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Helping blind was her vocation

Daisy G. Waterman used her position in society to establish the Lighthouse for the Blind.

Daisy G. Waterman no doubt would have been honored when the Lighthouse for the Blind opened in 1955 bearing her name.

She helped found the organization several years earlier and was a longtime advocate for the blind.

Waterman was born Daisy Guggenheimer in 1895 in Lynchburg, Va., where her family worked in retail and wholesale businesses, banking and cotton milling. Daisy attended nearby Sweet Briar College and in 1922 married Jerome Waterman.

Soon afterward they moved to Tampa, where Jerome's uncles, Isaac and Abe Maas, had a job waiting for him. Jerome became president of downtown Tampa's Maas Bros., which would soon become the largest department store south of Jacksonville.

Daisy quickly assimilated into Tampa society. She served as president of the Sisterhood of Temple Schaarai Zedek and the Tampa chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women. Waterman used these offices to help the blind, a longtime personal cause of hers. By 1937, she helped establish the Lighthouse, which by 1940 became the Hillsborough County Association for the Blind.

Waterman died of cancer in 1945 at age 49. Ten years later, the Daisy G. Waterman Lighthouse for the Blind opened. In 1971, the organization changed its name from the Hillsborough County Association for the Blind to the Tampa Lighthouse for the Blind. But its building, at 1106 W Platt St., still bears Waterman's name.

Cecile Essrig, one of Waterman's two daughters, has fond memories of her mother. "She was fun to be with, and sincere in what she did," she said.

Essrig, the first woman elected to the Hillsborough County School Board, has an elementary school in Carrollwood named for her.

- Source: Cecile Essrig and the Tampa Lighthouse for the Blind.