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Business Upturn
29-05-2025
- Business
- Business Upturn
Lighthouse Guild Awards $195,000 in College Scholarships to 17 Blind Students
By GlobeNewswire Published on May 29, 2025, 21:00 IST New York, May 29, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Lighthouse Guild announced today it is awarding scholarships totaling $195,000 to 17 students from across the country who are legally blind and will be entering college or attending graduate school this fall. Since 2005, Lighthouse Guild's Scholarship Program has awarded more than $3 million in college scholarships to students who are legally blind. Former recipients have gone on to successful careers as nurses, attorneys, teachers, engineers, chemists, composers, musicians, and neuroscientists. 'Our scholarship program is a powerful investment in the future of students who are blind or have low vision,' said Thomas Panek, President and CEO of Lighthouse Guild. 'These remarkable students have demonstrated exceptional academic achievement and perseverance. We are proud to support them as they pursue their goals and contribute their talents to the world.' The 2025 Lighthouse Guild scholarship recipients will be attending some of the nation's most competitive colleges and universities. The awards are based on academic excellence and merit, helping students who are legally blind make a successful transition to higher education. Recipient of the Lighthouse Guild Scholar- $40K ($10K per year over 4 years) Aubree Lautenschuetz, Plattsburgh, NY – Attending Case Western Reserve University Recipient of the Visual Aid Volunteers of Florida Scholarship– $12,500 Andrew Feng, Boca Raton, FL – Attending University of Notre Dame Recipient of the Daniel M. Callahan Memorial Scholarship– $10,000 Andrea Hernandez, Laredo, TX – Attending the University of Texas at Austin Recipient of the Dr. Neil S. Patel Memorial Scholarship– $2,500 MaKenzie Love, Commercial Point, OH – Attending Miami University Lighthouse Guild $10K Scholarship Recipients Andrew Gillespie, Loveland, OH – Purdue University Daniel Gunderson, Chicago, IL – Washington University in St. Louis Toban Harnish, Lebanon, PA – Messiah University Elliot Lapp, Atlanta, GA – University of Georgia Elektra Larson, Washington, D.C. – Georgia Institute of Technology Madeline Major, Plymouth, MN – University of Minnesota Twin Cities Kaelyn McColl, Chicago, IL – Harvard College Sid Miller, Cedar Grove, WI – Milwaukee Area Technical College Brooke Petro, Leawood, KS – Creighton University Zoe Tseng, Tinley Park, IL – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Quinn Wagner, Reading, PA – Cornell University Lucy Ye, Flushing, NY – Queens College, City University of New York Amanie Riley, Graduate Student, New York, NY – Dominican University of New York *Scholarship recipients' photos and quotes available here About Lighthouse Guild Lighthouse Guild is committed to providing exceptional services that inspire people who are blind or visually impaired to reach their goals. Through vision rehabilitation, assistive technology, mental health services, and innovative programming, Lighthouse Guild is dedicated to breaking barriers and enhancing lives. For more information visit Attachment Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with GlobeNewswire. Business Upturn takes no editorial responsibility for the same. GlobeNewswire provides press release distribution services globally, with substantial operations in North America and Europe.
New York Times
02-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
A Blind Bicyclist and His Daughter Work in Tandem
Good morning. It's Friday. We'll look at a father-daughter team that is preparing to ride in the Five Boro Bike Tour this weekend. We'll also find out what prompted a composer to write a tribute after Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for president. Thomas Panek has run more than 20 road races. His time in the New York Half Marathon last year was 2 hours 9 minutes 21 seconds. On Sunday, he will cover some of the same ground in a different way, as a rider in the Five Boro Bike Tour. 'I'm a little nervous,' he said. 'I don't know what to expect when you're using a different group of muscles in your body.' That sentence skipped over two things that will set him apart from most of the 32,000 other riders. One is that he will ride on a tandem bicycle. The other is that he is blind. He has retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative disorder that left him legally blind by the time his daughter, Madeleine, was born 22 years ago. She will be the one in the front seat of the tandem, shifting the gears and calling out when turns are coming or she needs to brake. They have practiced stopping because, as he put it, 'if she were to suddenly brake, I would get thrown forward into her.' Many sightless athletes talk about their collaboration with their guides. 'Harmony and synchrony' was how the blind runner Jerusa Geber dos Santos of Brazil described the relationship during the Olympics in Paris last year. Madeleine Panek talked about how she and her father trust each other, an idea he echoed. 'Holding my hand when she was 2 years old, helping me cross the street, it's second nature for her to guide me,' he said. 