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Paterson's commitment, confidence easy to see

BY MELANIE LEFKOWITZ | melanie.lefkowitz@newsday.com

8:10 PM EDT, March 12, 2008

Lt. Gov. David Paterson has no vision in his left eye, and almost none in his right. But since childhood, he has shrugged off most of the usual aids of the blind, developing his own techniques to excel in the world of the sighted.

He walks confidently into rooms, finding his way with what seems like ease. He strides up to people he can't see clearly and greets them by name. He has a famous recall for facts, figures and phrases, gives speeches from memory, plays basketball, ran a marathon and has recently taken up guitar.

Though he may make it look easy, friends and colleagues say, it isn't.

"It truly is pretty remarkable that he's compensated for it," said State Sen. Eric Schneiderman (D-Manhattan), who said he's traveled with Paterson and watched him maneuver in crowds. "He's got a tremendous independent streak, and a very strong sense of self-reliance."

Paterson has said he can see shapes and shadows. He does not use a cane or a seeing-eye dog, but is generally accompanied by a staffer who can tell him who is approaching. He never learned Braille, but can read for a few minutes at a time with the help of a magnifying monocle. He has most of what he needs read aloud to him by staffers, and has said that when he has to give a speech, an aide reads relevant material into voicemail, and he calls the voicemail to hear it.

"From that, I'll just try to formulate a speech in my head, and if I'm lucky, I'll remember it all," he once told a reporter.

His professors at Hofstra Law School remember him as a good student, but can't recall exactly how he learned the copious amounts of material required -- a testament, one said, to his achievement.

"Law school is very hard in those contexts, and he did well," said Hofstra law professor Eric Lane.

He was unable to pass the bar exam, telling a reporter two years ago that, although an assistant read him the questions and transcribed his answers, it was too difficult because he was unable to keep track of the time.

But with the help of readers and memorization, he entered state government -- eventually rising, as he will on Monday when he is sworn in as governor, to the very top.

"He has a phenomenal memory," said Schneiderman. "He has a very good sense of distance and motion as he moves around; people read to him, he takes things on tape."

Hempstead Councilwoman Dorothy Goosby, who has known Paterson since his youth, said he and his parents always strove for him to have as normal an experience as possible.

"It has never been a disability to him -- he used it to accelerate, through school, through law school," she said. Calling him "brilliant," she said she has been struck by his abilities. For example, at an event where both she and Paterson were honored by the village of Hempstead, she said, he "walked right into the auditorium, and you couldn't believe this man could not see. He walked straight up to where he was supposed to go."

"He has a sense of style with his blindness that you don't normally see," she said.

Paterson recently told The New York Times that sometimes he seems so adept that people believe he can see more than he actually can.

"When I am in places where I am familiar, I will appear to see better than in places where I'm not. If I walked around my house, and you didn't know, you'd probably think I have no vision problems," he said. "But I play basketball, and I've done things that people with my vision aren't supposed to do. I'm in this interesting sort of zone between the sighted and the unsighted, and have never really met anyone who I visually relate to. I've never met anyone who is kind of like me."