Center Helps the Newly Blind Relearn Basic Skills for Living
Jean Ginsberg was pleasantly surprised recently when a waitress volunteered to explain how her order of vegetables, bread and meat were arranged on the plate.
“That’s the first time in five years anyone’s taken the time,” said Ginsberg, 44, who became blind in 1985 and gets around, in part, by using a white cane.
For those who lose all or part of their sight later in life, relearning elementary living skills such eating or distinguishing currency is difficult. Visually Handicapped Adults of the Valley in Van Nuys offers a curriculum to redevelop those social skills that once were second nature.
The center, founded in 1972 as the Sophia Myers Center, is the only non-medical resource for the San Fernando Valley’s blind and visually impaired residents. It serves 150 members.
“Many of these older people identify blindness with beggars and second-rate citizens. And they often are treated like that too,” said Annie Lampl, who became involved with the center through her friend and the center’s founder, Sophia Myers. Lampl lost her sight 20 years ago from a relatively rare eye disease called uveitis, an inflammation that destroys the retina. The Braille Institute estimates that only 2% of the blind population suffers from retinal disorders.
After lifelong independence, those newly affected by vision loss must deal with what can be a devastating set of psychological and physical hurdles, said Lampl, a marriage and family therapist who has conducted group therapy at the center for a decade. The Brentwood resident, who declined to give her age, looks the part of an older Helen Keller. She is gray-haired, wears jaunty dark glasses and has a black, short-haired guide dog.
“I had excellent medical care, but no one cared for me emotionally,” she said.
That’s the center’s main purpose--to provide socialization and acceptance through a curriculum ranging from typing and crafts to the extremely popular group rap sessions. Lampl said socialization is generally overlooked by many physicians. Even the Braille Institute, the best-known organization for the blind, is primarily for training and teaching Braille, the special alphabet of raised dots that are felt with the fingers.
Students at the center agreed with Lampl’s assessment.
“When I came to the center in December, my chin was dragging on the ground,” said Patt Magee, 77, a retired X-ray technician. “Now I’m feeling 100% better. I know I’m not the only one suffering, and I felt that way.”
“What this does for me,” added Norman Roberts, a former Rockwell test engineer, “is give me a chance to communicate with people my own age and with my own medical problems.”
Attitudes about vision degeneration are slowing changing.
On CBS-TV’s “WIOU,” actor Dick Van Patten portrays weatherman Floyd Graham, who is afflicted with macular degeneration.
In early episodes, his character, like real-life victims of the disorder, isolated himself and was initially unwilling to learn how to use what was left of his sight in a useful way. Then Graham sought the help of a sight counselor, who showed him how to use a magnifying glass and a flashlight to read.
“That attitude is relatively new,” said Joey Terrill, a caseworker at the Center for the Partially Sighted in Santa Monica. “Prior to 20 years ago, people with visual impairment were corralled into using a white cane, a dog or learning Braille. Those techniques are appropriate for the totally blind.”
Magee vividly remembers the frustration often felt by newly sight-impaired people. Just last year, she was unable to perform household chores such as cutting up stew meat or finding the correct temperature on the oven.
With the help of the center, she found resources such as the Los Angeles County Department of Rehabilitation, which sent a caseworker to her home and marked the stove and washer with giant arrows for easier reading. The center has also told her about books on tape and large-print books.
A majority of people with limited vision, like many of those at the center, are senior citizens. Many have lost their sight recently from diseases common to older people, such as diabetes and glaucoma. About 34% of the blind are those with macular degeneration, according to a Braille Institute annual report. Although it’s a relatively common disease, it is without a cure. It doesn’t cause immediate blindness, but generally affects the central range of vision, often leaving its victims with some peripheral vision for years.
Like its students, the center has learned how to restructure and function even in the wake of mounting odds.
“With the resources they have, they do a superior job. The pluses outweigh the minuses,” said Gerard Sheridan, 44, a medical sociologist and Los Angeles Unified School District instructor who also teaches a class about health and communication at the center.
The minuses, however, are evident.
Although there are 150 students enrolled, the figure is a mere 1% of the eligible blind and visually impaired population in the Valley. The Braille Institute estimates that there are about 15,000 residents who could benefit from the facility’s services.
A limited budget forces the center to operate only on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. With limited funds for promotion, the center has poor name recognition even among the blind. And recently, the center lost its mobility coordinator, a crucial staff member who helps newcomers orient themselves to the center’s physical surroundings. Without the instructor, the center cannot easily accept new students.
The center is housed in cramped quarters at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys. The typing class occupies a sectioned-off portion of a larger room, and the equipment frequently malfunctions. In a recent session, one student was obediently following her blind instructor’s directions but her keystrokes punched only a stuck ribbon until it was discovered by a sighted visitor.
Lampl’s group, for instance, meets in a dark room that needs paint and new carpet.
About half the center’s $300,000 budget last year came from city funds. The $134,497 city contribution was a 19% increase over 1989.
Most of the subsidy boost came from an increase in funds generated by Proposition A, the local transportation tax. The funds are used to pay for the maintenance and operation of the center’s seven 15-passenger vans, which pick up and deliver students who live between Glendale and Porter Ranch. The vehicles’ drivers burn up $2,000 a month in gas.
“We have been trying to increase funding to the extent possible,” said Gloria Clark, director of human services with the city’s Community Development Department. “Most programs are skimping by. We don’t have any Cadillac programs. The need is great.”
Like its founder, Sophia Myers, now in her 90s, the center struggles to make the best of the situation.
“Sophia’s determination has made a difference because she knocked on doors and sold her program,” Clark said.
The center isn’t without cheer, however. The crafts class, one of the most popular, is well lit and brimming with textiles. The cafeteria, which also serves as an auditorium, is spacious, strung with banners and filled with the aroma of coffee. Lunches, prepared by another nearby senior citizens facility, are $1.
Aside from the city funding, the remainder of the center’s budget comes from donations, said Linda Williams, who took over as director in January and is one of the center’s two paid staff members. The other is assistant director Matthew Yedlin, whose duties range from bookkeeping to coffee making. Instructors are either volunteers or schoolteachers.
“I’d like to be able to expand things,” said Williams, whose responsibilities include fund raising. Before doing so, however, she wants to assess the center’s needs. Replacing the center’s old, problem-plagued vans may come before curriculum expansion, she said.
Topics of suggested new classes have included music, book reviews and discussion groups. Students would also like more excursions than the two organized annually, which have visited spots such as Ports O’ Call, a tour and shopping area in San Pedro.
“What we could provide in terms of service to entertainment is infinite,” Williams said.
