MyVisionTest News Archive
Apr 14, 2008
Bronx mechanic is legally blind, but his customers don't want anyone else
Fitz Octave can't see well enough to drive a car, but he can see to it that yours runs like it just came off the assembly line.
The auto mechanic turned entrepreneur is legally blind. Last May, he opened a shop of his own, FGO Motor Services, in the Park Stratton section of the Bronx.
He's been fixing cars since he did after-school training at age 10 at a garage in Castries, St. Lucia, where he grew up. Now 52, he refuses to let his disability keep him from the work he loves.
He left the Caribbean for the Bronx in 1986 to join one of his sisters. He became a U.S. citizen, and repaired and painted cars at a number of repair shops until glaucoma left him with severely limited vision in 2003.
Octave went to numerous training programs, but found the one that helped him most was for visually impaired entrepreneurs at the Brooklyn Economic Development Corp. He learned bookkeeping and marketing. He fine-tuned a business plan. To find a suitable site for a shop, he searched on foot.
He walked all over the South Bronx, even down into Washington Heights in Manhattan. He made 100 phone calls.
Octave said the fact that David Paterson is now New York's first blind governor proves a point about visually impaired people. "I'm very happy because it shows we can do the job," he said.
At Octave's shop just off E. Tremont Ave., business is steady. He's open six days a week, and now has six employees - three mechanics and three painters.
Octave himself handles the company paperwork on a computer with a program that enlarges the typeface with the click of a mouse. He puts on glasses with magnifying lenses when he needs to read tiny print on a business card.
He's expecting an estimated $170,000 in revenues his first year in business. FGO Motor Services isn't profitable yet, he said, but he's undaunted.
"Where I am sitting today is where I always wanted to sit," he said from his chair at the computer in the shop office.
Read more...
Daily News
Tags: job training, Paterson, self-employed, mechanic
Fitz Octave can't see well enough to drive a car, but he can see to it that yours runs like it just came off the assembly line.The auto mechanic turned entrepreneur is legally blind. Last May, he opened a shop of his own, FGO Motor Services, in the Park Stratton section of the Bronx.
He left the Caribbean for the Bronx in 1986 to join one of his sisters. He became a U.S. citizen, and repaired and painted cars at a number of repair shops until glaucoma left him with severely limited vision in 2003.
Octave went to numerous training programs, but found the one that helped him most was for visually impaired entrepreneurs at the Brooklyn Economic Development Corp. He learned bookkeeping and marketing. He fine-tuned a business plan. To find a suitable site for a shop, he searched on foot.
He walked all over the South Bronx, even down into Washington Heights in Manhattan. He made 100 phone calls.
Octave said the fact that David Paterson is now New York's first blind governor proves a point about visually impaired people. "I'm very happy because it shows we can do the job," he said.
At Octave's shop just off E. Tremont Ave., business is steady. He's open six days a week, and now has six employees - three mechanics and three painters.
Octave himself handles the company paperwork on a computer with a program that enlarges the typeface with the click of a mouse. He puts on glasses with magnifying lenses when he needs to read tiny print on a business card.
He's expecting an estimated $170,000 in revenues his first year in business. FGO Motor Services isn't profitable yet, he said, but he's undaunted.
"Where I am sitting today is where I always wanted to sit," he said from his chair at the computer in the shop office.
Read more...
Daily News
