11-year-old strives to overcome blindness; Murrieta girl is also an aspiring singer

By: CATHY REDFERN - For the Californian | Tuesday, January 9, 2007 12:39 AM PST ∞

MURRIETA -- Eleven-year-old Brooke Pernice has learned much since summer: how to cope with painful changes accompanying the emergence of her eyesight; that she must keep her focus on God; and that she will tell her story through song.

Pernice has been blind since birth. She finds her way around St. Jeanne de Lestonnac Catholic school in Temecula via a cane, help from others and the latest global positioning and state-of-the-art Braille systems.

A slight girl with wavy brown hair and brown eyes, Brooke says she feels she's been "getting a lot of blessings lately." Those blessings, which seem to have come together last summer, include vastly improved eyesight, so that she can now see outlines and distinct shadows and is no longer completely blind. She even went so far as to get eyeglasses in September as her eyesight was emerging and has been surprised that they seemed to have helped.

The blessings also include what Pernice says are three direct communications from God, which allowed her to handle the painful side effects of seeing for the first time and to sing inspirationally about it.

To pass on some of those blessings, Brooke recorded a song about the heroism of American soldiers and included the CD in Christmas gift baskets for Camp Pendleton families. The song, "Somebody's Hero," was produced and written by Rick Burnette and William B. Turpin, or in Brooke's words, "men in Atlanta who allowed me to sing it."

The country-western song speaks of all those "somebody's heroes" who fight for the rights of all Americans. Pernice is now working on four more songs; about how her sister and a great-aunt helped her imagine what things looked like, about the death of that beloved great-aunt and about how God has helped her negotiate it all.

Pernice has had about three years of voice lessons. She is now working with the music director of St. Martha's Catholic Church in Murrieta, where Brooke sings in the choir, and continuing to work with the Atlanta-based song producers who created her first CD. And a new friendship with country singer Daryl Worley isn't hurting her fledgling career, either.

Brooke explained her changed life in a recent interview, as she sat very straight and small on a large couch in a sun-soaked room of her Bear Creek home.

"I've been getting my sight back," she said calmly.

She talked of visits to an acupuncturist whose work brought her light for the first time, to "a man who mixes up drinks," to a chiropractor and then to the University of Pennsylvania's Scheie Eye Institute, where doctors finally tested her for a gene linked to her condition after becoming intrigued by her improvements.

Her mother explains that she and her husband carry the recessive gene for the impairment, a coupling with estimated odds of 1 in 100,000. She said neither of them is aware of ancestors who were blind.

Brooke's mom, Sydney, said her daughter was diagnosed with Leber's Congenital Amaurosis, an inherited retinal degenerative condition for which researchers have only recently isolated a gene that causes a protein deficiency in the eyes' photo receptors. She said the acupuncturist restored Brooke's undeveloped retina when she was a toddler, and her vision emerged somewhat, only to have the improvement decline when Brooke was in kindergarten.

The family now believes the declines came when Brooke twisted her spine during an injury at age 5 or so. A local chiropractor is now straightening her spine, which the family believes is leading to a re-emergence of eyesight.

Brooke said that on the fourth visit to the chiropractor, she put her hands in front of her eyes, crying that it was too bright.

"The light didn't go away," she said.

There were other blinding moments, followed by joy, intense nausea and fear.

She struggled to describe the fear, starting several sentences before finding an answer.

"It really makes me angry if people judge other people by how they look," she said. "I didn't want to be that way and I was afraid I would and I was afraid of other things, too."

"But there are things I would like to see," she added, "like the sunrise and the sunset."

And it now appears that she may see, in part due to contacts her father has made as a professional golfer. Tom Pernice Jr. last year finished his best PGA season. At age 47, he landed among the top 30 moneymakers, most of whom are significantly younger.

Over a round of golf, singer Engelbert Humperdinck told Tom Pernice about the acupuncturist, who is based in Santa Monica, and that tip ultimately led to the family's move from Kansas City to California about nine years ago.

And while her eyesight improves, Brooke's singing career is rocketing off to unknown places, mom Sydney Pernice says.

"I have to pray each morning to see who needs me the most," she said, mentioning daughter Kristen's success at competitive cheerleading and her husband's golf career.

In one example of possible looming stardom, Brooke will sing at Daryl Worley's July 8 benefit concert for the Foundation Fighting Blindness in Nashville.

This comes after Worley befriended Brooke at a House of Blues show last year, her mom said, and after Brooke then sang "The Star Spangled Banner" at one of his concert openings.

Brooke and her mother express a strong faith in God, and Brooke says she sings because God has told her to. She also credits her late great-aunt, Caroline Wade, with inspiring her with stories of sunsets, guardian angels and other wonders. Brooke saw Wade face a return of cancer and die, in 2001, with her faith, humor and dignity intact.

As for Sydney, the nonmusician mom said she has been waking up with lyrics to songs that she writes down and hands over to her daughter. Mom shakes her head and says she is moving very fast to keep up and is grateful to others for helping too -- people such as her other daughter, Kristen, and 11-year-old Kiara Kavanagh, Brooke's best friend and schoolmate.

She said Brooke sometimes says, in exasperation, that she didn't ask for any of this. And though Brooke has little doubt that she is meant to sing, she seems not yet ready to face the world with fully restored eyesight.

Brooke says she wants to do that "in God's time."

"The way I feel, God knows what He's doing and he won't let me down," she said. "I'll just enjoy my life and do what He wants me to do."