By Dean Poling
Joe Brogdon had a childhood of eyesight before the colors faded and the visible world began slipping away.
Now, 64 years old, with a guide dog, and the vaguest impressions of shadows playing around the peripheries of his opened eyes, Brogdon does not think about a past with sight.
“If you try remembering that,” he says, a smile playing across his lips, before his voice grows somber, “it will drive you crazy.”
Instead, this Lanier County resident focuses on the life he’s leading.
He plays guitar every Wednesday morning, rotating between nursing homes in Lakeland and Nashville, with the Teeterville Gospel Five, a group composed of Brogdon, his wife Jean, Dotty Randall, Geraldine May and Frank Presley.
Brogdon also plays ukulele with the Strummers Act II, a regional group whose members from Lowndes, Berrien, Lanier and Cook counties have been entertaining under this name and as the Golden Strummers for the past 23 years.
We caught up with Joe Brogdon at a Strummers Act II rehearsal in a house belonging to Northside Baptist Church where the group meets weekly. On this particular day, the Strummers are playing and singing gospel music for an upcoming performance, but group leader Joan H. Shepard explains that the group plays numerous types of music, including the Beatles.
About 20 players, mostly women and a few men, are seated in the room. Ages range from the 50s to the 80s. They play the four-stringed ukuleles. One member has fashioned what members call a ukulele banjo. They play rousing gospel favorites like “This World is Not My Home.” They flip a few pages, finding the music and lyrics for “Closer Walk With Thee.”
While the rest of the Strummers turn pages for the next song, Joe Brogdon sits with his ukulele resting on his leg. His yellow-lab guide dog, Charley, curled up at his feet. The rest of the Strummers will look at their music and words throughout rehearsal and a performance. Brogdon will not. Cannot. He learns a song by hearing it a few times. He learns the lyrics by hearing people sing them. He often walks into a rehearsal already knowing the song, without benefit of reading the music sheets.
“I told them if they’d learn the songs and get rid of them books,” Brogdon says, laughing, “they’d play a whole lot better.”
A lifetime has taught Joe Brogdon to be prepared and to find his own way.
He began losing his sight the summer he turned 9. He returned to school and teachers realized something had happened to his vision. “They noticed it in my reading,” he says.
At the time, doctors didn’t know what to make of his eyesight. This wasn’t a sudden loss of vision, but a gradual loss, bit by bit.
Neither the doctors nor young Joe knew how long it might last, how long the loss might take, or whether he may one day go blind. But bit by bit, day by day, Joe Brogdon’s world became a little darker.
“I could see well enough then,” Brogdon says. “I could drive a tractor, but I couldn’t read and I couldn’t drive a car. That bothered me a little bit when I turned 16 that I couldn’t get a driver’s license.”
The son of W.R. “Dub” and Iris Brogdon, Joe’s mother was a light in his life, encouraging him to do.
“People can do what they want to if the ask the Lord for help,” Joe Brogdon says. “But you can’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself.”
Even if you don’t know why you’re going blind.
Brogdon didn’t get a diagnosis, a name, for his loss of sight until he was 25 years old. Retinitis pigmatosis, also known as “tunnel vision,” a condition that slowly robs a person of sight until blind. By 25, Brogdon had a name but he had been living the diagnosis for years.
He didn’t let it stop him. He adjusted. He worked the family farm with his father. “Dub” Brogdon passed in 1972. Joe Brogdon continued farming with a cousin until the cousin got another job in 1978.
His brother-in-law, Red Plair, owned a flower shop, and Brogdon went to work setting monuments for him. He performed this back-breaking work into his 50s.
He raised rabbits for 18 years, overseeing anywhere from 1,200 to 1,800 heads of rabbit at a time. He raises dachshunds now as a hobby.
Six years ago, Brogdon received his a guide dog. He spent 28 days of training in Florida to bond and work with Charlie. The dog gets him from point A to B. “If I’ve been somewhere once, we make it just fine,” Brogdon says.
Brogdon began learning his way around a guitar about a decade ago.
Music has always been a component of Joe Brogdon’s life. He recalls days as a child hearing J.C. Johnson on the radio playing one after another Hank Williams song. He had wanted to play guitar and sing all of his life.
He credits Jean, his wife of 15 years, for encouraging him to continue doing and trying new things.
He credits Frank Presley for having the patience to teach him guitar. Presley taught him to play by explaining where Brogdon needed to place his fingers on the strings and frets. Brogdon’s performances started unexpectedly when Presley said it was time to go play somewhere and they went right to it.
His work with the Strummers Act II began through his grandchildren. Joan Shepard led the youngsters in playing the ukulele. Brogdon attended their concert and he expressed an interest to Shepard in learning the ukulele.
That was three years ago. Now, he and Charlie are a familiar sight amidst the Strummers.
Following the interview, Charlie guides Brogdon back to his seat among the Strummers. Brogdon can still make out the blurs of shadows. He can tell when a light is on or off in a room. Doctors say he shouldn’t be able to see anything. He and Charlie move with certainty through the room and folding chairs, right to his spot against a wall.
Brogdon sits down. He picks up his ukulele. Charlie stretches at Brogdon’s feet. Joan Shepard leads the Strummers into finding the next song.
Hank Williams’ “I Saw the Light.”
The chorus rises: “I saw the light, I saw the light / No more darkness, no more night / Now I’m so happy, no sorrow in sight / Praise the Lord, I saw the light.”
An appropriate song for a man who cannot literally see but who figuratively saw years ago that he didn’t need to let blindness keep him from living.
As he said a few minutes earlier, “Whatever you set your mind to do, you can do it.”
