SYRACUSE - With her left eye, Brenda Anderson sees the world through the cornea of another person.

Anderson lives in Syracuse, in a white house with red shutters. She delivers the Lincoln Journal Star every morning, beginning at 2.

She's happy to be able to read the paper again and to be able to drive her route again.

Slowly.

"Like a grandma."

She laughs. She's 49.

She's had that first transplanted cornea since 1989. The donor lived in Wisconsin and was black. That's all she knows.

With her right eye, Anderson sees the world through the cornea of a 59-year-old guy. She doesn't know his race, and she doesn't care. She got his cornea in July, her third transplant.

Before that, with her right eye, she saw the world through the cornea of a 12-year-old girl who died in a car wreck.

Anderson's house has a happy scarecrow on the door. It's a block and a half north of the Shur Save grocery store downtown. Earlier this year, she and her husband, Dana, sat in their living room, dumbfounded, after hearing she needed a third transplant.

She has keratoconus, a steep curving of the cornea. Lights have rings around them. She squints a lot. She finds it hard to see. She can see just well enough to keep her driver's license.

If she stood on the porch and looked across the street, she probably wouldn't be able to recognize a person.

But she can see from her couch to the TV a few feet away and to the studio portrait of her with her husband and son on top of the TV.

She can see the Elvis print on the wall above the TV. It's a serious-looking Elvis, in black and white. He seems to be listening.

In sharp contrast, she laughs a lot.

She laughs about the time she realized she couldn't see well. She was 16. Her mother had driven her to the Lincoln airport to watch the airplanes take off.

She saw a woman holding a baby.

Oh, Mom. She's got a cute little baby.

That's not a baby, her mom said. That's a doll.

She laughs as she models the Solar Shield sunglasses she has to wear in the sun. She got this pair after the last surgery, right after Michael Jackson died.

The glasses are big and dark. People tell her they look like Michael Jackson's sunglasses.

She throws an arm in the air like Michael Jackson.

"Whooo!"

She has 16 stitches in her right eye. The thread is clear. It sparkles a little now. It sparkled a lot after the surgery, "like diamonds."

"When I first had it done, I felt like an alien because it was so distinct. Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle. I remember my husband telling Nathan, 'Look at Mom's eyes.' And my son goes, 'Oh, my gosh, you're twinkling!'"

Her husband likes to joke that she got Michael Jackson's eyes. (Did he donate his corneas?)

Brenda Anderson has no health insurance. Dana Anderson, a plumber, has no health insurance.

They were sitting here with Elvis earlier this year, wondering what they would do.

Then amazing things happened.

The Lions Club raised money. The United Methodist Church did, too. Many donations were anonymous.

People on her paper route? At church? At the Shur Save?

A doctor in Omaha performed the transplant for free.

Of the $7,000 cost, the Andersons had to pay just $1,000.

She took out an ad in the local Syracuse Journal-Democrat, thanking all her donors.

She thinks about them as she goes about her day and her paper route, wondering what their lives are like. Do they know they made her life better?

Does the guy from Wisconsin know? The 59-year-old guy? The family of the girl who died in a car wreck?

"My pastor, he's wonderful. He goes, 'Brenda, people always wonder what it's like to see the world through other people's eyes.'

"He goes, 'You actually can.'"

Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.