'It takes some coordination to trust the captain if you're blind and you don't know the person. We already have that relationship. That is going to be the easy part. The hard part is getting it done.' He knows the route from running — it is similar to the course of the New York City Marathon. The two races start and end in different places, but both cover the 2.6-mile-long Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and highways like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive. Some of the hazards are similar, too, like potholes that can seem as large as craters on the moon. But some of the hazards are different for cyclists: Expansion joints between sections of pavement could be trouble spots. Riders who do not spot them in time could fly over the handlebars. Thomas Panek started a new job last month, as the president and chief executive of Lighthouse Guild, a nonprofit organization that provides services for blind people. When he heard about other cyclists from the Lighthouse Guild who would be riding, he signed up. He waited to ask his daughter to be the pilot 'because she just finished her MCATs,' he said — the standardized test for medical school applications. 'I didn't want to add any additional pressure,' he said. She is coming to New York for the weekend as she approaches graduation from Binghamton University and is applying to medical school. Bike New York, which runs the Five Boro Bike tour, says that 210 riders with disabilities will be in the ride on Sunday and that 101 of them will be visually impaired cyclists on tandem bicycles. Ken Podziba, the president of Bike New York, first rode in the tour in 2002 on a tandem bike with Matthew Sapolin, a friend who was blind and was the commissioner of the Mayor's Office for People With Disabilities under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Podziba, the sports commissioner under Bloomberg, loved it and ended up working for Bike New York. Thomas Panek said their tandem is 'a long vehicle,' adding that 'you have to account for the fact that it's almost like pulling a trailer.' 'On a tandem bike,' he said, 'you're pedaling for two. If I get tired at some point, Madeleine can pick up the level of effort.' And vice versa, he said. 'But on the Verrazzano, it's going to take everything from both of us.' There is a chance of showers throughout the day, but also sun and temperatures near 80. In the evening, there is a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, with a low around 63. In effect until May 26 (Memorial Day). The latest New York news A first New York performance of a requiem from the 1960s On a June day in 1968, a man named Frank Lewin drove his three daughters to a railroad station not far from where they lived in Princeton, N.J. He wanted to watch for a train that was going to pass by. 'I mostly remember standing there, and that it was very hot,' said one of the daughters, Naomi Lewin. The train Frank Lewin wanted to see was carrying the body of Robert F. Kennedy, the former attorney general and senator who had been assassinated while campaigning for president in Los Angeles a couple of days earlier. The funeral had been held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. The train was bound for Washington; Kennedy was to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Frank Lewin was a composer who was perhaps best known then for scores for television shows like 'The Defenders' and 'The Nurses' on CBS. But he wrote serious music, too, including an opera based on John Steinbeck's novella 'Burning Bright,' and decided to write a requiem Mass in memory of Kennedy. It will be given its first New York performance, with Matthew Lewis and the St. George's Choral Society, on Sunday at the Rutgers Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side. 'I think my dad felt there was a need for a requiem in the English language,' Naomi Lewin said. The works by Mozart, Verdi and Fauré follow Latin texts. Lewin's setting of the Lord's Prayer in English is particularly lovely. 'Dad wanted to compose music for an entire Catholic requiem service,' Naomi Lewin said. 'So instead of having the congregation speak the Lord's Prayer, as they would normally do during a church service, he wrote music for it, and labeled it to be sung by the congregation.' As for Kennedy, 'my dad obviously admired him,' Naomi Lewin said. The Lewins were German Jews who had come to the United States 'looking for freedom — and the sort of freedom that Robert Kennedy was fighting for,' she said. 'Robert Kennedy had a legacy of civil rights and helping poor people. This is history.' Frank Lewin turned to the Roman Catholic chaplain at Princeton University and others from the university's Aquinas Institute who 'gave him pointers because he didn't know about the Catholic liturgy.' The piece was first performed in the Princeton University Chapel in 1969. 'Dad used the Catholic text' for the Lord's Prayer, 'ending at 'deliver us from evil,' with no 'kingdom' or 'power' or 'glory,'' said Naomi Lewis, who was a professional singer and a classical music radio personality. 'Years later, having sung in countless churches, I told Dad that he should compose a Protestant ending.' So he did. Così fan tattoo Dear Diary: I have been attending operas for more than 25 years and getting tattoos for almost twice as long. On a trip to New York in 2018, I attended a Metropolitan Opera production of Mozart's 'Così Fan Tutte' that was staged in Coney Island and featured actual sideshow performers, including a fire-eater, a sword swallower, a snake dancer and a contortionist. Later that summer, I returned to the city for an annual tattoo show in Manhattan. Some of the same sideshow performers provided entertainment. As one woman came off the stage, I told her I had seen her earlier that year in the opera. She looked at the heavily tattooed and pierced crowd. 'I'm guessing you'll be the only person this weekend who tells me that,' she said. — Jil McIntosh Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@ Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
CBS News
05-04-2025
- Sport
- CBS News
Visually impaired Bronx native training for TD Five Boro Bike Tour
