Santa Monica founder still a strong presence at venerable nonprofit
WEST L.A. If Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, then Sam Genensky had a vision.
It was one in which the visually impaired would have a place to call their own, where they could seek support and learn to overcome the daily obstacles that come with living with an optical condition.
Three decades after founding the Center for the Partially Sighted (CPS) in the former Santa Monica Hospital, Genensky’s vision lives strong today.
Currently located one block east of the Santa Monica city limits on Wilshire Boulevard, the nonprofit provides vision care, rehabilitation and support group services to more than 2,300 individuals from the Los Angeles area every year, helping those with low-vision best utilize their remaining eyesight, whether it’s prescribing corrective lenses, recommending special reading devices, or making in-home visits to make their residences more livable.
The center is considered a pioneer in catering to the partially sighted, technically defined as a best corrected visual acuity of 20/70 or less in the better eye, the majority of people falling under this category being unable to read a standard newsprint even when wearing normal lenses.
The CPS came on the scene at a time when the only available services were designed specifically for the blind, leaving out a large chunk of people who fell in the middle of perfect vision and complete sight loss.
Genensky, a Santa Monica resident, was then working at the RAND Corp. as a mathematician, his team creating a new device that would help the visually impaired read and write through a closed circuit television. Reader’s Digest got word of the new technological marvel being produced secretively behind closed doors at RAND, publishing an article that caught the attention of the rest of the nation.
The calls started coming to Genensky’s office, followed by the visits, those who had long struggled with low-vision asking how and when they would have access to the new machine.
It was then he realized there were no available services that tailored to the special needs of the partially sighted, there was no place where they could seek help.
“This made no sense to me at all,” he said. The center first opened its doors in spring 1978 in a small office just off Arizona Avenue, starting with a modest staff of eight people and serving about 400 clients a year. The popularity of the center quickly grew, moving to bigger facilities to house a bigger staff and bigger client base, jumping from Santa Monica Boulevard to Lincoln Boulevard and later to Wilshire, where its headquarters have remained the past nine years.
“We’re proud of our position as pioneers,” LaDonna Ringering, the president and CEO of the center, said.
The RAND senior math team’s revolutionary video magnifier is still a strong component of the low-vision optical program, though the center has since upgraded to more recent iterations. In the past 30 years, the CPS has served more than 23,000 individual clients.
Santa Monica resident Mary Wenzel has been a regular patient since the late 1970s, visiting because of a detached retina, leaving her with no vision in the right eye and lost side vision in the left.
For Wenzel, the experience has been life-changing, the center teaching her how to live with the condition, increasing her mobility.
Just a few years after she started visiting the center, Wenzel finally got her driver’s license.
“It opened up a whole new world,” she said.
While the center is reputable in ophthalmology circles, Ringering said it still feels like a “drop in the bucket,” particularly since it is not recognized and covered by most insurance providers. More than half of the center’s clients are low-income or below the federal poverty level.
Funding can also become an issue with the majority of the center being paid for thanks to private donations. The center is planning to celebrate its 30th anniversary later next month with a fundraiser.
Three decades after founding the center, Genensky still remains involved, the 81-year-old stopping by twice a week to take part in board meetings and to provide a helping hand.
He too has been visually impaired most of his life, starting shortly after birth when doctors mistakenly dropped a solution in his eyes that left him with 20/1000 vision. Babies back then were typically treated with silver nitrate in their eyes to prevent blindness. Genensky however received the wrong solution.
Aside from the center, Genensky has made an impact in advocacy work, serving as one of the founding members of the Disabilities Commission and successfully lobbying City Hall to install a signal at 23rd Street and Wilshire Boulevard that verbally tells pedestrians when it’s safe to cross.
He was also responsible for designing restroom signs — ones typically seen in most public places — that would allow the visually impaired to distinguish between the men’s and women’s rooms, distinguished by shape.
“I would come into the restroom and open the door and a lady would look at me and I would look at her,” Genensky said. “That wasn’t good.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 22, 2008. Read the original PDF.