Mary Tyler Moore’s vision eventually became so limited that she could no longer read or safely navigate walking across a room. “And for a woman who was in her heart a dancer and so physically capable and so independent, just imagine what that would mean to you, to have your joy robbed from you,” Dr. Robert Levine told Fox. Two years after Moore’s appearance at the SAG Awards, Betty White, who had a decades-long friendship with Mary Tyler Moore, told Closer Weekly that Moore’s “eyesight is what the big problem is right now” and that her friend was “almost beyond the point” of being able to see at all.
Mary Tyler Moore died on January 25, 2017 at age 80. According to her death certificate, the cause was cardiopulmonary arrest, with contributing factors that included diabetes (via TMZ). Following her death, Levine, who is a cardiologist, helped launch the Mary Tyler Moore Vision Initiative with the JDRF, which has the stated goal to “create a world without vision loss” from diabetes “by working across the entire therapy development and access pipeline.” While Moore may have hidden her blindness in life, in death her memory may help others experiencing the same condition.
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