A Close- Up Look At People Who Matter : Building the Long Road To Independence

Larry Pearlman likes to show off his room, his bed and the common living area in his house at the Therapeutic Living Center for the Blind in Reseda.

“Do you want to have a glass of juice?” asks Pearlman, 41, with the buzz of other clients around him.

He also wants to show off the room where he and other multiple-handicapped, vision-impaired people stuff envelopes, work and play in the complex of buildings in Reseda.

It is raining and close to dinner time, so Larry’s mother, Bernice Pearlman, tells him he can’t give a tour right now.

“Let’s go outside for a fire drill,” Larry suggests.

“Come on, honey,” says Bernice Pearlman, who is also the center’s founder. “Give me a hug. I’ll see you later.”

Shortly after birth, Pearlman had breathing difficulties and suffered brain damage, caused partly by a high fever and pneumonia. Doctors gave him only a 50-50 chance of survival. He lived, but in his teens went blind following cataract surgery and an injury.

His parents, Bernice and her late husband, Seymour, searched in vain for a group that was geared to helping the mentally handicapped and the blind. They learned that people like their son often fell between the cracks in the system.

Unable to cope with the growing frustration Larry was feeling and provide the care that he needed, the Pearlmans considered a state institution. But a visit to one in Pomona in the early 1970s changed their minds.

“My husband and I said, ‘This is not an acceptable way for any human being to live,’ ” said Bernice Pearlman, who refuses to even describe the conditions. “It was so overwhelmingly tragic I could not tell you.”

So, in 1975, the couple founded Therapeutic Living Centers for the Blind to serve those with both mental retardation and blindness. Their first facility opened in Pasadena two years later, before eventually moving to Reseda.

“We knew it was going to be a tough job,” says Bernice, who lives in North Hollywood, “but we didn’t know it was going to be as tough as it was. This took over our lives.”

Friends donated money and property. Seymour Pearlman, a probate lawyer, handled much of the paperwork and the establishment of a fund-raising foundation for the center. He died in 1989.

Without her husband, Pearlman realized, “My job was to carry on.” She became president of the TLC foundation, while remaining on the center’s board.

Today, the organization houses 52 residents in seven homes throughout the Valley, including two at the main site in Reseda. The center, which aims to teach clients to become more independent, also has a day program with activities for another 30 clients.

Pearlman fondly remembers a day about five years ago when she realized that Larry was reaching the goal of becoming more self-reliant.

He was showering when she came into his room. She started laying out his clothes on the bed. When she told Larry what she was doing, Larry insisted, “Mom, I can do that myself!”

It was a small step, but a meaningful one.

“I ran out of the room and started to cry,” she says. “This was what we had wanted to accomplish.”

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