Norman Kaplan; Began Group for Blind Youths

Norman Kaplan, who 36 years ago founded a nonprofit foundation seeking to integrate blind children into a seeing society, died Wednesday night of heart failure at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.

The founder and executive director emeritus of the Foundation for the Junior Blind was 65 and had retired in 1985 while remaining a spokesman and adviser.

Kaplan had entered the public relations business after Navy service in World War II and through a client became aware of a lack of recreational facilities for blind children in the Los Angeles area.

Using a $5,000 grant, he began a nonprofit foundation that in its initial year of existence served 15 children.

Today that effort involves 400 to 500 children a year in a variety of special education classes, outdoor trips and the foundation’s best-known activity--Camp Bloomfield--a summer program for blind individuals of all ages in the Santa Monica Mountains near Malibu.

As Kaplan’s foundation grew to its present 5.5-acre facility near Los Angeles International Airport, its founder kept pace by attending special education classes. In 1976 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Santa Clara.

Over the years, his foundation--which today also serves blind adults--sponsored river-rafting trips to the Colorado River, day journeys to farms where blind children helped harvest crops and outings to the San Bernardino Mountains.

“Blind people are normal people,” Kaplan once said. “Blindness is a nuisance, not a handicap.”

He is survived by his wife, Nadia, two daughters, two grandchildren and two sisters.

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m Sunday at the foundation, 5300 Angeles Vista Blvd. In lieu of flowers, the family is asking donations to the foundation.