Dash Between: Pat Mason Beattie, advocate for the blind

Pat Beattie, who began losing her eyesight to Stargardt's disease (a type of juvenile macular degeneration) at a young age, coordinated development of and access to programs and services that helped others who were blind or nearly blind.

Over the years, she served as president of the Council of Citizens with Low Vision International, treasurer for the American Council of the Blind and director of public policy and consumer relations with the National Industries for the Blind.

As a teenager in the 1950s, she became a columnist for her hometown newspaper, the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, and went on to cover labor and business.

As a newlywed in the 1960s, she worked for U.S. foreign service agencies in countries where her husband handled assignments for International Telephone and Telegraph.

Pat lived in Toledo, Ohio, before moving to the Washington, D.C., area and beginning her work with the blind on a national level in the early 1980s.

Read about "The Dash Between" May 14, 1936, when she was born Patricia Mason in Elyria, Ohio, and Feb. 10, 2010, when she died in Alexandria, Va., at age 73, in the April 18, 2010, edition of the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram.