It hit him in the heart when he first heard it, during a lunch with a determined father who became a friend.
He has returned to it often during his support and advocacy for a cause he knew nothing about until a letter changed his life.
And he referenced it again Thursday, one day before a baseball executive with no known family history of blindness was honored for spending the last decade fighting to save strangers’ sight.
It was not until his parents bought Jack, then 5, a wooden model ship that the magnitude of Jack’s obstacle became known.