Before I met Sheann Stokes-Gilmore, I had already heard of him from coworkers. Around campus, he’s known as “BMC,” short for “Blind Man Can.” He’s often spotted at Metro and Southeast campuses with his walking stick in hand. He lost his sight about six years ago after a traumatic injury.
The first time I met BMC, he broke into song in the middle of the Southeast Campus Academic Building. His voice stopped many in their tracks; it’s soulful and raw.
“Music was born in me through my mother. She used to lead the choir in our Pentecostal church,” he tells me. “I’d watch her command the room, and that’s why I ever got on stage , because of her. Even now, when I sing, it’s in memory of her.”
I learned that behind BMC’s character and charisma, his story is one of hardship and perseverance.
Struggle & Survival
BMC wasn’t born blind. He grew up in Houston, Texas, entering the foster care system after losing his mother as a young teenager. By his count, he attended nearly 20 schools.
At 18, BMC took a Greyhound bus to Tulsa in search of a fresh start. Instead, he faced addiction and homelessness, often sleeping under the Meadow Gold Pavilion at 11th and Peoria.
“I lived a life where you had to be strong just to survive,” he says. “You don’t get soft in a life like that. You either get strong, or you don’t make it.”
In 2019, BMC was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and was critically injured in a shooting. A bullet tore through four organs and left him in a coma for two months. He woke up paralyzed, with a trach in his throat, and had to relearn to walk, talk, and breathe.
But he says the worst part came after. He eventually went blind because of the shooting.
“Doctors told me I’d never see again,” he says. “I didn’t want to live like that. I felt broken.”
But as BMC slowly began to reframe his life, he started challenging himself to stay positive instead of thinking about things he couldn’t do anymore.
“I asked myself ‘What can a blind man do?’ A blind man can wash dishes. A blind man can cook. A blind man can keep moving forward.”
That phrase eventually became his moniker—The Blind Man Can.
Finding Community at TCC
By the time BMC arrived at TCC, he had already survived more than most people face in a lifetime. Although he didn’t know if he would belong at first, he says TCC has become a place of community.
“I came to TCC to build skills and to prove I could still build a future,” he says. “This place gave me more than an education. It gave me people who believed in me.”
BMC is majoring in Communications and quickly got involved in campus life. He serves as a New Student Orientation leader and vice president for both TRIO and the African American Student Association, where he’s made numerous connections.
No matter where we met to work on his Vision Dinner speech, friends, classmates, and TCC staff would stop to greet him.
“When I came here, people didn’t see me as broken. They saw me as capable. That changed everything. TCC gave me people who believed in me, and that belief gave me strength.”
Center Stage at Vision Dinner
Even during sound check for Vision Dinner at the Arvest Convention Center in September, a former coworker recognized him immediately and embraced him. BMC had previously worked in the kitchen there, back when the building was the Cox Convention Center.
Now he was preparing to deliver his speech on stage as a featured speaker in front of nearly 400 Vision Dinner guests.
Because he couldn’t read a written speech, we developed what he calls a “dance.” I stood on the other side of the room, reading his words into his ear through a headset as he delivered them aloud. We practiced this routine for a week leading up to the dinner.
In just five minutes, BMC shared his life story and the impact TCC has had on him. The speech ended with a standing ovation, and afterward, several guests approached to tell him how his words had moved them. He says he hopes to keep sharing his story to help others overcome obstacles in their own lives.
Working with BMC taught me that resilience is a choice. He isn’t letting his loss of sight affect the vision he has for his life.
“It doesn’t matter what I’ve lost,” he tells me. “Blind Man Can. And if I can, then anybody can.”