A coward took her sight, but a dog, the water and grit helped Aerial Gilbert remake her life.

Gilbert is the outreach manager for Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael and a member of USRowing’s 2006 Adaptive National Team.

She celebrated her first visit to Humboldt County in 17 years as the keynote speaker at the rowing community dinner Saturday night at Humboldt State University. As an art and nursing student in Arcata, she’d been part of the college’s founding group of rowers before heading on to a career as a pediatric nurse in Marin County.

That was in the early ’70s, part of her B.C. years — before a coward tampered with a bottle of over-the-counter eye drops by adding lye.

“The factory closed two weeks after that bottle,” Gilbert said.

Then 34, she shut down, too, but only for six months.

“I can remember the morning I woke up, projected forward to what my life was going to be if I was in the same place five, 10 or 20 years from now,” she said. “I was angry, afraid and depressed. He’d hurt me once with the eye drops and I was still allowing him to hurt me.”

Logical, rational and list-oriented, Gilbert determined she needed a job, friends, active life and sports to be complete.

“But if I couldn’t walk around the house or put toothpaste on the brush, all of that couldn’t be accomplished. I had needs and realized there were skills I needed to learn, the techniques of being blind.”

Braille, independent living and mobility with a cane — Gilbert learned it all, but it wasn’t enough.

“It took me six months to learn to work with a cane,” she said. “I was competent and could do it, but it always felt like a lot of work — evaluating obstacles, where they are, what they are, how to get around them. I’d think about going for a walk and think, Do I really want to do this?”

Gilbert said she’d been raised by German dogs, starting with dachshunds and shifting to shepherds in high school.

“Let’s see: blind person getting around with a cane or with a guide dog — that’s an obvious choice,” she said.

Founded in a rented home in Los Gatos in 1942, Guide Dogs for the Blind set up shop in San Rafael in 1947 and opened a second training center outside Portland, Ore., in 1995. The schools have graduated more than 10,000 teams.

With Gilbert in her rookie training run was Russell Redenbaugh, who was returning for his “fifth or sixth dog,” she said.

“Look at your blindness as a major inconvenience, not a disability,” she recalled his words. “That will take you a long, long way.

“I looked around at all the other people there and thought, ‘I want to be like him.’”

Redenbaugh owned his own business and served on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. They are close friends now, more, she said, like peers. Gilbert see his influence and her first walk with a guide dog as two of her life’s ah-so moments.

“My first walk was a total epiphany,” Gilbert recalled. “I was walking the street at my old pace, moving around obstacles, and it felt normal and natural. No matter what I wanted to accomplish, I knew I could do it with a guide dog by my side.”

She left that day with Webster, a yellow Labrador. In the years since, P.J., Audrey and Deanne followed.

Today, Hedda is her eyes. The jet-black German shepherd is her “spouse, child and best girlfriend.” Hedda’s been to Europe seven times, but there’s one place she does not go.

On the water.

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“There were so many choices around that six months,” Gilbert said. “A friend I’d rowed with called and said, ‘I’m taking you out on a double. You don’t need to see and you’re not going to argue.’”

From the first stroke, the muscle memory was there.

“For the first time in six months, I could move without fear of running into something, and I felt strong. Oh my God, what a gift.”

A buddy bound for the Gulf War loaned his rowing machine and Gilbert immersed herself in the Marin Rowing Club.

“Rowing was the only time I could forget I couldn’t see, the only time I can forget to pay attention to orientation.”

It’s also the only time the blind can compete on an equal athletic footing with the sighted.

“I’m the only blind person in a club with 400 people, but the expectations are the same,” she said. “I carry the boat down, lift weights and row as hard as everyone else.”

The single allowance for her blindness is teammate reminders to duck or to step down or up.

“It’s a great compliment if they forget to remind me,” she laughed. “They don’t see me as Aerial blind person. I’m Aerial rower.”

Gilbert is not just any rower. She’s completed the Sausalito Open Water Regatta, the Tahoe Regatta and the 33-mile annual Catalina Crossing over open ocean.

Along the way, she’s successfully advocated for the inclusion of rowing in the Sept. 6-17 Paralympic Games in Beijing. It is the only new sport added for the upcoming Olympiad and will feature three divisions of rowers: arms only; trunk and arms; and arms, trunk and legs.

“Can you imagine rowing 1,000 meters with your arms only?” Gilbert asked the junior rowers of the Humboldt Bay Rowing Association Friday.

The assembled teens were the first of the community rowers lined up to work out over the weekend with Gilbert, a member of the adaptive national team since 2002. Gilbert also planned to row with the HBRA masters and HSU alumni.

“Her very existence is proof you can overcome obstacles and achieve goals,” HBRA’s Jerry Simone said. “She shows everyone there are terrible setbacks you can get through.”

“You sound tall,” Gilbert said — accurately — after youth rower Vivie Smith introduced herself in the team circle. Laughter, a few questions and everyone headed off to the boathouse filled with vehicles far more efficient and better looking than the “funky old boat” Gilbert remembered from her first row at HSU.

“Somebody else had the inspiration and did the hard work to organize, I just wanted to try it,” she said of her 1976 start. “We went out a few times, sometimes only six of us in an eight, and we never got to the point of competition.”

But it was love at first stroke for Gilbert.

“The sport, the metaphor for teamwork — it clicked with me. You either love it and are obsessed or you don’t like it at all.”

Hedda doesn’t like it at all. She barked and tugged at her leash as Gilbert and HBRA juniors Jean Sack, Elizabeth Pierson and Shenae Bishop made their way to the water.

Hedda quieted down as they rowed off, but not for long.

“She barks when she sees me coming back,” Gilbert said. “Everyone in the boat knows we’re nearing the end in a race.”

If Gilbert doesn’t earn a Paralympic spot at tryouts next year, she’ll have only herself to blame.

“I hope I haven’t recruited myself out of the seat,” she told the juniors.

Gilbert is introducing the sport at major blind conventions by bringing rowing machines and volunteer coaches to the sites and athletic events. She wants rowing to be a medalist event in the Junior Blind Olympics.

“Blind kids love the movement and want to be physically active,” she said. “And the volunteers got a kick out of how quickly they took to it. Some will get inspired to take it out on the water.”

Tomorrow: Gilbert copes with other losses.