Blind Artist Sculpts a Work of Art from Life's Trials

By Jill Adair, The Beehive Newspaper and Church News
Sixty-seven year old Paris White, a member of the Arizona Pima Stake, finds that by using his creative abilities, and sustained by the love of his family, he can face the trials life deals him, even if he can't see them. More than 45 years after losing his first eye in an accident, and nearly ten years after losing his second eye to cancer, Brother White says creating helps him to cope. "Art is something I've been doing all of my life," he says. "Now I can't see what I'm doing, but I can feel it."
Brother White and his wife of 48 years, Lilly, both grew up in Mesa, but have spent the latter part of their lives in Central, a small Gila Valley community in Eastern Arizona. Early in their married lives, Brother White served in the Air Force, running advanced communication systems, while his hobbies included painting and drawing.
He painted even after he lost his right eye in Mississippi in 1956 when a propeller from a model airplane shattered and a piece of the wood tore through his eye.
Years later, Brother White retired from the Air Force and started a second career with the Arizona Department of Public Safety as a specialist in their radio communications system. The White's settled in Central, near his work in Safford and Mount Graham.
During this time, Brother White began being treated for skin cancer on his head because of years of exposure to the sun.
He entered the Tucson Medical Center in August 1991 for what he thought would be minor surgery to remove the cancer.
When the doctors operated, they found that the cancer had spread from his skin to his remaining good eye. Fearing hte cancer would continue to spread, the eye was removed.
Paris woke up in an ambulance being transferred to another medical facility, and realized the horrifying effects of the surgery, he was now permanently blind. Optic nerves had also been severed, leaving him with excruciating pain.
During the following months Brother White became addicted to Morphine and Demerol-heavy medication prescribed by the doctors to help dull the pain. "We had a rough time because of the pain." Recalls Sister White of her husband's ordeal.
"As bad as I was physically," Brother White says, "it was worse emotionally. I felt like it was the end of the world."
Brother White whose posterity includes eight children, 30 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren, remembers when he finally reached a point where he had to decide what the future held for him. "I felt like I was not alive," he says "You lose your life when you're on that kind of medication. That's no way to live."
Depressed and in pain, but clinging to his strong faith and love and support of his family, Brother White decided to take back his life; he told the doctors that he was going off the drugs, "They told him that it would probably kill him," says Sister White, "but he was determined to do it."
"Through prayer and feeling close to the Lord, and understanding what life is all about, I realized that I had things that I still needed to do," Brother White says, "We all have trials that come along, but you can't allow them to knock you down and rule your life. Our families need us. "I couldn't be a good husband or a grandpa when I was on that kind of medication."
Slowly he began weaning himself off the large dosages of drugs and learned to do for himself what he could without his sight.
He went through a blind rehabilitation program offered through the Veteran's Administration. There he learned to dress himself, to eat, and to use a cane. However, he was unable to learn Braille because years of handling hot tubes in communications equipment had dulled the feeling in his fingers and hands.
He took up a new artistic medium that he had not tried before. He attended a sculpting class given by Eastern Arizona College. Sculpting with clay over wire frames has not only become his work and his passion but also a creative outlet that he considers "therapy."
"If I'm not doing something with my hands I get nervous and my hands move uncontrollably," he says. "When I have something to work on, it calms me down. Touching things is a substitute for seeing things. I can visualize it in my brain: my hands have become my eyes.
The White's home as well as their children's is filled with artwork crafted by his hands; images of things he feels instead of seeing, and others that he remembers clearly in his mind.
One sculpture, sprayed with a copper colored finish to look live bronze, is of Brother White's seeing eye dog-an amazing likeness of a dog he's never seen'
His favorite subjects are horses, cowboys, and Native Americans: Images often inspired by Western Novel he listens to on tape. "When the book is about horses and I hear the clip, clop--it helps me visualize them," he says. He also recalls many of those images from his youth when he spent the summer's with his grandfather who was a rancher in Eager.
He also listens to his scriptures, the Ensign and his priesthood lesson on tape. "The Church makes sure I'm not left out because I'm blind"
Brother White also taught Gospel Doctrine class in Sunday school for 10 years, teaching even after losing his sight by listening to the lesson several times until he was familiar enough to teach it without ideas.
When asked what gives him the strength to go on, he credits his family and his faith. "My wife and I have a wonderful love for each other, and my kids are always challenging me and giving me something to do.
"We've always had the church," says Sister White, "it has given us the willpower and determination to keep going.
Today Brother White takes very minimal pain medication and finds much to be happy about. He says he's still learning to cope and calls it a "progression."
"The main thing is that I wanted to be as much as I can be, despite my handicap," he says. "I'm still working on it, but I never gave up."