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Hernando Today

A Sight For Sore Eyes

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By TONY HOLT

Hernando Today

Published: January 3, 2009

SPRING HILL - Eventually, Susan Sardiello's eyesight will be lost.

She has been told by doctors the blood vessels behind her retinas are rapidly deteriorating and will cause total blindness. It could happen in a week or maybe in a year. It is a medical certainty she will lose it all.

Sardiello has delayed changing her lifestyle. Her doctor has asked her to make preparations for a seeing-eye dog, but she has not complied.

She was waiting for one last visit before following her doctor's orders. She wanted her granddaughter to see her one last time without any signs of her pending handicap.

Sardiello wanted to see her, too - in uniform.

"Eventually it will all go," she said of her vision. "That's why she came. She chose to come to Florida for her R&R."

Pfc. Laura Champagne is in the middle of a 20-month tour in Iraq. She completed boot camp in August 2007.

As of Wednesday afternoon, she had finished a long series of flights that took her from Kuwait to Ireland to Atlanta and then Tampa.

Champagne was seated next to her boyfriend, Spc. Kyle Barton, on Sardiello's living room sofa opening her Christmas presents. They were both in uniform and had been in town less than 10 minutes.

She was greeted by her mom, dad, brother, sister and grandfather. She paid for all of them to fly down from Rhode Island to be with Sardiello.

While in Iraq, Champagne drives a battalion commander and a sergeant major across various sections of the country, some of which is still war torn and prone to aggression.

She wakes up every morning at 5:30 a.m. She runs three or four miles before breakfast. But the rest of her day usually is made up of sitting in a motor pool, she said.

She was glad to be in Florida on Wednesday, one day before her 21st birthday. She and Barton relished the sight of green grass, private bathrooms and better television.

Coming home was a present to both herself and her grandmother.

"She doesn't stop showing me off," Champagne said.

Sardiello hasn't been with her daughter and grandchildren for the holidays in 14 years.

It meant a lot to her to be with her family again before she completely loses her eyesight and Champagne knew it.

"They're very close," said Champagne's mother, Carolyn Magee, who also is Sardiello's daughter. "The three of us are like triplets, really."

The Christmas tree is still up at the Sardiello house in Spring Hill. Christmas dinner is Sunday. There will be a spiral ham and lasagna.

"I was very proud of her," Magee said of her daughter's decision to bring the family together for a belated Christmas. "She's grown up a lot since she joined the Army."

The family laughed and joked together while posing for photographs. The next few days would consist of a lot of bonding, laughter and tears.

Champagne and her boyfriend made plans to go on a three-day cruise of the Bahamas. They leave Friday.

The moments she has with her grandmother will highlight the trip. The family waited nearly a decade and a half to be together for the holidays. Sunday will be the last time Sardiello will get to see the entire family seated together at the dining room table.

"She wanted it to be the most special Christmas for my mom," Magee said.

Reporter Tony Holt can be reached at 352-544-5283 or wholt@hernandotoday.com.

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