Blind lawyer, musician defies odds and inspires others with remarkable journey of success

By Rick Quan

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    HAWAII (KITV) — When Terry Tom was born premature in 1948, he was put into an incubator where he lost his sight. Despite that handicap, Terry has gone on to live a life most able-bodied people would find hard to achieve.

“All my life, I’ve just seen my blindness more as an inconvenience not as a disability, although it is. But I’ve made adjustments that I really have net my blindness hold me back,” Terry said. “Whenever I think of wanting to start a new chapter in my life, I do it. And then as I am succeeding in the chapter, I go, ‘Oh my gosh! What did I do?’”

Since he was a boy, Terry Tom has been blind to his limitations. As a teenager, he became an accomplished musician and was able to help pay his way through college by playing at local venues.

“No one wanted me to be on their baseball team or their football team or their soccer team. So, while my friends were playing outside, I would be in the house playing my piano. My uncle who was married to my wife’s sister came every Sunday to teach me piano,” Terry said.

While music is his passion, his greatest love is for his wife, Penny, whom he met while at the University of Hawaii.

“I was allotted money through the university to pay readers, to read to me…and I loved her voice,” Terry recalled.

“I didn’t even see his blindness. It was just adapting, like you would adapt to any other person. But I didn’t see that he couldn’t see. We just had a lot of fun together and we shared common interests. We just seemed to complement each other,” Penny said.

“She’s everything to me. She’s my partner. I couldn’t imagine life without her,” Terry said.

Working long hours together, he was able to get through law school in San Francisco and in 1973, he became the first person in the nation to pass the bar exam by braille. Justice may be blind, but no one wanted to hire a blind lawyer.

“All I wanted was a chance. All I wanted was a chance to prove myself to show what I could do,” Terry said.

He did eventually get a job with the prosecutor’s office and in 1982, Terry successfully ran for state representative — a position he would hold for 16 years.

“I never thought about whether people would vote for a guy that was blind, I just did it. I went door-to-door and I said, ‘Hey, I want to represent you.’ And that’s what I did,” Terry said.

Because no private firm would hire him, he started his own practice in 1976. Forty-seven years later, he continues to work full time. He has a machine which can translate legal documents into braille, but the work can be tedious.

“I email my work to my secretary, then she has to email it back to me after formatting and fixing it. Then I have to make sure it’s correct. And then we’ve got a report. And sometimes I do 12 to 13 reports a month,” Terry said.

During their nearly 53 years of marriage, Terry and Penny raised two boys and now have four grandchildren. She doesn’t mind driving him wherever he needs to go. Sure, there have been a few bumps in the road, but they don’t stay mad at each for long.

“When we start arguing and all, in the end we start laughing at each other about how funny it is. And how insignificant the argument is, when you look at the whole picture,” Penny said.

When not practicing law, Terry plays piano on a regular basis at the Craigside and Arcadia retirement homes. As for his own retirement, he’s not ready yet. He’s having too much fun playing music and spreading his message of hope.

“The motto I always lived by was to reach for the stars and dream big. Don’t ever give up. Because if I can do it, I know you can,” Terry said.

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