DURHAM - When Deborah Sugg was born in 1951, she weighed 3 1/2 pounds. Doctors didn't know as much then as they do today about caring for premature infants, and they put her in an incubator infused with a high concentration of oxygen.

Too much oxygen can make the retina separate from the rest of the eyeball. When she was about 4 months old, doctors solemnly told her parents she was blind.

Distraught over her condition, her parents nevertheless vowed that they would do their best to raise her as a normal child who just happened to be unable to see.

So she grew up riding horses, her father cringing when she urged her mount to jump. She went to college, lived alone, got her Ph.D. She sacrificed her independence only in the last few years, when she was forced to return to her parents' home as she grew sicker.

Deborah Anne Sugg died Dec. 21 of complications from Wegener's granulomatosis, a rare inflammation of the blood vessels. She was 56.

To Sugg, blindness was practically just another personal trait, like eye or hair color. She matched her clothes with the help of labels her mother attached to pants and shirts.

As a child, she learned about colors by caressing the petals of a jonquil with her mother close by.

"That's what yellow feels like," Dot Sugg told her daughter. "It's a bright color."

Away from home

From about first grade on, Sugg lived away from home. She attended the Governor Morehead School, the state's school for the blind in Raleigh.

After graduating as salutatorian in 1969, she enrolled at N.C. State University.

In college, she'd play cassettes of lectures and reading assignments, then take notes in Braille after class. She earned A's, although her strategy didn't work as well in P.E., where she got B's. She could have been exempt, but she spurned special treatment.

One exception was the car she was allowed on campus because she couldn't get around as easily as a sighted student. Her sister, Patsy Berry, a year behind her in school, was the driver. Driving was the one thing Sugg couldn't do, and she was angry about it. But Berry was happy to shoulder the responsibility.

Berry also fulfilled other sisterly duties, such as clothes-swapping. Once, Berry sneaked into her sister's dorm room to snag a sweater their mother had bought them. "Pat, I know you're in here," Sugg said.

After N.C. State, Sugg earned a master's from Duke University and a doctorate from UNC-Chapel Hill, both in special education. She wanted to help children like her.

She did that two ways, working with visually impaired children and with the teachers who taught them. She helped blind children as a consultant in the Durham Public Schools, and, as a professor at N.C. Central University, she taught teachers how to work most effectively with blind children in their classes.

"She came from a family who could really help and support her, but she knew that many children did not have that support," said Cecelia Steppe-Jones, dean of the School of Education at NCCU.

An animal lover, Sugg got riding lessons as a Christmas present when she was a girl. The next year, Santa brought a horse. For obvious reasons, her parents discouraged jumping, but she would disregard their concerns.

"We did everything but forbid her, and forbidding her would have been too much of a challenge," said Robert Sugg, her father.

On trail rides, she could sense from the feel of the horse beneath her what the terrain was like. That helped her anticipate what bumps lay ahead. Accidents were aplenty; one day, her horse threw back its head and banged into her front teeth. The resulting fracture didn't please her father, a dentist.

Sugg, hardheaded and determined, stayed in the saddle.

At the same time, she tended all the requisite childhood pets -- the turtle, the rabbit, the fish darting around in the aquarium, the gerbil that escaped from its cage and scampered through the house -- and she named them all.

About 10 years ago, she began training and showing shelties and continued until she grew too weak.

Her last guide dog

Her love for animals expanded to include the four guide dogs she relied upon to help her navigate the world alone. She was a junior in college when she got her first. Her last, Xylan, is living now with Sugg's parents. Xylan, 9, had been Sugg's companion for seven years.

In keeping with protocol, the guide dogs are tethered to their owner's bed when they first arrive at their new home. The practice teaches the dogs to stay with their owners at all times.

Xylan accompanied Sugg everywhere, including to her classroom at NCCU. In her office, he stayed under her desk.

He is dealing with Sugg's death in his own way. Trained to never leave her, Xylan has refused to enter her room since she died.

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Deborah Sugg is survived by her parents, a sister and a brother.

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