Judi Jasek made a difference in thousands of people's lives as she helped them get the training, devices and assistance they needed to cope with blindness or loss of vision.
She coped with her own vision loss so well that many of her clients never knew she had only about 5 percent of her eyesight left, in most light just enough to make out nearby shapes in gray. Nor did strangers who saw her whipping down the ski slopes in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Since 1995, she had dashed about the offices of the Catholic Guild for the Blind at 180 N. Michigan with the assurance of a fully sighted person, finding people helpful things such as lighted magnifying glasses, braille-marked kitchen items, talking watches and calculators, software to make computers talk, heavily lined paper for writing notes, or the latest designs in white canes.
Her beloved guide dog Ian accompanied her from her LaGrange house as she walked to the train station, rode to Union Station and walked each day to Michigan Avenue.
Then he spent most of the day curled beneath her desk.
Mrs. Jasek died Tuesday at LaGrange Hospital of complications from a cancerous brain tumor diagnosed July 6. She was 56.
She had just been promoted from manager of the Guild's consumer product center to manager of rehabilitation and had developed a community program for an introductory course for people recently diagnosed with low-vision issues.
"Judy knew that when someone is diagnosed with a visual impairment, they tend to close down. They're not likely to come to even a friendly place like the Guild. She wanted to offer them help in their home community so it would be a familiar place, a place they could get to readily, so they could see they are not alone," said David Tabak, executive director of the Guild. He said the program will be carried out.
Mrs. Jasek was born in Harvey, the oldest of five children of Ancel and Carolyn Dean. She graduated from Thornton Township High School and earned an associate's degree from what now is South Suburban College.
Mrs. Jasek was 26 when cone and rod dystrophy began to attack her eyes. She went from 20-20 vision to legally blind in about 18 months. She went through white cane and mobility training and began working at the Riverdale library as volunteer coordinator, ordering talking books for people with vision loss. She met her husband, teacher and librarian Owen Jasek, when they both worked there. They married in 1994.
In the early 1980s, to increase her mobility, she got her first guide dog. She became a guide dog advocate and until her death served on the board of Guiding Eyes for the Blind in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
Mrs. Jasek recently earned a master's degree in blindness rehabilitation teaching from Western Michigan University.
She had never tried skiing until she met her husband. "I asked her if she wanted to try, and she said, 'Yeah, I'm willing to try anything.' We hooked up with a ski club. On one of the beginners' trips, they provided her a special instructor for two days at Iron Mountain, Michigan," he said. She became an accomplished downhill skier, with her husband as guide.
From childhood she loved to paint. When her vision failed, she had to give up landscape painting, but using bright light, she managed to see and paint subjects such as a single iris blossom. Her work can be seen on the Guild's Web site at www.guildfortheblind.org. Click on 2003 Art Exhibit.
Survivors in addition to her husband are two daughters, Laura Hutton and Sarah Waymire; her mother; four brothers, James, Charles, John and Robert, and five grandchildren.
Services will be at 10 a.m. today at St. Francis Xavier Church, 124 N. Spring, LaGrange. Burial will be private.
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