggle. The thought of waking up blind tomorrow is unsettling for anyone, “I think that is when the Lord got a hold of my life and said, ‘You are going to have to walk by faith and not by sight. Not because you choose to, but because you don’t have a choice.'” She made the decision to overcome any impairments that might keep her from living a normal life doing things that she had always enjoyed prior to her vision loss. Her new attitude: “You can put your boots on ... get behind that stick and walk and do this well!”

Not prone to underachievement, Catherine decided that if she was going to be visually impaired, she was going to do it just as she always did everything else, extremely well and with style. “I decided if I am going to be blind, I am going to do it with a really cute hairdo and in high heels. If you are going to look at me because of my stick, [the rest] of what you see is going to be cute,” she said seriously. “Oh sure, I trip and fall. Oh sure, I run into things but you know, at least I’m out there. At least I’m trying!”

While she admits that if people stare at her with her stick, it occasionally it bothers her children, but she doesn’t let it bother her (she says she can’t see them anyway). “I just lean over and say, ‘Honey it doesn’t bother me... really they are just looking because I’m cute.’ They just go, ‘Yeah right, mom!’ That is just the kind of mindset I had to [have] to adjust to be the chick with the stick,” she said. “If I swing it big enough, people move!”

Harrison has been legally blind now for 16 years. Seven years into her diagnosis she was trained to read braille and to use a Hoover cain (the folding white cane) by the Division for Blind Services for Texas. To function at a high level, she also attended the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center, which specializes in teaching the visually impaired to do everyday things with no sight. “Living in Africa where we went hungry, where we were in danger every day of our lives: from cobras to [the threat of] being killed with guns – it was nothing compared to blind school. If you have any sight, they take it from you. They take a big blindfold and [you] spend eight hours a day in total darkness.”

Attending school for the visually impaired was part of her decision to shift gears, and make the most of her life – even though it was a challenge to get through each day. She learned to cook; and how to be independent and mobile whether walking, traveling, cooking, etc. For three months, she lived in Austin in a dorm surrounded by the other visually impaired students “which is hilarious, by the way,” she laughed. “You just run into one another ... you come out with your wash and you’ve got extra large boxers in your laundry and you are like, ‘Wait a minute! I don’t even wear boxers!’”

Other aspects of the school were much more serious. Harrison said the students would go on outings to Target on a short bus labeled “School for the Blind,” which for her, was extremely humiliating. Yet, she did learn from the experience. “I think it helped me to have a lot more empathy for others and to not use excuses – [to] not use this as an excuse.” Harrison also learned to operate without relying on the limited sight she had – and not to trust what she only thought she could see. “People say ‘Oh has your hearing gotten better?’ No, your senses do not improve – you simply use them. [The average person] doesn’t use their ears to cross the street – I do,” she testified. “You stand and listen to the flow of traffic. So, that’s what ‘walking by faith’ is, stepping out on what you hear: it’s stepping out on what you know to be true – even when you can’t see it. And that’s my life.”

After conquering her experience at the school for the visually impaired, Catherine began another chapter of her life: sharing her story with others. Due to public interest, Harrison began working the public speaking circuit and traveled across the country. She also wrote columns for a Christian women’s magazine, and co-authored two Bible study series. “People [began] asking me to share my story, and so I did. Then, they began to pay me to do it,” she recalled. Harrison was trained by her father, a Toastmaster, even though she initially did not enjoy public speaking (the No. 1 fear of most Americans – No. 2 is death...). “I wasn’t necessarily good at it, but I had a story to tell. God helped me find my voice of what to say and to encourage people to walk by faith...

“I don’t just walk, I have something that goes in front of me. I have to have my stick that finds those things in life that are going to hurt me, and that is how I approach life. I don’t lead the way, I follow behind the path that God leaves me.” From her success in public speaking she created “Beyond Sight Ministries” which enabled her to speak to all types of organizations, no matter what they could afford.