A visually impaired man in the Bronx is riding out of his comfort zone as he trains to participate in the TD Five Boro Bike Tour to raise awareness and funds for programs serving people with vision loss. For the first time in roughly 30 years, Terrell Dobbins shared he is getting on a bike again. "I wasn't sure how I would feel about it. Once I actually took my first seat on the bike and got accustomed to the handles and the pedals, I felt more comfortable," Dobbins said. Dobbins shared he became visually impaired after being diagnosed with diabetes. He said he received the diagnosis when he was 19 years old, and started to lose his vision nearly 10 years later. However, through the Lighthouse Guild, which is an organization that works in supporting individuals of all ages who are blind or visually impaired, Dobbins is training to be part of TD Five Boro Bike Tour next month. "To feel the seat under you and just to realize, you know, it's kind of a commitment, a trust fact that I have to go on between you and your pilot," Dobbins said. Dobbins will be training on Saturdays getting comfortable on a tandem bicycle with a partner. He will also ride on a tandem bike for the tour. The Lighthouse Guild also exposes Dobbins and other people with vision loss to activities like archery, cycling, and blind baseball. Riding in the TD Five Boro Bike Tour will help the organization raise money to continue these sports and other services. "Lighthouse Guild has a charity team, Team See No Limits, where we will raise funds that will benefit both Lighthouse Guild and a foreseeable future foundation. Last year, we had 33 riders that consisted of sighted cyclists, as well as low vision and blind cyclists who all feel like nothing is impossible when we have proper support," said Kiana Glanton, the development and special projects manager at the Lighthouse Guild. While being able to participate in the tour and other sports, Dobbins hopes his story of determination and perseverance will inspire others. "I would have to say is it's empowering. It's giving me the ability to rejoin the world in a sense that I thought I never could before," he said. "Once I was developing my loss of vision, I thought things like riding on a bike and playing baseball, being athletic in general was something that wasn't allowed for me anymore." If you would like to join team #SeeNoLimits, click here . If you would like to donate to the team, click here . You can email Erica with Bronx story ideas by CLICKING HERE .
Associated Press
18-03-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Lighthouse Guild Announces Thomas Panek as New President & CEO
New York, March 18, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lighthouse Guild, the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to providing exceptional services to individuals who are blind or visually impaired, is pleased to announce the appointment of Thomas Panek as its new President and CEO, effective April 2025. He succeeds Dr. Calvin W. Roberts, who has led the organization with distinction. Panek brings a wealth of leadership experience and a deep commitment to advancing accessibility and independence for people with vision loss. For the past decade, he has served as President and CEO of Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a nonprofit organization that provides specially trained guide and service dogs to individuals with disabilities throughout the U.S. and Canada. Under his leadership, the organization raised over $350 million in donations, exponentially expanding its budget, and strengthening financial reserves. A trailblazer in accessibility innovation, Panek collaborated with Google to develop Project Guideline, an AI-driven technology enabling individuals who are blind to run independently. In November 2021, with the help of this groundbreaking technology, he completed the first-ever solo race for a blind person, a 5K race through New York's Central Park – without human or canine assistance. Panek's career spans leadership roles in both nonprofit and governmental sectors. He previously served as Vice President of National Industries for the Blind, where he played a pivotal role in business development, national account management, and the Wounded Warrior Program. Additionally, he served as a Senior International Trade Specialist at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Beyond his executive experience, Panek actively serves in various advisory and leadership capacities, including as Chair of Delta Air Lines Advisory Board on Disability and a board member of Achilles International. He has served as an expert on the CDC's Vision Health Initiative and Chair of the North American Council of Guide Dog Schools. He has been featured in The New York Times, TODAY Show, Time Magazine, ABC, CBS, NPR, Runners World, Forbes, Reuters, and HBO Real Sports, and more. He has also been a guest on Lighthouse Guild's podcast, On Tech and Vision, where he discussed emerging technologies, including autonomous navigation and robotic guidance. Panek holds both a Bachelor's and Master's degree in International Studies from The American University in Washington, D.C. 'We are thrilled to welcome Thomas Panek as our new CEO,' said James M. Dubin, Chairman of the Board of Lighthouse Guild. 'His exceptional track record in leadership, advocacy, and innovation will help propel Lighthouse Guild's mission forward, ensuring that individuals with vision loss have access to the resources and technology they need to live independent and fulfilling lives.' Panek shared his excitement about joining Lighthouse Guild, saying, 'I am pleased and excited in becoming the President and CEO of Lighthouse Guild which is widely considered the country's preeminent pioneer for vision rehabilitation since its formation in 1905 and continuing to today. I foresee an even brighter future. I look forward to working with the dedicated team at Lighthouse Guild to expand access to critical services, harness emerging technologies, and create innovative solutions that support independence and opportunity for all.'
