[MUSIC] >> Tom, what is it like to not be able to see?

>> You gotta get along the best way you can with whatever might be missing.

I tell people what you need to do is pay attention.

It doesn't mean that your other senses are better than anybody else's.

It just means that you've got to pay attention.

But the biggest thing is what you get from somebody's voice, because that's what you have.

You've got to determine whether whoever you're talking to is being sincere with you or not.

And then even when you're with them, you've got to make that determination to find that out.

And the biggest thing is, you've got to trust yourself before you can trust anybody else.

I was born in Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica, Queens.

I have a twin brother and I was losing weight.

I was born prematurely.

We were both in incubators and what had happened was I stabilized a little sooner and Tom did not.

So they had him maybe with a slightly higher oxygen feed in a different incubator because they were worried about losing him.

And that's why the damage to the retina was done, because of the oxygen feed.

And I developed RFL that made me blind.

So my blindness was a freak accident.

My childhood was a real happy one.

I used to play ball with my brother.

We would toss a football around and I could kick a ball about 40 yards.

There was one time early on when my mom decided to blindfold me.

And we were outside in the yard and she said to me, "I'm gonna put this blindfold on you and I want you to just do one thing.

Find your way around the house, around the outside of the house."

And I thought I had gone so far and was trying to get everywhere and having a hard time.

When I took it off, I realized so much.

And it was very smart of her to do that.

Tom has always, always amazed me in how he has been able to have such an incredible life and do so much.

He's an inspiration.

He really is.

[MUSIC] >> Hey, Tom, you wanna play the piano?

>> Sure, why not?

>> All right.

We can manage something.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

We have a lot of musicians in my family, actually.

My mother sang, my father was a violinist, and we used to jam together every now and then.

My brother plays and sings, records people, teaches voice and piano.

I remember the day that he asked for a piano.

I remember that my father managed to get a piano into the house within less than a week of him asking.

-It's late in the evening.

She's wondering what clothes to wear.

- When he started playing it was a life changer I think for him because it his whole career evolved beyond that.

This woman said to me Is it really cool to have perfect pitch?

I said sometimes it's a curse.

- I can imagine it would be a curse.

I learned how to play piano by ear but I did take six months of piano lessons in high school.

[music] After six months, the guy said, "I can't really teach you anymore."

[music] I was a music major in college.

I was in the jazz workshop.

I did an informal lesson with the teacher.

He said, "What do you want to work on today?"

And I would tell him, because I was also out performing.

He gave me different ways to do fingering, so that I could do certain chords a certain way and I could do different musical riffs a certain way.

And then I took a year of classical music in college, and that has helped me out to this day.

I went into piano tuning because I used to go to this camp in Pennsylvania way back.

I wanted to be in the talent show like everybody else.

So I told the music director I wanted to do "This Guy's in Love with You," Herb Alford.

"This guy's in love with you."

Well, the show was going on.

Everything seemed to be pretty well.

The piano seemed to be perfectly tuned, but it was tuned a half-tone flat.

So I wanted to know who the piano tuner was.

And the next day, I heard the man's name, and I said, "Are you Max?"

He said, "Yep."

I said, "Max, you know, that piano's a half-tone flat."

And he said to me, "The piano was donated to the camp.

I couldn't pull it up to pitch right away, but you come to the rec hall in three days, it's going to be perfectly on pitch."

I listened to what he said, and I said, "This is a trade that I want to do.

If I don't make it in music, then I have something to fall back on."

So if I saw this gentleman today, I would shake his hand and tell him that.

I went to the Metropolitan Opera House and learned how to tune pianos.

So I apprenticed over there for five years.

To put it bluntly, it was like being in boot camp.

I relearned how to tune pianos from Jim Wooten at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Setting temperaments and just going about the whole process of tuning and how long a tuning should take.

And as you begin doing certain things with the tuning, it will become second nature to you.

And he said to me, "You've got a great ear, and I could tell that, but I'm going to teach you how to do this.

You're going to do this my way."

And I said, "Yes, sir."

Because I knew.

I knew that I was around greatness.

And he said to me, "You'd better be 10 times better than anybody else tuning pianos because you're blind and because people expect it."

How many pianos do you tune a day or a week?

I've tuned as many as 10 pianos in a day.

Sometimes less than that due to COVID.

COVID really did a lot of damage to my business and things are only getting a little bit better now.

(music) - I used to play up in Harlem with a guy who called himself B.B.

King Jr.

We were playing blues gigs.

