GREENSBORO, N.C. — Spend a few minutes with Gladys Dollar and you can’t help but smile. The 92-year-old is full of life, and she always talks about how blessed she is.
Her blessings are something that many wouldn’t see if they were in her shoes. Dollar is blind and yet she wakes up almost every morning excited to see what the day will hold.
“I love every day, they’re all special,” Dollar said.
Make no mistake it isn’t easy navigating the world as a blind person, but Dollar makes it look easy. She also never complains.
“I came from the country. I like to dig. I got a garden in the back and flowers in the front,” Dollar said.
Dollar and her late husband moved to Greensboro, as she likes to say, a long, long time ago. The house has been great but like many older homes needs a few repairs from time to time.
“When it rains, (the floor) was getting damp when you walk on it barefoot, your feet would stick to the floor,” Dollar said.
The culprit was a leaking roof above the screened-in porch in the backyard. It wasn’t awful, but it made it impossible to sit outside when it was raining, and several items that were out there were getting damaged.
“Yeah, it’s cracking. You can’t sit out there if it’s raining,” Dollar said.
A friend of hers sent an email to News 2 in hopes we could help. He told us Dollar had tried to contact several organizations to see if they could assist.
“They said somebody would be out to look at it, but they kept putting me off and putting me off,” Dollar said.
Being able to sit out on the screened-in back porch during the day was something Dollar missed. She didn’t feel comfortable sitting in the front yard.
This case took some time but with the help of friends and a couple of calls from News 2, Dollar was able to find an organization and have the necessary repairs made at no cost to her. Dollar remembers the first time she was able to go sit out on the back porch.
“We cooked something on the grill, and I was able to sit out there and eat it,” Dollar said.
While Dollar doesn’t spend much time out there in the winter months, the recent warm weather has been a nice change of pace. Being able to hear the birds chirp and the bells from the church next door has been nice and was missed.