David Bearden and "Upton;" Dwelling in Life's Possibilities

David Bearden is a man of action, a man who wastes no time. For example, check out his winter schedule. In January, he trained with Upton, his Fidelco successor dog. In February, he was downhill skiing in Aspen.

He credits his adventurous and active life quite simply to the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation. He says, “Every bit of it led from having a guide dog. Before I had Isaac (his first Fidelco guide dog), I was stuck at home. There are no sidewalks here and I couldn’t go anywhere. When I got Isaac, I was set free. It was like letting me out of jail.”

David won the trip to Aspen for selling raffle tickets on behalf of Challenge Aspen, a non-profit organization that brings people with disabilities to Colorado for instruction in downhill skiing (and other sports, depending on the season). Never having skied before, he arrived atop Highlands Mountain with an instructor, two ski buddies and a cane pole. They taught him the basics and then he was off and skiing without them.

How does a person without sight ski down a mountain? According to David, he listened to his ski buddies call out the turns for him. The experience was exhilarating.

“I was flying down the mountain. You can literally feel the mountain in your skis. You’re going so fast and you’re feeling the wind on your face. There’s nothing like it.”

David was thirty years old and working in a hospital as a phlebotomist when a biohazard accident took away his sight. Someone had inadvertently put sharp objects in a biohazard bag which exploded near him. The bacteria in the fluids led to his vision loss just three days later.
Sadly, he’d have his sight today had he immediately been given a course of antibiotics. But, David is a guy who doesn’t wallow in life’s “what ifs” but rather, he dwells in life’s possibilities. He says, “I can’t complain. I’m alive!

And I just went skiing!”

At the time of his accident, however, his life was topsy-turvy. “As soon as I brought home the cane, my wife left me.” Overnight, he found himself the primary caregiver to three young daughters: a two year old, a three year old and an eight month old. The state Department of Children and Family was ready to take his children away because they believed he couldn’t take care of them as a newly blind person.

“But no one takes my children away from me,” says David. He had two weeks to prove he could do it and spent nearly twenty-four hours a day during that time training with the Lighthouse Services for the Blind.

“I had to learn how to make formula, how to change diapers, how to organize cabinets, how to organize their clothes. It was tough.”

But David was successful. He proved to the state of Florida that he could raise his children as well as any sighted person and they are now all grown and on their own. But David doesn’t have an empty nest. About three years ago, he looked at his extra bedrooms and thought he might be able to help teenagers who had behavioral problems. He opened his home to foster children and now has three teenage boys living there.

David is also the president of the National Federation of the Blind for his county. He engages in advocacy work to ensure that persons with disabilities have access to critical services like transportation. And he makes it a practice to regularly visit a local elementary school to educate the kids about people with disabilities. The school, Spring Hill Elementary, has adopted Upton as its mascot.

David and Upton now take a daily, six-mile walk with one of his foster children. He does it to spend quality time with each of his foster children and to give them the underlying message that fitness is important.

But he also does it for a more personal and practical reason:
“You can’t ski down a mountain if you’re out of shape!”