Whitney: Through blindness, vision emerges

If you spend time with Eric Rippentrop at the Center for New Americans in downtown Sioux Falls, it’s clear he knows the place well.

The volunteer instructor uses his white cane to navigate hallways at the center, a Lutheran Social Services program that helps refugees with language and citizenship skills and community orientation.

Rippentrop, who is legally blind, enters each lesson and conversation without preconceived notions based on appearance, allowing his other senses to sharpen.

“When you sit down and hear the horror stories that some of these people have gone through, it’s mind-boggling,” says the 36-year-old Dell Rapids native. “It makes you realize that you still have a lot to learn.”

That message resonates with Rippentrop, who has his own story of tragedy and renewal. He lost his vision and nearly his life as a passenger in a 2008 rollover accident, forcing him to re-evaluate his personal path.

Inspired by caregivers who helped him heal and deal with his disability, he decided to study social work and explore the spirit of faith-based volunteerism that his family has often embraced.

“In a lot of ways,” says Rippentrop, “I have better vision than I did before.”

At the Center for New Americans, his outgoing personality and sense of humor help ease situations that could otherwise be uncomfortable. During a recent class, Rippentrop exchanged banter with Taw Reh, a refugee from Burma who speaks Kayah as his native language.

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Education program coordinator Laura Smith-Hill recalls showing up early one winter morning to find her eager volunteer outside the entrance, handing out gloves to his students to fight off the cold.

“There’s always someone who needs compassion and a helping hand, and that’s something that Eric does not hold back from,” she says. “No matter what has happened, he has a lot to offer.”

Eager to please

Rippentrop’s first brush with volunteerism came in third grade, when he dressed as an elf for the annual Goodwill shoe drive during the holiday season.

“I handed out candy canes,” says Rippentrop when asked about his role. “I’ve only missed one year since.”

His mother, Linda, set an example of community and church involvement she expected her three sons to follow. Eric, the oldest, played along while growing up in Dell Rapids but was increasingly drawn to other pursuits, such as baseball, golf, hunting and beer.

“He’s always been a people-pleaser,” says younger brother Scott, 33, a physical therapist in San Antonio. “Sometimes he just had trouble saying no.”

After graduating from high school in 1998 and heading to the University of South Dakota, Eric’s studies suffered as he found his way to campus parties more regularly than the classroom.

“I was on the dean’s list, but not for academics,” he says with a smile. “Things did not go well.”

He was hired at a Sioux Falls bank dealing in student loans for a few years before heading back home to work as an electrician. On Aug. 28, 2008, he knocked off work early with his boss and some co-workers to play a round of golf, which led to socializing and drinking.

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On the way home, Rippentrop was a passenger in a pickup truck driven by his boss. The truck swerved on a gravel road and flipped into a ditch about a mile from Dell Rapids.

The driver was wearing his seat belt. Rippentrop was not. Assuming that he had been thrown from the vehicle, the driver searched for Rippentrop in the area around the crash before finally locating him in the back of the truck, unconscious and barely clinging to life.

Nightmare begins

Linda Rippentrop and her husband, Daryl, were awakened by a late-night visit from police. Their oldest son had been involved in a serious car accident and was airlifted to Sanford Hospital in Sioux Falls. Time was a factor. Family members should be called.

“It was every parent’s nightmare,” recalls Linda. “Things were minute by minute, hour by hour. They were trying to prepare us for the possibility that he would not make it.”

Scott had just arrived in Rapid City for a friend’s wedding when he got the call. He enlisted a friend to make the return drive to Sioux Falls and arrived at the hospital around daybreak, devastated at the sight of his older brother in intensive care.

Eric suffered a traumatic brain injury with enough swelling to necessitate a medically induced coma. His left carotid artery had been severed and his left lung collapsed. The crash also cost him his left eye, which was ruptured and would be surgically removed.

“With the shock of seeing all the swelling and tubes, I had to back out of the room after a few seconds,” recalls Scott. “I remember thinking that it wasn’t going to be a positive outcome.”

Concerned about a high fever and extensive brain trauma, doctors gave Rippentrop about a 10 percent chance of survival, with slightly lower odds that he would emerge as functional.

When they weaned him out of the coma, his parents found it difficult to be in the room. Eric’s two brothers watched as doctors spoke to him and asked him to give them a thumbs-up.

“It was a matter of two seconds and up popped his thumb,” says Scott. “We started crying and laughing and (Tyler) ran out of the room to get my parents.”

Finding his way

Rippentrop’s hospital stay lasted two months. As his brain healed and he was removed from his ventilator, he still required intensive physical therapy to overcome lack of mobility on his left side.

With his left eye surgically removed and his right eye providing only blurry images due to nerve damage, there were serious concerns about long-term vision. But overcoming his head trauma came first.

As days passed, fragments of personality returned, including Eric’s passion for Ohio State football. He joked with nurses and became friendly enough with other patients on the ward that they stayed in touch after leaving the hospital.

