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Rose Resnick

Camper Jane Reflects on Adult Camp at EHC

Camper Jane Reflects on Adult Camp at EHC

Enchanted Hills Camp (EHC) kicked off the first six weeks of summer with four fun-filled camp sessions for our youngest and eldest campers. We opened our cabin doors in early June to our first bunch of campers at Deafblind Camp. Our LightHouse Little Learners and their families made their EHC debut the following weekend and began what is sure to be a new summer tradition. We were delighted to welcome back our campers 21 and older for the first Adult Camp session since the summer of 2019.  First-time campers and longtime friends made the most of their time in our enchanted redwood retreat: hiking, swimming, boating, fishing, crafting, creating, playing, and laughing. We look forward to hosting more campers in August.

Ever since EHC was founded by Rose Resnick (blind activist, educator, and leader) in 1950, LightHouse has been proud to provide a happy and blind-positive environment where blind and low vision people of all ages can grow, explore, and connect – with nature, with each other, with themselves – but the true magic of Enchanted Hills Camp is our campers and the value each and every one of them brings to EHC. Camper Jane reflected on her time at camp this summer:

One Tap at a Time

Thank you, Rose Resnick, for your visionary spirit. You aimed beyond boundaries. You forged pathways of lifelines and lifetime connections.

You and I met back in the 1970s. You, the persistent, passionate, and sincere woman who wrote and delivered her 60-second advocacy speeches on behalf of the blind every few months on KGO-TV, Channel 7 in San Francisco. Me, the Assistant Director of Community Affairs handled the “Speak Freely” community messages. Your name was memorable, as was your demeanor: gentle, kind, and articulate. I laugh to myself now as I realize how routinely we had always prepared hand- written cue cards for each guest to read and deliver their messages. And, of course, now I realize your hands were reading braille notes!

Fast forward to today, nearly 50 years later. I’m basking in the afterglow of experiencing Enchanted Hills Camp 2022… the magnitude and magnificence of sincere love, care, compassion, kindness, support, and camaraderie.

Here are a few of my lasting impressions….
—Priceless. Seen and acknowledged as an asset. Not a liability.
—Poetry Workshop poem: Same. Same. You. Me.
—Beyond imagination. The wholly huge support of our young counselors. Not a moment to fear, knowing their gentle voices, guiding, and helping hands, and support were always nearby.
—According to the accordion, and tunes of Venus and Mars life abounds with upright and downright jamming music, spontaneity, twilight zones, and picnics!
—Wouldn’t it be wonderful to greet morning light as birds do… bursting into perfect pitch and song? Greeting the new day with sounds of joy and delight! I’m afraid of what’s ahead…
—Been too long since I’ve freely laughed and smiled and clapped hands, stomped my feet, hooted and hollered, listened to live music and simply shared comfort and joy with others!
— “Something” in the way Dylan and Hanna harmonize and “wOOooooOO!” Believing in HOW. NOW.
—First time holding a bow and arrow. It won’t be the last. New revelation: it’s a meditative art. Focus. Hold deep breath. Extend reach. Let go.
—At the chapel, outside finds inside. One strike on Bill’s meditative bowl. Maddie makes it sing. With mallet, she traces the rim again and again.
—Thanks, Brent. You illuminated life’s orientation beyond South, West, North, East. Adding upwards to Sky, downwards to earth, and hands covering our hearts completing the connection to ourselves.
—Rose knew. Rose knows. No one could be finer than Tony as the guiding heart, mind, body, and soul of Enchanted Hills Camp.

We don’t walk alone. We hold our heads high. We’re less afraid of the dark. We walk on with the tap of our white canes, guide dogs, human guides and enchanted hearts and souls graced by nature with Rose.

History

History

In 1902, Mrs. Josephine Rowan, whose brother was blind, organized a group of women to establish The Reading Room for the Blind in the basement of the San Francisco Public Library, with the intent of helping blind and visually impaired individuals access printed material. Thus California’s first private agency for the blind was born.

In 1914, the Reading Room changed its name to the San Francisco Association for the Blind, and Ruth Quinan was hired as Superintendent of the Association. Her first action was to create the trademark “Blindcraft” for the growing production of brooms and baskets. Quinan served as Superintendent and later President of the Association until her death in 1955 – over 40 years of service. During her leadership, the Association dramatically expanded its production activities and added a cooking school to the range of services offered.

As the Association grew, the need to expand facilities emerged. In 1924, three members of the Cowell family stepped forward with the generous offer to buy land and construct the building that would house the Association’s expanding services. With the support of Isabel, Helen and S.H. Cowell, the Association moved to a new facility at 1097 Howard Street later that year. For the next two decades, the Association continued manufacturing and selling brooms, baskets and furniture produced by blind workers, and began teaching braille, instructing white cane technique and providing counseling. This made the organization quite unusual. In the 20th century blind people doing any kind of work was unheard of, and the industrial opportunities the LightHouse provided 100 years ago were considered the most progressive options then available.

In 1950, Rose Resnick and Nina Brandt founded Enchanted Hills Camp on 343 acres of land in the foothills west of Napa Valley, under the auspices of Recreation for the Blind, Inc. This organization soon after merged with The Association to become the San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind. In the sixties, the LightHouse expanded its employment opportunities to include deaf-blind individuals, and in the seventies, the agency collaborated with ophthalmologists at Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center to establish experimental services for people with low vision.

In 1977, Jewel and Jim McGinnis (who were members of Blind San Franciscans, Inc.), identified a service that was not available through any of the agencies then serving the blind and visually impaired. They founded Broadcast Services for the Blind, which offered the reading of printed materials such as newspapers, magazines and literature on the radio. In 1989, the LightHouse merged with Broadcast Services for the Blind.

Finally, in 1993, the Rose Resnick Center and the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired merged to form Rose Resnick LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, thus providing a broader continuum of services to better meet the needs of those who were blind or had low vision.

In 1996, two years after Rose Resnick LightHouse purchased 214 Van Ness in San Francisco, the LightHouse designed a comprehensive “living with Vision Loss” training program, providing rehabilitative and orientation and mobility training throughout the greater Bay Area for the first time. Today, the LightHouse provides services throughout Northern California and serves thousands of blind and visually impaired youth, adults and seniors.

As successor to many organizations, the Board of Directors streamlined the name of the organization for the new Millenium to be simply, “Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired.” Rose Resnick passed away in August 2007, just two months short of her 100th birthday, but still today we carry on her legacy and value her many years of leadership. Enchanted Hills Camp for the Blind is busier than ever, as both a summer camp, retreat center, and training facility, and every day we become more effective and relied upon for providing a seamless continuum of services and outreach into the community.

Over the last several years, LightHouse CEO Bryan Bashin has conducted a series of interviews, collecting the oral histories of significant members of the blindness community, which you can listen to at our LightHouse Podcasts page.

The Next 114 Years

In the spring of 2016, the LightHouse moved from the 1906 converted garage it occupied since 1993 into a new, state-of-the-art location in the heart of downtown San Francisco. Designed for the blind, by the blind, the new LightHouse for the Blind will triple the available space for programs and community services. The new headquarters uses innovative lighting and architectural design features to set a new standard of universal design for people with all levels of eyesight. Onsite dorms will accommodate blind people of all ages and their families from all over the US for intensive, immersive training. With this new headquarters the LightHouse’s reach and influence will grow exponentially.  We’re envisioning partnering with blind, deaf-blind and other organizations across the US and the world, to house their students in our dorms and provide groundbreaking programs not offered anywhere else. Our new headquarters overlooks UN plaza and is one of the most transit-accessible blindness centers in the world.