Mindy Mies, right, and her twin sons, Cole, left, and Luke, center, head home from school by way of Massachusetts Street.

Mindy Mies is a daughter, a wife, and a mother to twin adolescent boys.

She’s an athlete — a runner and skier (an activity she mastered at a young age during regular trips to Aspen, Colo.) — who also enjoys a good cup of coffee (especially La Prima Tazza’s) and the occasional beer from her favorite, Free State Brewing Co.

She’s also a college graduate, having earned a degree in human development from Kansas University in 1997, and a resident of North Lawrence, where her family shares a single-level home off Comfort Court with their menagerie of pets.

Mies, 43, also happens to be totally blind.

She has been since she was just over a year old, when doctors at KU Medical Center found cancer in her eyes and removed them.

For Mies, it’s just how life has always been.

“Remember that movie where this guy was blind all his life and then they somehow gave him sight and he freaks out?” she said, sitting next to her German shepherd, Ada, on the couch in her living room. “I can’t remember the name, but that would be me.”

Mies later remembered it was the 1999 flick “At First Sight,” starring Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino. The movie follows Virgil, who has been blind since age 3 and undergoes radical surgery to regain his sight. Like Mies said, Virgil “freaks out.”

“I assume so,” Mies said of whether her reaction would be like the fictional Virgil’s if she were in his position. “I guess I really don’t know.”

Meet the Blind Month

One thing Mies is sure of is that she doesn’t have many limitations as is — she has a kind of independence the National Federation of the Blind is trying to bring awareness to through an October campaign, Meet the Blind Month.

The local chapter of the national organization, which works to secure equal rights and opportunities for the blind, went before the Lawrence City Commission on Oct. 6. Mayor Mike Amyx read a proclamation recognizing the campaign, and Renée Morgan, president of the local chapter, encouraged people to “just be aware that we’re here.”

According to the proclamation, the campaign was created to bring “opportunities for the people of Kansas and people everywhere to learn firsthand that blind people are basically like everyone else.”

Morgan, who had 20/20 vision before losing her sight to a genetic disease five years ago, said she learned through the organization that she “could be doing everything I wanted to being doing,” she said. “A lot of things can happen that can spur this independence, and there’s a lot of it that’s due to this community that I live in.”

Growing independent

Mies has lived in this community since she was 18 months old, when her family moved from Tonganoxie so she could receive instruction from Mary Gordon, who was then the Lawrence school district’s consultant for visually impaired students.

The Journal-World documented Mies’ path to independence during the 1970s and ’80s.

One story follows Mies, then Mindy Knepp, a 6-year-old first-grader at Cordley Elementary.

Gordon, who Mies continues to remain in touch with, would, at the time, take the girl to the Kansas University Natural History Museum, where she could feel the stuffed animals in order to visualize their appearance.

“The biggest thing is to teach her what’s in the world because her world is only as far as her arms can reach,” Gordon said at the time.

In 1978, 6-year-old Mies was also learning to play piano, doing well in school and infatuated with her dog, Buttons.

A few years later, Journal-World staffers accompanied Gordon, Mies and a group of other visually impaired children to Aspen, Colo., where Mies would continue to travel annually up through her college years.

Mies said she was “a regular” on the group trip, and she eventually became skilled enough to go on some black diamond runs, one of the most difficult categories of skiing runs.

Jump to 1984, and Mies, then 12 and a sixth-grader at Deerfield Elementary, was learning how to use a new technological advancement: Apple’s Echo system, which allowed the computer to speak the letters she was typing.

With the crude — but at the time, innovative — technology, Mies had to spell her first name M-Y-N-D-Y for the system to correctly pronounce it. Otherwise, the computer would call her “MIND-y.”

“I’m no good with computers,” Mies said now, more than 30 years later. “I prefer the brailler.”

Later that same year, 12-year-old Mies appeared in the newspaper again, for winning a Daughters of the American Revolution statewide essay contest with her piece on colonial candle making.

In 1988, Mies was 16 and a sophomore at Lawrence High School, still working with Gordon and thinking of attending college at Baker University.

Mies, filling in the blanks on what happened after that last article, said she did go to Baker, and then transferred to KU.

She got to know her now husband, Kevin Mies, a 9-1-1 dispatcher, while finishing up in college. He would regularly drive her home from Douglas County Senior Services, where she volunteered as part of a class.

“It took him six months to ask me out,” she said, laughing.

The couple had a bit of a scare when the twins, Luke and Cole, were four months old. Doctors found retinoblastoma in Luke’s eyes — the same cancer his mother had.

The family was sent to a hospital in Philadelphia, where Luke would undergo treatments and be cured.

“Luckily, they found it early enough,” Mindy Mies said. “All treatments were done before his first birthday.”

Weekly walks

Now, Mies is a stay-at-home mother, and the only unique challenges she faces are familiarizing herself with a new area to the extent she can develop a route, she said, and knowing when to cross the street at busy intersections.

She could also use a new service dog. Ada, Mies said, is 10 years old and doesn’t have the energy she used to.

Since college, Mies has had a few service dogs — first a Labrador, and then a couple of Golden Retrievers — but she wants another Shepherd.

“Labs get fat,” Mies said. Of Ada, she said: “I like her stamina.”

On a recent walk to pick up Cole and Luke at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School — Mies makes the five-mile round-trip trek weekly — Ada pressed against Mies’ left leg as they quickly strolled along, sure-footed, keeping to the sidewalks.

Leaves crunched under Mies’ bright pink-and-purple Asics. The sun shone down hot, and Ada started panting about two miles in.

The pair strode past barking dogs and a man working on his home with oldies blasting on the radio, and they had a couple close encounters with oncoming bicyclists on the Massachusetts Street bridge.

Mies’ and Ada’s first stop was at the corner of Massachusetts and Sixth streets, where they waited for the talking crosswalk system to signal it was safe to cross.

At the rest of the Massachusetts Street intersections — which aren’t equipped with audible signals — Mies slowed to a stop and tried to listen to the traffic pattern.

“This one is tricky,” she said at the Ninth Street crossing.

Mies waited on the sidewalk through two light rotations before she could deduce it was OK to cross.

“Sometimes I just have to guess,” Mies said.

She hasn’t yet had any close calls.

“Knock on wood,” she added.

A new challenge

She’s a mom, wife, skier, and many more things, but there’s one title Mies hasn’t quite grasped, but wants to: employee.

Back in 1978, then-Mindy Knepp, the 6-year-old Deerfield Elementary student, was considering being a beautician like her mother, or maybe a nurse.

Now, Mies said, her boys are getting older, and she needs something part-time. Human development was a “broad” major, she said, and she’s thought of everything from dog groomer to massage therapist.

“The workforce, that’s what I need to conquer next,” she said. “I haven’t quite figured that one out.”