Updated: May 17, 2008, 2:36 PM ET
Campbell Grousbeck sits at his granite kitchen counter, attacking a steaming dish of pasta and broccoli. He sips a pink vitaminwater, power-c (dragonfruit), and, being an acutely social 15-year-old, he asks a guest his favorite flavor.
“Uh,” the guest says, trying to buy time, “the red kind.”
This is not a good answer, for a number of reasons, but Campbell doesn’t flinch.
“What are the ingredients?” he asks.
“Blueberry and, hmmm …”
“Pomegranate,” Campbell says, triumphantly. “That’s triple-X, triple antioxidants.”
Yes, in fact, that’s it — XXX. Now, this is a solid effort for anyone, but well, here’s the thing: Campbell Grousbeck is blind. How does he know that?
“Campbell,” his father says, smiling, “is a pretty smart guy.”
The apple apparently doesn’t fall far from the tree. Campbell’s father, Wycliffe “Wyc” Grousbeck, is the chief executive officer of the Boston Celtics. In 2002, he led a group of local investors who purchased the NBA franchise.
It now has been 22 seasons since the league’s most decorated franchise won a title. That the Celtics still are a threat to hoist a 17th championship banner this season is largely a result of the aggressive, spare-no-expense leadership of Wyc and his partners. And that Wyc found himself in position to buy the team, oddly enough, can be traced directly back to Campbell’s blindness. So, as you watch Kevin Garnett elevate under the basket and swat away the shots, and see Paul Pierce and Ray Allen singe the twine, know this:
It’s all happening because of a sweet, slight boy who can’t see any of it.
“We would be out in California, probably, and my golf game would be a little bit better, but I wouldn’t be getting ready for a playoff game tonight,” Wyc said several weeks ago. “If not for Campbell, we wouldn’t be here.”
Said Wyc’s wife, Corinne: “We would never be out here if it were not for Campbell. I mean, that’s a real example of following the child. We followed him clear across the country.”
Adjusting expectations
Wyc Grousbeck grew up in Weston, Mass., a wooded suburb west of Boston. His father, Irving, took his four children to Fenway Park and Boston Garden several times a year, and those experiences created a profound bond with the professional sporting teams.
Irving co-founded Continental Cablevision Inc. in 1963, and he and his partner, Amos Hostetter, ultimately sold it for $11.5 billion. Wyc attended Noble and Greenough, a prep school in nearby Dedham, and, later, Princeton University, where he earned a degree in history. After earning a law degree at the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Stanford Business School, he spent four years as a venture capital lawyer in Silicon Valley. He had married Corinne, whom he met at Michigan, and they were living in the Bay Area with 3-year-old Kelsey when Campbell was born in 1992.
“Everything was going to just sort of fall into place,” Corinne said, “and we were going to live in California and have this happily-ever-after kind of life.”
But soon, they noticed Campbell wasn’t like other babies. He didn’t respond to visual stimuli. They took him to eye specialists and eventually learned he had Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), an inherited retinal degenerative disease characterized by a severe loss of vision at birth.
“It hits you pretty hard,” Corinne said. “Most of it was [feeling] sorry for him, a lot of sort of grieving over expectations that are not going to be met.”
After the Grousbecks worked themselves out of their “disbelief haze,” they aggressively confronted the problem. Wyc investigated the science and technology that might restore Campbell’s vision. Corrine went to the local library and sifted through piles of materials. Everything she found pointed to the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Mass.
The school, founded 179 years ago, became famous for successfully educating Helen Keller in the late 19th century. Today’s 38-acre campus sits along the Charles River and exudes the charm and cheer of an Ivy League institution.
When Wyc and Corinne visited, they were impressed by the independence of the students, making their way to class confidently with canes, and the low student-to-teacher ratio. They knew almost immediately that it was the place for their 2-year-old son. Before their first morning there ended, they knew they had to call a realtor. …..