“Some of them were 80-year-old ladies, and he was in his upper 20s,” says Scott. “He wanted everyone to have a good time. He’d be learning how to walk in physical therapy and telling people he’d been there so long that (hospital CEO) Kelby Krabbenhoft was bringing him breakfast. His attitude was, ‘I’m alive. I’m here.’”

By the time he was released in early November – which he referred to as “busting out of this joint” – the emotional numbness of nearly fatal tragedy was replaced by the realization that he had been given a second chance.

“His personality was his saving grace,” says Linda. “The day we left the hospital, we said that things would get back to normal again. It would be a new normal, but we’d be a regular family, and Eric would take it from there.”

Leap of faith

When you live in darkness with time on your hands, thoughts creep in. For Rippentrop, any hope that normal vision would return to his right eye became slimmer by the day as the pupil refused to constrict.

He could make out shadowy shapes but not faces or words or colors, which is still the case today.

“Your vision has to be 20/200 to be considered legally blind,” he says. “I’m 20/670.”

When he visited his eye doctor after leaving the hospital and heard the actual words – You are blind – it jarred him. He sat in the parking lot with his mom and considered how he would no longer play golf or go hunting or watch his beloved Buckeyes, some of the simple pleasures he had taken for granted.

“It was a shock to his system,” says Scott. “He thought to himself, ‘This is permanent.’ It’s hard to empathize, because I can wake up every day, roll over and look at the clock and know what time it is. He gets his days and nights mixed up. Every day is in darkness. I’m sure there were times of depression, not knowing what to do next.”

Eric found answers at the Division of Service to the Blind and Visually Impaired, which teaches independent living skills, Braille reading and assistive technology such as speech synthesizers to help with computer access. He also learned how to walk with his white cane, using baby steps at first.

“The hardest day for me was dropping him off there the first day,” says Linda, who still gets emotional with the memory. “I didn’t go in with him because they said he had to learn for himself. Watching him find his way to that front door and realize that was going to be his life going forward, that was very hard.”

Gradually, the fog lifted. Eric was impressed by the skill and care of his instructors, who inspired him not only to help himself but to reach out to others. When the center brought blind and disabled high school kids to the center, he volunteered to help out.

By the time he left the program, he made the decision to return to school and study social work, putting his experience and personality to use. It felt good to confront the darkness and let light shine in.

“I always thought I was a Christian, but after that accident I realized I had not been,” he says. “Doctors told me, ‘Eric, there’s no medical explanation for why you’re still around,’ so I knew I was here for a reason. I was given a second chance.”

Future in focus

Lisa Fink was working at a hospital in Aberdeen when her cousin called about a double date. There was a guy from Dell Rapids with a great personality who seemed perfect for Lisa, and he was willing to meet her.

Before long, she was dating Eric Rippentrop regularly and heading toward marriage.

“He made me laugh and was fun to be around,” says Lisa, 40, now a cytology technician at Avera Health in Sioux Falls. “When I met him, I was amazed at how adapted he was at (being visually impaired). Sometimes when you’re around him, you forget that he’s blind.”

Eric and Lisa will celebrate their one-year anniversary Monday. They have thrown themselves into worship and fellowship at United Methodist Church in Dell Rapids, where the Rippentrop family are longtime members.

The newlyweds joined other couples to create and support the Lighthouse, a weekly church gathering for those who want to feed their “mind, belly and soul.” Playing to their strengths, Eric works the room and greets newcomers while the more reserved Lisa helps coordinate the meal and keeps everything running smoothly, much as she does at home.

“She’s been a godsend,” says Scott of his sister-in-law. “The amount of progress Eric has made the last two years is largely because of her. It’s a large responsibility to take on, to be honest with you, to devote your life to a person who does require some special attention. She doesn’t think twice about it.”

Eric pays it forward by helping at the Center for New Americans, an extension of his studies at University Center. Turned away from other volunteer opportunities due to his disability, he has found a home in the citizenship classrooms where refugees learn about their new land.

Instructor Diana Calvetti-Streleck had concerns at first but was quickly won over by her assistant’s one-on-one interaction with students.

“They would show a word and ask, ‘What is this?’ And Eric would say, ‘I can’t see. Can you tell me the letters?’ So they’d work it out together,” she says. “Sometimes he’d write words on the board and make a mistake, and they loved that. I watched his perseverance and how he related to them.”

It’s not uncommon for Rippentrop to stand near the entrance and greet students as they arrive, recognizing them by their voice. The ones he knows best have developed a special handshake with their teaching assistant, showing the easy rapport of longtime friends.

Such outreach led to Rippentrop being honored at the Spirit of Volunteerism Awards in May at the Sioux Falls Convention Center, an event organized by the Helpline Center. As he took the stage to thunderous applause and accepted his award, he thought about the Eric of before and the Eric of now.

He thought about all he had gone through to make peace with his new reality, of overcoming darkness to find the light. He considered his sense of purpose and newfound desire to help others, instilled by those who had lifted him. Most of all, he looked within to find signs that the journey ahead was still meaningful, and decided he liked what he saw.

Argus Leader Media city columnist Stu Whitney can be reached at swhitney@argusleader.com. Follow him on Twitter @stuwhitney