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A group of women are spending their lunch hour in the back room of a Buford insurance office — eating pizza and listening to a sale pitch from Abby Shirley, a trim woman wearing a beige skirt and top and a blue jacket.

"Don't y'all just love this jacket? I do," Shirley says, running her manicured nails along the placket. "It goes with just about anything."

Abby Shirley shows her 'Weekender' line of clothes at her Buford home.

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The clothing line is Weekenders, she says, and with a few pieces, can give buyers a wide array of smart-looking outfits.

"Someone hand me my scarf, please," Shirley asks. "I'm really as blind as a bat."

Watching Shirley make her sales pitch you have little idea she can't see.

Enthusiastic and personable, blindness doesn't define the wife, mother, businesswoman and advocate for the vision impaired.

"Nothing is too small or big for her, and you can sometimes forget that she's blind, because she never makes excuses like other people do," says Mary Williams, Shirley's manager. "She has an incredible spirit and can-do attitude."

Shirley laughs when she hears that people admire her. She talks instead about how her family's immaculate house is a wreck. She cleans the house herself, irons her husband's clothes and cooks their meals. She dresses — in Weekenders, of course — and does her own hair and makeup.

"No one can ever expect a perfect life," says Shirley, 55. "When you do, how do you appreciate your blessings?"

She volunteers in the nursery of Buford First Baptist, which she and her husband Danny are members. She has worked with United Way and Barrier Free Gwinnett. She hopes to do more speaking and fund-raising for Prevent Blindness Georgia.

"She's totally inspirational to me," says Barbara Myers, who works for Prevent Blindness Georgia. "She's very organized, with a wonderful memory, and is very plucky."

Myers traveled with Shirley to Washington recently to lobby elected officials to support programs to help prevent blindness. After a meeting of officials with Prevent Blindness America, Shirley distributed Weekender catalogs and started selling clothes.

"She doesn't meet a stranger, that's for sure," Myers says.

As a teenager in Virginia, Shirley was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Her diabetic father had died of a heart attack at age 37. Shirley took her insulin, exercised and watched her diet.

She moved to Atlanta to work for Contel and married in 1982. In July 1983, she banged her head on a water slide. The force of the blow made her eyes hemorrhage and her retinas detach. Surgeries followed, but scar tissue from the diabetes complicated the situation. By October, Shirley was blind.

"Anytime you're starting out on a marriage, you have a lot to deal with, you don't expect to have to deal with something like blindness," she says.

Two years after losing her sight, Shirley gave birth to a son, Brett. He will graduate from the Gwinnett Police Academy on May 1 and start a career in law enforcement. Photos in the family living room show a handsome young man with dark hair, a younger version of his father.

"That's one thing I feel cheated about," Shirley says. "I know he's a miniature Danny, but every mother wants to see her child."

Earlier still, she was very angry. Gradually, she went through the grieving process. Shirley also went for rehabilitation at the Center for the Visually Impaired in Atlanta, where she learned to read Braille and to develop mobility skills.

"I made a lot of friends there," she says. "Some people went home and carried on. Some went home and wallowed in self-pity. I didn't. I think God puts things in our lives to strengthen us and to draw us closer to him."

For more information, see: www.preventblindness.org