That was quite an experience in and of itself.

- Did you ever play at the Apollo?

- I did.

I played at the Apollo Theater with The Intruders.

That was a lot of fun.

I did a couple of crazy things when I was younger.

I would bang on things and just get sounds out of them.

[train sounds] I was in the subway.

I started playing on the seats of the train, making them sound like Timbales.

A guy came up and said, "I'm George Rodriguez, and I'm a drummer, and I got a gig for you tonight if you want it."

And he said it would be with Eddie Palmieri and Celia Cruz.

And I got 200 bucks for it.

1974, that was good money.

I met Rita January 1st, 1977, in my brother's guitar player's house in Manhattan, and we just hit it off immediately.

We're the longest-running show on Broadway.

[ Chuckles ] -Tom and I have been married since 1978.

I fell in love with Tom's voice.

He has a lovely speaking voice.

-When we first met each other, I loved her voice, too.

Her sense of humor.

-I really enjoy being with Tom because he's the nicest person I know.

♪ All battered and torn ♪ -In 1984, I had a speck go into my left eye, and I was using my right eye to see, and I noticed the street lamps had halos around them.

And you're not supposed to see halos around lights, so I knew something was radically wrong.

-Well, when Rita began to lose her sight, I just kept thinking, you know, that's much harder than not being able to see all along, losing it little by little, and then losing it completely.

That was pretty rough, and I felt, you know, hopefully I could be an example to get us through things.

Losing my vision was a very long journey for me.

I had 35 eye surgeries, and by 2011, I lost all of my vision.

Through all of my eye surgeries and my glaucoma, Tom was with me every step of the way and I knew I was going to be okay because I'm loved.

[Music] That was the song I would sing in the school just before I was going to visit Tom in St.

Thomas.

Yeah, and then you could hear the echo in the halls.

- I love that song.

- Do you ever regret having had sight and losing it?

Would you have preferred being like Tom, and not having had sight at all?

- When I lost my vision for good, it was a progression.

So I wasn't upset.

I just kept on going because I had one of the most incredible mentors and that was my husband.

And my husband just lived his life and because I noticed it, I said, "You better buck up and get on with it."

And I continued my life because of my hero.

Have a good night.

Thank you, you too.

I play at a restaurant called Casa di Isacco on 9th Avenue between 39th and 40th streets.

And it's Italian food with Spanish cuisine from Spain.

The owner is from Mallorca.

He is a character unto himself.

[MUSIC] >> How did you meet him?

>> I met Isaac at a place called Broadway Pasta, 33 years ago.

Carol Music sent me there to tune a piano, and I get done tuning the piano.

Three times the owner said to me, "And you're a pianist?"

I said, "I told you three times, I'm a pianist.

What is this, Jesus denied me three times?

Come on."

So he laughed, then I started playing.

So then this gentleman, Isaac, comes to the back of the room, adjusts the mic, and he says to me, "Could you do 'Yesterday' by Ray Charles?"

I said, "I could do 'Yesterday' by The Beatles."

He said, "I sing the key and you play, right?"

I said, "Sure."

He goes, "Yesterday."

Like this, so we did the song.

I had the job four nights a week for six months.

I never got anything that quick in my life.

[Music] When I'm on stage and performing for people, it isn't even that I feel like I'm a great performer, but I feel like I want to make people happy.

Because if they're happy, then so am I. I do some crazy things now.

Underneath the piano bench sounds like a great snare drum.

It is just unbelievable.

It's like perfect for a parade.

That kind of thing, you know, it's really, really great.

[Music] When Isaac is singing, I'll do this percussion at the end of a song and just do these drum rolls.

And then do a drum roll on top of the piano.

And then sometimes I get people that do drum rolls on the table, and I'll be like "Hey, thank you for the drum roll!

Thank you very much."

Since it's an Elvis kind of place, I really put that on.

That whole Elvis thing.

"Thank you very much."

- You make Elton John look like an amateur.

- Oh, that's very kind of you.

- Have you ever written a song for Rita?

At my best.

That was for her.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Did you have coffee?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, I could tell.

Our son Michael was born in 1981.

He was born prematurely.

He had a heart defect.

His left bar ventricle didn't develop.

He lived for 35 hours.

My husband came into the nursery, picked his son up.

I held on to him.

And I said, well, son, hopefully you can go to another dad, go in a new place, and be with somebody that will play ball with you and do all the things that a dad would want to do with his kid.

At the same time, you know, I didn't want you to suffer.

You need to be where you need to be.

