Medicine: The Spectacle Ladies

The operation for cataracts was successful, but the 70-year-old man in the charity ward at Manhattan's New York Eye & Ear Infirmary still could not see without expensive glasses. Then a hospital worker sat down and wrote a postcard. Last week a pair of thick new glasses arrived and for the first time in twelve years he was able to read. A Christmas card with the glasses bore the name: "New Eyes for the Needy—Short Hills, N.J."

In the Depression '30s, a Red Cross worker from Short Hills named Mrs. Arthur E. Terry watched relief applicants fumbling and groping, but too poor to buy glasses. She began salvaging the metal from old glasses, jewelry, fillings and dental plates, had it melted down, and used the money to buy glasses for anyone who could not afford his own. It took about 20 old pairs (nowadays it takes 40 pairs) to pay for a new one. Mrs. Terry got out and stumped church, civic and club groups, badgered her friends, and even got one of them, Alexander Woollcott, to put her on his radio show.

Soon, boxes of old glasses were arriving at the Short Hills post office, sometimes as much as 200 Ibs. of them in a week. A woman in Ohio left a note willing her glasses to the "spectacle lady" when she died; a small girl mailed her glasses to the "poor eyes lady," sent along seven pennies for good measure.

As fast as the glasses came in, Mrs. Terry and her helpers sent out vouchers for new ones. New Eyes asked the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness for the names of people who needed help. Glasses were shipped to every state in the U.S. An eight-year-old boy who had lost one eye pleaded for a glass one. It took 150 pairs of old spectacles to raise the money, but he got his new eye for Christmas. In 18 years, New Eyes has collected 400,000 pairs of old glasses, sent out money for 65,000 new pairs. In return come hundreds of fervent letters of thanks. Wrote one man: "It's like coming out of a dark cellar. I don't have to stumble any more."