10
June 2012
Feature
Celebrating God’s Word in the dark By Don Harrison
Jose Feliciano is renowned as a singer, guitarist and composer, and he is also a man of deep faith. Although blind since birth—he has performed his music and read Scripture as a lector at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Westport. Another man who happens to be sightless, Eric Bellavance, may lack the fame, but he lectors at a neighboring Diocese of Bridgeport parish, Our Lady of the Assumption in Fairfield. Bellavance has been blind since birth, too, yet he has served as a lector at Assumption since 2005 and before that for two decades at his former parish in Lewiston, Maine. To him, it’s no big deal. “Some blind people will sit
back and wallow in pity. Me, I wanted to take life by the horns,” he said on a recent spring afternoon in the condominium he shares with his mother, Rita. Eric, who celebrated his 54th birthday on May 18, has parlayed a booming voice and a devout belief in God into a lay ministry that has warmed the hearts and moistened the eyes of congregants in two states. His mother uses a Braille writer to translate the Scripture readings into a form Eric can read. He does the rest, with vigor, reverence and clarity. “He is one of the best lectors we have in terms of his projection and delivery,” says Fr. J. Barry Furey, who has served as Assumption’s pastor since the late fall of 2010. “He has a love for Scripture and a reverence for
delivering that message. The best compliment I can give him is… I never think of him as being blind.” It was Fr. Furey’s predecessor as pastor, Msgr. Blase Gintoli, who determined that Eric possessed the skills to handle a lector’s duties, and assigned him to the schedule of parishioners who serve at Assumption’s 4 pm Masses on Saturdays. “Monsignor was delighted,” Eric says, “and I’ve been part of the team ever since.” Eric and Rita had settled in Bridgeport in 2004 so they could live in close proximity to Eric’s sister, Bernadette “Bunny” Madera. Eric’s father, Raymond, had died and there were no other family members in Maine. Bernadette and her husband, Eugene, reside in nearby Easton.
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ERIC BELLAVANCE IS FLANKED by his “team” at Assumption Parish in Fairfield. (l-r) Fellow lector Ann Okrentowich; his mother, Rita Bellavance; and his sister, Bernadette Madera. (Photo by Don Harrison)
Bernadette speaks warmly of Eric and their mom. “He is very genuine, and seems to have a special outlook on life,” she says. “A lot of that is due to my mother. Her faith is so strong; she really believes there is a reason for everything. She never complains and says, ‘Why me?’” Rita Bellavance could have cursed the heavens when Eric was born three months prematurely and weighed just two pounds, 10 ounces. To save his life, he was placed in an incubator and, in keeping with the standard practice of the time, given supplemental oxygen. The high doses spared his life but destroyed his vision. At the age of six, Eric learned to read Braille—earlier than many sighted children learn to read. His teacher, a Josephite Sister named Sr. Harriet Sharon, taught a class of 14 blind youngsters at Sacred Heart School in Auburn, Maine. “She was like a second mother to me,” he says. “She taught us Braille, reading and writing, and mathematics. She took us out on field trips. Between them, my mother and Sr. Harriet have taught me about faith. Even in the difficult times, never give up on faith.” After graduating from high school at the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Waterville, MA, Eric entered the next phase of his life. He went to work at Eastern Die Co. in Auburn, where his dad was the general manager. Later, Eric became a mobile telephone operator for a communications company, worked the switchboard at a nursing home and handled the “graveyard shift” as an operator for a detective and security agency. “To make up for my lack of
sight, God has given me a very sharp memory,” he explains. “I don’t want any special charity, just dignity and respect.” At home, Eric enjoys a myriad of hobbies—listening to doo wop music from the 1950s and ‘60s and classic commercials from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, and using a Dell desktop computer. Utilizing the JAWS (Job Access for Windows) software program, he is able to hear the words on the computer screen. Many will attest to his voracious appetite for emails. Eric also derives great pleasure in travel and the sensation of riding roller-coasters at amusement parks. It was during Lent in 1981 that he received his first invitation to serve as a lector at Holy Cross parish in Lewiston. “We were doing a reading about Jesus and the blind man, and the priest turned out all the lights in the church. He told me, ‘You’re going to have to project tonight,’” Eric recalls. He remained an integral part of the lector team for two decades before relocating to Connecticut. “I felt pretty good about it. I knew I was doing the Lord’s work,” says Eric, who labels lectoring “a humbling experience.” At Assumption, Eric works in tandem with another parishioner, Ann Okrentowich, at the Saturday Masses. She guides him to and from the pulpit, and reads the announcements. “We’re a good match,” she says. “He’s just so comfortable with himself, and you can’t help be comfortable with him. Eric is not blind; he sees so much without sight. When my mom died, he couldn’t see it in my eyes, but he could hear it in my voice.” n