Blind Veteran Makes Candles For VE Day

“Making candles allows me to channel my thoughts and emotions into something beautiful.”

Tony Haskey has made a batch of candles to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day.

The 65-year-old from Poole is selling them in aid of Blind Veterans UK, which has supported him since he became visually impaired.

“I hope that people can burn a candle, think of those who laid down their lives for us, and know that the candle is burning in their memory,” he says.

“It would be a wonderful thing for me and my heart,” he adds.

Mr Haskey has adapted his candle-making process because of his sight loss.

“I use talking scales to weigh up the fragrance, I’m using and I purchase wax in blocks of certain weights so I can cut them to the right size, consistently,” he explains.

Mr Haskey joined the Royal Marines aged 16.

But later, on an overseas operation, he felt something amiss with his vision, and a medic told him he had an incurable eye condition.

He says: “I was feeling low, I had to return to the UK alone and leave my unit and comrades behind.”

He was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition which worsens over time.

Retinitis pigmentosa

It is an inherited eye condition that affects the photoreceptor cells responsible for capturing images from the visual field.

These cells line the back of the eye in the region known as the retina and help with low light, peripheral vision, and seeing detail and colour.

As these cells die there is a gradual decline in vision.

More than 80 causative genes have been identified, and faults in any one of these can cause the disease.

Mr Haskey was 27 when he was diagnosed, and he says his world “fell apart”.

“I was absolutely devastated by the news,” he recalls.

“I went home from the hospital and started to contemplate what I’d been told. I got depressed and felt that was the end for me.

“The career I’d set up to do well in had come to an end. I didn’t know what job opportunities were available to me.

“I was frightened and alone.”

But Blind Veterans UK sent him to its rehabilitation centre in 1993 to learn about basic housekeeping, cooking and computer literacy skills.

He says when he arrived he was in a “deep void with no self-confidence, no self-worth and no self-belief” but that each day there was a “new beginning”.

Half of the profits for his candles will go towards the charity.

Speaking about VE Day’s anniversary, he says: “As someone who is still fortunate to be here today, I look back at the legacy that the young men and women left behind and fail to see how anyone couldn’t acknowledge their worth.

“We have our liberty today because of their sacrifice.”