Technology, kindness of stranger gives Sanford man gift of sight

"I want others who live in the world I live in to feel what I feel when I wear these glasses."

Ambrose Greene of Sanford wants to open the eyes of the world to a technology that lets the blind see. He is legally blind but, thanks to computerized glasses he just received, he's beholding the beauty of sight again.

"I was a truck driver, man," said Greene, a 6-foot-5 man with a deep voice and a quick wit. "I was driving down the road. One day, the lights went out.

He was hauling chickens in Alabama. Cerebral fluid destroyed his optic nerves in a rare condition similar to a tumor. For the next 16 years, the windshield on his life would be fogged.

"You know, a blind person can't go into stores and see colors and stuff that everybody else sees," Greene said.

The man whose personality fills a room couldn't see the clock on the wall.

"All this little area here is actually a computer and the lenses," Greene said about the glasses.

That is until a few weeks ago, when his electronic glasses arrived from a Toronto-based company called e-Sight. With a camera, algorithms and high-res screens, the blind can see — or see a whole lot better.

"I can read my medication bottles," Greene said. "I can read my mail, I can look at TV."

And, he can read the clock on the wall.

"I can see the little dots under the numbers," Greene said. "I've never seen that before."

The device runs roughly $6,000, and it's not covered by insurance. Greene learned about e-Sight glasses a couple of years ago and started a crowdfunding site to raise money to buy his own. An anonymous person in Sanford called him and helped Greene out in a huge way.

"Said 'what's the balance?' and the lady said $3,000 and they said 'it's paid'," Greene said.

Now Greene is on a quest to share the vision. Every month, he gathers with others who have visual impairments at the Lee County Enrichment Center. He let his friend Jeff Peck, who has macular degeneration, try them on.

"It almost leaves me speechless," Peck said.

Seems like a miracle, not unlike those Greene can now read in his Bible.

"When I picked up that Bible the first day and read it, it was kind of a special moment," Greene said. "I hadn't picked up that Bible since 2003.

"I wouldn't feel right to have these glasses and not help other people get them. I want others who live in my world to feel what I feel when I wear these glasses."

Clearly, they have made an impression, just like the man wearing them.