Shirley Jennings, 63; Was Blind 40 Years, Then Regained His Sight

Shirley “Shirl” Jennings, 63, who was blind for 40 years before operations restored his vision in 1991, died Sunday in Atlanta of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Jennings’ life was depicted in the 1999 Hollywood film “At First Sight,” starring Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino.

As a child in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Montvale, Va., Jennings lost his sight at the age of 3 after coming down with meningitis, polio and cat scratch fever. By the age of 10, he could distinguish only light from dark.

When two operations restored his sight after 40 years, Jennings, who made his living as a massage therapist, suffered from sensory overload, according to his wife, Barbara Jennings.

“His visual cortex has lost the ability to process images,” she said. “It was much easier to be blind.”

She said her husband could not recognize a tree, for example.

“He knew the top and bottom separately, the trunk, the leaves,” she said. “It took him six months to put a tree together.”

The year after his successful surgery, he contracted pneumonia and much of his restored sight was temporarily lost because of lack of oxygen, his wife said.