A Different Kind of Vision

Navigating a world without sight and living life to the fullest

This story was featured first in the Spring 2026 edition of the Florida Gator Magazine. Want to grab your copy? Print versions are mailed to all UF Alumni Association members three times a year.

By David Whitley (BS ’82)

Carl McCoy led the Florida Division of Blind Services, left, and is the only living charter member of the Florida Council of the Blind, a support organization. (Left: Photo courtesy of Carl McCoy | Right: Photo by Tim Casey)

Carl McCoy (BA ’50) is arguably Florida’s most dedicated football fan, yet he’s never seen a game.

In eight decades of rooting for the Gators, McCoy has been in the stands all of one time. That was the first home contest of 1946, when McCoy was a UF freshman.

“I didn’t know a damn thing that was going on,” he said.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know football. McCoy was blind, his sight taken in a freak accident 10 years earlier.

Miami beat UF 20–13 on that confusing October afternoon. Approximately 22,000 fans left Florida Field disappointed, but the game sparked the beginning of a beautiful relationship for the guy who didn’t see a play.

The next Saturday, McCoy settled next to a radio in his Fletcher Hall dorm room and listened to Otis Boggs call the UF-North Carolina game. As the decades rolled by, Boggs gave way to David Steele, who gave way to Mick Hubert, who gave way to Sean Kelly as the “Voice of the Gators.”

As for the coach of the Gators, Wolf eventually gave way to Bob Woodruff, who gave way to Ray Graves, who gave way to Doug Dickey. Through 19 coaches, 15 U.S. presidencies, 39 losses to Georgia and three national championships, there has been one constant with Gator football.

McCoy was listening.

Photo courtesy of Carl McCoy

Now, as he approaches his 80th season and UF again tries to crawl out of the football darkness, it might be a good time to listen to McCoy.

“I’ve had a good life,” he said. “Like anybody else, I’ve had a few rough spots. But basically, life’s been good to me.”

Rough spots?

Try being raised in the Great Depression, going blind in the third grade and trying to navigate a society largely oblivious to the needs of people with disabilities. Through it all, McCoy focused on solutions, not his problems.

He excelled in school, raised a family and rose to lead the state agency that helps the visually impaired. On the side, McCoy ran a real estate business. He was still flipping houses until a couple of years ago.

He’s looking forward to celebrating his 99th birthday on May 16. If you’re a serious history buff, you’ll realize McCoy was born four days before Charles Lindberg took off for Paris in The Spirit of St. Louis.

Feel free to slap your forehead in amazement.

McCoy lives in a St. Petersburg retirement community. His only obvious concession to age is a hearing aid. He spends 30 minutes a day on his exercise bike.

“Exercise has kept me alive,” he said.

CVS won’t get rich off McCoy. He may be the only person in Pinellas County that doesn’t need or take any medication.

Feel free to again slap your forehead in amazement.

Carl McCoy relished Thanksgiving turkey carving duty, shown here in 1965, when the family lived in Topeka. Mark McCoy looks on with twin sisters Sue and June, across the table from mom, Betty. June says her dad was very handy and took care of many household repairs. (Photo courtesy of Carl McCoy)

McCoy might accept your admiration. Just don’t temper it with sympathy. You might get the reaction he gave to a stranger in the early 1940s.

McCoy was sitting in a Jacksonville bus station, waiting on a bus that would take him to school in St. Augustine. A man walked past and slipped a quarter into the blind kid’s shirt pocket.

“I wanted to take that quarter and throw it at him,” McCoy said.

The word “victim’” has never been in his vocabulary. He was the middle of seven children, raised on a farm outside Tallahassee. His father was a fourth-grade dropout who drilled water wells for a living. After the stock market crash, good times were not flowing for many Americans.

“We were lucky,” McCoy said. “We didn’t have any money, but we had food. A lot of people didn’t have that.”

What they didn’t have was modern medical care. McCoy was playing a game with friends before school one spring morning. They would yank a string wrapped around a top, get it spinning and bounce it off the floor.

One kid had a top with a spring at the bottom. He yanked hard and the top bounced off the floor and smashed into McCoy’s eye.

