If he wanted to be a curmudgeon, a Scrooge, an all-around unpleasant person, no one but no one would blame Stephen Doroghazi.

On the eve of his 50th birthday, the Fort Lauderdale resident has never seen a palm tree, a flamingo, the crystal clear ocean waters between South Florida and the Caribbean.

Nature graced the blind Philadelphia native with just a little sight when he was a child, peripheral vision in his left eye. But an accident at age 14 -- Doroghazi walked into a door frame at a summer camp for the blind -- caused injuries that would leave him completely blind by age 15.

Regardless, Stephen Doroghazi isn't a curmudgeon, a Scrooge, or an all-around unpleasant person.

He says: ``I'm just a regular guy.''

All things considered, he may be the most accomplished ''regular'' guy you'll ever read about.

He is a formidable attorney -- for the Internal Revenue Service, but there's no need to hold that against him. He is an accomplished property flipper, having bought, renovated and sold a number of residential properties. He once co-owned a boat-building company that sold award-winning catamarans, each of which he helped design. And he is a board member of Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic Regional Unit of Florida, the organization that started books on tape, the organization Doroghazi credits for his success, and an organization that coincidentally is also about to turn 50.

''Quite frankly, Steve's always been a pretty aggressive individual,'' says Doroghazi's father, Robert. 'Even as a child in Philly he never let his sight problems get the best of him. When he was 5 or 6, he organized other kids on the block to mow the neighbors' lawns. Steve was the businessman of the group. He got the 'contracts' for the lawn jobs.''

BUMP IN THE ROAD

Stephen Doroghazi may sound like a saint, but he really didn't earn his wings til after his freshman year of high school, his father says.

''He had a wonderful mother, definitely got his brains from her. He was a damned good student, a great student til ninth grade. He flunked a couple of courses,'' Robert Doroghazi says. 'Apparently he wanted to be a playboy and focus on the girls, `wandering eye.' We had a little talk with him. His mom told him, 'Don't you ever have me go up to that school for something like that again!' And you know what? He took it to heart. He turned up the heat after that and hasn't let up since.''

Stephen Doroghazi agrees that his parents inspired him to take life seriously, but he also says -- and his father agrees with him on this -- that he couldn't have taken school more seriously if not for Recording for the Blind, the audio book non-profit group.

''I knew Braille, but I needed some other way to read,'' Doroghazi says. ``We learned about Recording for the Blind -- they later added Dyslexia to the title in the 1980s. And I can remember as a student at Cardinal O'Hara High School in Philly getting recorded school books in the mail and at the end they would say they had been recorded in Miami.

``It made all the difference in the world. I don't have a problem bragging a little: Because of my folks and Recording for the Blind I was 18th in my graduating class of 892. I got accepted early to Villanova University, and I was near the top of my class at University of Pennsylvania Law School. All through school, I would contact Recording for the Blind and request books I needed for class, and they would get them to me. Never missed a beat.''

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