The History of

Massachusetts Lions Eye Research Fund, Inc.

Back in the summer of 1950, E. Daniel Johnson, then District Governor of District 33N, had a visit from a friend on his farm in Lyndeboro New Hampshire. This friend brought his four year old blind son, a so called "blind baby" or "retrolental fibroplasia" baby, with him. The cause was unknown, the child was apparently blind at birth. In talking of this with Harry Hartford, then District Governor of District 33K, Lion Johnson found that Harry had a friend, Al Hirshberg, who had a blind baby that was born on the day that Al landed in France, D-Day 1944.

In October of 1950, they and a small group of Lions had lunch with Al Hirshberg (Sports Writer for the Boston Post and Chairman of the Foundation for Eye Research) and Dr. Edwin B. Dunphy (Professor, Harvard Medical School and Chief of Staff, Massachusetts Eye and ear Infirmary). This small assembly of Lions were told of the existence of a new disease, first discovered in Massachusetts in 1941 by a Dr. Terry. This disease was known to physicians as "Retrolental Fibroplasia". This disease was not only baffling, but discouraging because no funds were available to attempt to discover its cause. The Lions of Massachusetts were asked to try to do something to help the medical profession in raising funds to combat this terrible disease which was afflicting four out of five premature babies weighing four pounds or less.

This story was so amazing that the Lions asked Al to write a pamphlet, telling this story, that they could carry to the Lions Clubs throughout Massachusetts. Dr. Dunphy edited this pamphlet and Lion Johnson had several thousand copies printed and mailed to all Lions in Massachusetts and to all District Governors in the United States and Canada at his own expense.

A quotation from Lion Johnson's cover letter from 1950:

"The attached leaflet tells briefly about the lack of research in the field of blindness. To me, an engineer, it is unbelievable that so little money is spent on trying to prevent a malady and I shudder to think that probably a child or grandchild of mine or yours might well be the victim of this... which strikes rich and poor alike... baby blindness. With 2500 babies around the country born totally sightless, and no one knows the reason, can we as Lions sit back and not do something about it? It seems that this is a challenge to the Lions of Massachusetts, yes to the country! Our primary aim is 'sight conservation', although we do a lot of other civic charitable acts. It is not my idea to give up our good projects, but to add another bigger project... the underwriting of eye research. It would be a boon to mankind and add glory to Lionism. How about making the Lions pin mean Eye Research?"

In 1952 Eye Research was voted to be the official project of the Massachusetts Lions.

From an informal meeting in Harry Hartford's hotel room at the Lions International Convention in Atlanta in 1951 to the first committee on Eye Research appointed by the council of Governors in October 1951, to the first permanent Eye Research Committee appointed in 1953 at the state convention, to the incorporation of the Eye Research Center Inc. in January 1958, to the present nearly 20,000 Lions of Multiple District 33 throughout Massachusetts, we have totally dedicated ourselves to one primary state wide project ... EYE RESEARCH!

The first Eye Research committee recommended that a permanent committee be formed to administer the project of stimulating the interest of all Lions Clubs in fund raising to support eye research, and that the duties of the committee be:

A)     Suggest means of raising monies;

B)      Promote publicity;

C)      Receive donations;

D)     Give an accounting and report progress to the council;

E)     Receive requests for funds from research centers and to distribute to those centers every dollar received from the Lions.

Every dollar raised is used to initiate new research projects which often attract Federal and other funding at much higher levels on the basis of the initial studies that we fund. All our board members are volunteers, we have no paid staff and work strictly on the belief that we can make a difference. From 1951 to 1993 we raised and funded research projects in Massachusetts totaling over $21,000,000. Through the same period we received requests in excess of $40,000,000. We still have a lot of work to do!

Research grants given by the Massachusetts Lions stimulated research that found the cause of retrolental fibroplasia ("Blind baby disease"), now known as retinopathy of prematurity. It was found that the oxygen level in the incubators that premature babies were kept in was too high and damaged the babies developing eyes.