He spent weeks at home with hot compresses on his eye. His sight never returned, and the infection spread to the other eye. At 9 years old, McCoy’s world went permanently dark.

“My family didn’t make a big deal out of it,” he said. “It was just a matter of doing what I could do.”

He still pumped water, shucked corn and boiled sugarcane into syrup. When August came around, members of the Lions and Elks clubs showed up with some donated clothes. McCoy packed them in a suitcase, and his mother kissed him goodbye. He was put on a train to St. Augustine, where he enrolled in the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind.

“It was the other side of the world in those days,” McCoy said.

Ray Charles enrolled about the same time. But the school was segregated, so McCoy never met the future musical icon. Not that either could have seen the racial differences that dictated American life.

McCoy spent the next nine years at FSDB. The main goal was to teach students a trade, like making brooms or doormats.

“I was more ambitious than that,” McCoy said.

Being blind doesn’t take away a person’s vision. McCoy got a scholarship through the Florida Council for the Blind and enrolled at UF. Thousands of GIs were returning from World War II, and the campus was a maze of construction projects.

McCoy always had a keen inner GPS, though his sense of surroundings wasn’t foolproof. He was taking his usual route to class one morning, unaware a five-foot-deep trench had been dug the night before. He splashed into a foot of water at the bottom.

“Did you fall in?” a passerby asked.

“No,” McCoy said. “I live in here.”

That sense of humor served him well over the years. Like when he struggled to find a job after graduating with a business degree. McCoy worked in a Tampa mattress factory, sold advertising and ran a vending stand in Fort Lauderdale.

His break came when the Florida Council for the Blind needed an instructor. McCoy started teaching braille and life skills to clients. Five years later, he moved to Topeka, Kansas, to head up a blind rehabilitation agency.

The Florida Council lured him back to run its operation in 1965. In 1978, he became director of the Florida Division of Blind Services, overseeing 12 offices around the state.

McCoy became a leading advocate when Congress was hammering out the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990. His go-to story was about how whenever he checked into a hotel, he had to put a rubber band around the doorknob to know which room was his.

The problem was that maids would usually remove the rubber bands. McCoy’s testimony is a big reason there are now braille room numbers on hotel doors.

“He’s helped thousands of people,” said his daughter, June.

McCoy lived 100 miles from Gainesville in Daytona Beach, but he never returned for a football game. A radio and a comfortable chair were all he needed. He and his wife did make it to Jacksonville for a Florida-Georgia game, though they never made it to their seats.

“People were partying under the bleachers,” McCoy said. “We stayed there with them.”

The years and games and players and memories tend to blur, though he can still envision some things.

“Spurrier, of course,” McCoy said. “We all thought the world of him as a player and a coach.”

A radio that Carl McCoy uses to listen to Gator games. (Photo by Tim Casey)

Billy Napier called him last May 16th to wish him a happy birthday. McCoy appreciated the gesture, but he didn’t want to take too much of the coach’s time.

“You’ve got a job to do,” he told Napier.

McCoy has probably endured more droughts than any fan in Florida history. The Gators went 0–9 in his freshman year. They won only 13 games before he graduated and a new coach was brought in. That might sound sort of familiar to today’s students.

Good times, bad times, in all kinds of weather, McCoy has remained the Ears of the Gators. What began in a cramped UF dorm room now plays out in a cozy one-bedroom apartment.

McCoy spends a lot of winter nights listening to Florida’s basketball games. But football remains his true sporting love.

On Saturday mornings in the fall, McCoy’s son, Mark, will call him to discuss the day’s schedule. As noon approaches, McCoy will put on a Gators shirt and plop down next to his SiriusXM radio.

He rarely gets up for the next 10 or 12 hours. And he won’t budge during the Florida broadcast.

“I don’t even go down for dinner,” McCoy said.

If all goes as planned, he’ll be listening on Sept. 5th when the Gators play Florida Atlantic. McCoy has hope for the new football staff, but he’s not making any predictions for the 2026 season.

“It’s a lot more fun when they win,” he said.

If they don’t, McCoy won’t despair. Whether it’s football or life, he knows one thing for sure.

With the right vision, there is no hole too deep to crawl out of.