The Stubbornness of Hope

Each year the San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind grants the Holman Prize, a $25,000 award given to a blind individual to adventurously explore the world. The inaugural recipient was Ahmet Ustunel, a Turkish national who has always refused the label of “handicapped” or “disabled.” 

As a child he did the things all kids do: Rode a bicycle, walked to school, and went fishing with his father. It was those fishing trips that first drew him to the water, to kayaking, where he found a freedom he never knew elsewhere. He brought this love for the sea to the United States when he immigrated to become a teacher of the blind; and it was his love for the sea that earned him the Holman Prize.

The money was used to fund Ahmet’s kayak crossing of the Bosphorus Strait, and the creation of a navigational system that employed sounds, vibrations…