After several years of public speaking and working with her ministry, Harrison's oldest child requested she stay home full-time. “That was it. I was done [with the Beyond Sight operation,]” she said. “That is the most important thing to me and they were in high school needing me to help with college [prep] stuff and [to be] involved with PTA... that’s probably when my community service began to pick up.”

Her passion for volunteer involvement has become another other career in itself. As the 2012 Co-chair of the Women’s Symphony League Ball, along with Co-chair Treacey Smith, Harrison explains chairing a huge event allows a bye on other things, at least for now. She has been busy most recently overseeing and planning the annual gala themed “An Evening at the Plaza,” set for March 2, at Harvey Hall. Other volunteer duties in her repertoire include: Texas Rose Festival, involvement with her church (GABC) and serving on various committees, serving on the Board for the Baptist Student Ministries at UT Tyler and Tyler Junior College, involvement with local missions and support of local organizations such as Bethesda Health Clinic, and serving on PTA and other school organizations. Her goal in all the volunteer work is to pull the team together and to have fun. “Why do it if it’s not fun – really. There are too many things in life that we have to do that are not fun. So, I’m going to have fun doing it,” she explained.

With her fearless attitude, she aims to experience all there is to life, even if she experiences it differently than others. She walked the runway in the Annual Women’s Symphony League Fall Brunch and Fashion Show. “I have walked on the Great Wall of China. I have climbed the pyramids. I have ridden camels. I do it all. I’ve been in the Dead Sea,” Harrison said. “I am going to do it all, see it all, taste it all... We just go with gusto!” She enjoys cooking even though occasionally things in similar containers get mixed up. Cooking by smelling is definitely her mantra. “The other night I did not smell what I was putting on the green beans and instead of it being red wine, it was vinegar. The kids were like 'the green beans are sour!' I smelled them – dang! It was balsamic vinegar!”

Harrison enjoys participating in whatever the family enjoys: water skiing, snow skiing, target shooting... The week prior to the interview she had just returned from snow skiing in Vale. Her m.o.: she learns to do things without depending on her sight. “Life is not a spectator sport... I want chocolate on my lips and my hair on fire when I die, [so that] I have gone and done [things] and given it my best shot,” Harrison said. “I seem to have surrounded myself with people that offer me no excuses, you know [like] LaVerne Gollob... great friends who do not let me sit back and say ‘I can’t do that ,cause I cant see it.’”

Her biggest fan and support is her husband, Craig. She attributes their “team” approach to their early years spent overseas in danger. “All we had was God and each another – that was it! … He is my best friend. He always has my best interest at heart. I never question that,” she explained.

Catherine has learned to appreciate things most take for granted. She has a driver to help her get around and relies on friends and family to give her rides to appointments. If she hears another mom gripe about having to sit in the carpool lane, she is quick to tell they won’t get sympathy from her. “I would give anything to be in the carpool lane.”

She is in no way bitter. Since she doesn’t play the victim role, she doesn’t think others should either. “I can’t stand the victim mentality – I can’t stand it. I think it’s a cop-out. Bad things are going to happen to everybody. Put your boots on and deal with it. Honestly, it’s a choice you make. I don’t play the victim. I don’t think anybody should.”

Like I said, few people surprise me – and Harrison is one of those people. One example is the run-in she had with a university professor after she mentioned her dependence on God in her speech. “The professor came up to me afterward and said, ‘Honey, you are walking dangerously close to the edge.’ Catherine replied, ‘That’s exactly where I was headed.’” She explained, “I do come close to the edge and that’s where it is the most exciting – right on the edge...”

Another example is when she stood up to a Cub Scout father at a troop meeting. “I was a Cub Scout leader for years... I stood up and said, ‘I need one of you Dads to step-up and be the next leader.’ One dad said to me, ‘Well, I can’t be the leader. I was never in Boy Scouts.’

“And so I go, ‘I was never in Boy Scouts either... I’m a woman … and I can’t see... Is that the best [excuse] you’ve got?’” [Stunned, I asked if she really said that.] She laughed and said “Yes!”