A few years later, Rita and Tom would go on to suffer another unbearable loss.

This is our daughter.

Her nickname was Schnuggins.

And I felt that she had Tom's body parts, such as his long fingers, his no earlobes.

And I looked at her and I said, "How am I going to put earrings in your ears?"

But she was adorable.

Our daughter had a heart defect, which was the left ventricle did not develop.

Tom gave her her first bath and he sang "Papa, I'm the Self-Dementor" and she started laughing hysterically.

She just loved it.

She loved that her daddy sang to her.

And so we knew at that point that she always heard him singing to her.

She passed away in the hospital at three months, one week.

It was definitely an experience.

It was a journey.

And I realized, and so did Tom, the reason why she came into our life, she was the reason why we got Gohonzon.

She was the reason why we became Buddhist.

I stay positive by chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

It's a Buddhist chant which basically says I dedicate my mind and body to the mystic law of cause and effect through sound or action or teaching.

You make a cause, you get an effect.

That's pretty much what that means.

- Do you ever chant to have vision?

I don't chant to have vision.

I chant to find a way to heal it.

I chant for major artists to do some of the material that I've written.

I think the biggest thing that I see is he has a spirit of joy and happiness that doesn't go away.

And no matter what happens, every time we get on the phone, he's laughing.

He's got a joke.

He'll say something funny.

He'll say something to make me feel good.

And we start kidding around.

You know what they call a drummer without a girlfriend?

Yeah.

Homeless.

[LAUGHTER] [MUSIC - THE BROADWAY BAND, "HOMELESS"] What?

(SINGING) Everything in this crazy world is lonely.

- Do you see your blindness as a blessing or as a curse, or a bit of both?

I see my blindness as a bit of both.

[MUSIC PLAYING] I'm told that there are many things out here that you would not want to see.

I see it as a blessing, because I'm basically somebody who's a happy guy.

I'm usually in a good mood.

I run around singing all the time.

I navigate New York City by taking the trains, the buses, cabs if necessary, and that's how I do it.

I don't need too much direction.

I inquire.

I will ask people, "Which way do I go to get the A train or the B train or the number four?"

Or whatever it is.

I know if I've got to go to certain places in the Bronx, I'll take a cab to Grand Central, walk inside, get the number four train, and then I'm on my way.

-As Tom walks home, he meets all these wonderful people that will walk with him for a few bucks or bring him right home.

And sometimes he gets piano tunings because the people own pianos.

I'm not scared, you know.

People are okay.

I'm on the subway and people are pretty courteous to me.

Some people that I know would be deathly scared of going on the subway that I know that are from out of town.

And I said, "Well, no, I don't find any problems as far as that goes."

I find people that are going the same way I'm going.

We get to talk.

Sometimes I get jobs from them.

Sometimes not.

Just momentarily help them out and then we go on our way.

On top of the couch are several frames with different things that Tom and I accomplished.

In 2008, my humanitarian award for creating the Buddhist newspaper on audio.

We also have my Reiki certificate for being a master.

There is also Tom's license for being a massage therapist.

We also have a thank you letter from President Clinton because I sent my glaucoma book to him.

And these are our accomplishments.

And it's really incredible to know that we have had some impact on the world.

I think that is the most important thing that all people should do is do something.

It doesn't matter what you do.

Do something that your heart really loves.

And the world changes because of your efforts.

- Rita has done so much for the blind community.

She helped create a library and has written several books.

She was also responsible for the talking elevators in her apartment building.

- I think about the fact that since we were both so premature that we both could have been blind, I feel that I was lucky and when you think about that you can't help but feel grateful but at the same time it's unsettling because you're not, you know, it's, it's, you always feel like, "Wow, it just, it happened.

It just happened that way."

A lesson that he has taught me is something that maybe I'm only still beginning to learn about bravery.

Bravery in the world and just embracing so many things in life, no matter what happens, to be able to overcome them, and even if you can't overcome them, to accept them, put them in a place where you go on.

I don't see myself as a disabled person.

I just see myself as somebody who is trying to get things done and get through the day, do what I do, and make people happy.

- That's good.

- Wow.

[SINGING] Happy birthday to you.

[MUSIC - "THE STINGS OF MY HEART"] The strings of my heart, they started to play.

Though I knew it wasn't right, but I did it anyway.

You don't know me.

No, you don't know me.

[MUSIC] That's all I can say, you don't know me.

As I turn my back away, you don't know me.

No, you don't know me.

No, you don't know me.

[MUSIC]