It is with great pleasure we share an excerpt of a recent article from the San Francisco Chronicle highlighting longtime friend and former LightHouse Board member, Jerry Kuns. “Blind in S.F.: How one man learned to ‘see’ San Francisco,” is written by Carl Nolte and shared with his permission below:
“Jerry Kuns has a special feeling for San Francisco, a city he cannot see. Kuns, who is totally blind, lives in a bright and cheerful house just above Noe Valley and just below Twin Peaks. He goes for a walk through the city every day with friends, and once a week or so he walks along Ocean Beach from the zoo to the Cliff House and back — “about 6 miles round trip,” he says. “I know San Francisco,” he said the other afternoon. “It is my city.”
“He used to lead sighted people on tours of the city — listening to what they told him they could see and then offering his sense of the city. “I still show off San Francisco any time I get the chance,” he said. For a while, he ran a small tour business as kind of a sideline. He billed himself as Jose and called it Jose Can You See Blind Guided Walking Tours.
“Kuns is part educator, part entrepreneur, part salesman and part tactile artist, and he lives life on his own terms. He is a tall lean man with unruly gray hair and a Vandyke beard. He recently turned 80. “An octogenarian,” he said with a wry smile. “
