Owl Bowl offers opportunity to assist the visually impaired

2/25/10 6:00pm

When I graduate in a few months, my mom will be bringing baked treats for my masters, embarrassing me in front of my friends and smiling in pride when I receive my degree and skip through the Sallyport. She'll be doing the things that a mother of a 22-year-old should be doing, and better than I ever could have asked.But she won't be seeing me in the same way as the rest of my family.

That's not some post-adolescent, no-one-really-knows-me jibe. And it's not some examination of her psyche, or the nature of the maternal, or any other sociological mumbo jumbo. It's simply a matter of fact.

See, my mom has a degenerative eye condition known as macular degeneration. In 1990, her left eye began to grow gray, a tiny, blurry speck spreading from a pinpoint to a dime-sized hole of blankness. She went to the ophthalmologist thinking she had pink eye and came away with the knowledge that her sight would soon be halved.

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Twenty years later, we're fortunate: The growth of gray in her left eye has stemmed, and her right eye remains just as focused, just as sharp as ever. She can, for all intents and purposes, function normally (though her penchant for making my friends laugh at my expense is still above average).

But that's not to say that all is well. With her right eye closed, my mom can't read, nor can she identify neighbors' faces, nor can she do any of the tasks - baking her otherworldly cookies, sewing my clothes without a moment's hesitation - that make her the best mother I could ever ask for. Her eyesight has taken a permanent hit, and she will never see her children in the same way she once did.

Of course, she couldn't care less about her plight. So long as my brother and I have smiles on our faces, have the hopes and dreams we've always been chasing, she can endure any malady. That's the kind of woman she is. And it's just that kind of character, just that kind of compassion, that makes her circumstance all the more unfair.

She has supported us through every endeavor. She has culled every resource to see us follow the paths of our choosing, sacrificing her desires so that we could pursue ours. One such path I elected to follow was that of sport management. Splitting defensive tackles was never my forte, but working sport marketing strategy alongside those same tackles is something that caught my eye and my energies early in my college career. The major has gifted me contacts, experience and drive that other majors stifle or stymie, and for that I will always be grateful.

But it isn't until now, in my senior year, with 90 percent of my college experience relegated to memory, that I am truly thankful to have followed this major for my four years. Because in what has been my biggest project of my college career is also my biggest chance to give something back to my mom, something beyond just a long-distance report of health and happiness from the Houston heat.

On April 25, my class and I - a smattering of athletes, coaches and plebeians like myself - will put on the third annual Rice Owl Bowl, a benefit bowling tournament at Houston's Palace Lanes. Instead of nursing hangovers from the first few days of dead week, the students of SMGT 366: Event and Facility Management, will be working painstakingly, diligently, to procure the best results from a semester's worth of work.

This project won't be for the athletic department, and I could care less about grades, as my work at the Thresher attests. Instead, our work will benefit only one party: the Foundation Fighting Blindness. A group that funds research at some 80 institutions across the nation. A group that helps 80,000 people in Houston and nearly one million in Texas. A group started, fittingly, by Gordon Gund, a former owner of the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers and the NHL's San Jose Sharks who, due to the eye disease retinitis pigmentosa, never actually saw either of his teams play.

A group that is searching, every day, for a cure for the 10 million people who suffer degenerative eye conditions.

The cost of tickets to our event is steep: $750 per team, for three hours of unlimited bowling and a shot at a silent auction. Don't get me wrong - as a college student, I'm still pinching pennies at every opportunity. I have no doubt you're in similar straits.

But I also have no doubt that you know someone, or have a friend who knows someone, who suffers from the kind of degenerative eye disease my mom lives with, struggles with, every day. A disease that has all but robbed her from her sight in one eye, and may someday blind her entirely.

The only thing I can ask you to do is to pass the message along. If there is someone who may be willing to purchase a ticket, who may be willing to bowl alongside other Houston-area athletes, who wants an evening of bowling and beers and a clean conscience, let them know what we're doing. Even if you can't afford a lane - and I know I'm sure as hell in this camp - e-mail riceowlbowl@gmail.com just to donate your pocket change. Any effort will help.

Because someday, when I have children marching to the beat of their own graduations, I'd like my mother to be there. I'd like her to see the tassels and the pomp and the degrees. And I'd like her to see me, and the rest of her family, smile. Because that's all she wants - and that much she, more than anyone else I can think of, deserves.

Casey Michel is a Brown College senior and former Thresher editor in chief.

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