Change Your Life: He Won a Karate Championship After Losing His Sight

As he tells the story, Jim Stevens laughs. He had just won the Rocky Mountain Tournament of Champions karate competition. As he tapped his cane, advancing toward the podium to get his trophy, "My sensei was watching the gentleman who took second place. His jaw was on his shoe tops when he realized he'd just been beaten by a blind man."

Stevens lost his sight in 1993, 23 years after being wounded while on patrol in Vietnam, when shrapnel still lodged in his brain caused a stroke in his visual cortex. "In 30 minutes, I lost my sight. I lost my job as a professor, my wife left the family, and I was suddenly the blind single parent of two young daughters," Stevens says.

After Losing His Sight, Seven Tough Years

For seven years, raising his girls was about all he could do. "I was a pretty miserable individual," Stevens recalls. "I had to accept the fact that to have a life, I would have to reinvent my life." His youngest child kicked off his comeback when she said, "Daddy, karate has been good for my sister [who went on to win the national women's championship six times]. It would be good for you too." So Stevens approached her sensei and asked if he would teach a blind man.

"At first he thought I was jerking his chain," Stevens says. But the sensei agreed to give it a try. "He made me sit and listen to kicks and punches for months before he would even start teaching me." Stevens proved so able a student, he won the brown belt title without anyone at the competition realizing he was blind. "In the third fight, the referee asked my sensei, 'What's wrong with your fighter's eyes?' My sensei yelled, 'Jim, open your bloody eyes. You're freaking everybody out.'" Stevens had them shut to concentrate on the other senses – hearing and touch – that were guiding him.

Learning To Draw All Over Again

Three years after Stevens began studying karate, his sensei asked him why he didn't return to scrimshaw carving, an art he'd taken up shortly before he lost his sight. Stevens accepted the challenge, experimenting with lenses that allowed him to work using the mere pin dot of vision he has left.

It wasn't easy. "I got so angry I threw pieces across the room," he says. But he stuck with it because his younger daughter reminded him, "Daddy, you promised not to quit." It took two years to recover his skills. At first, he created scrimshaw for family and friends. As his confidence grew, he began to exhibit and sell his work.

Luckiest Guy on the Planet

Today, Stevens has achieved so much. As he puts it, "I feel like I'm the luckiest guy on the planet – wonderful kids, a wonderful career, people around the world who love my work. My art is displayed in galleries around the world, I'm collected internationally and I've written three books. Not bad for a blind guy in his garage."

Stevens, who attributes his success to persistence, has two pieces of advice for the rest of us when the going gets tough: "Don't take seven years to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Then, whenever you're discouraged, remember what my daughter told me: 'You promised not to quit.'"