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AR: So we know you're retired now, and what... let me see. Can you talk a little bit about your humanitarian work in your retirement years?

RE: Well, you know, for years I was quite aware of my brother-in-law, who was a plastic surgeon that was, he was involved in working with disfigured people in the leper colonies, whether it was in Kilimanjaro area or Mexico or Molokai. He would spend time repairing their disfigured faces. He also spent time in the Vietnam War repairing hundreds of children's faces and disfigured faces caught in the crossfires of the war. But I also wanted to spend at least two to four years of my life doing humanitarian work as well, so I've been involved in doing that. I do the free clinic doing eye examinations, the free clinic, county free clinic I go once a year to do eye care in South American countries, Central America.

AR: Is there a particular organization you work with there?

RE: Not really, but there's a group called... Volunteer Ophthalmic Services to... for Humanity, VOSH, and I enjoy that because it's comprised of everybody from veterinarians to RNs to MDs and ODs and it's just that we all have a common interest in caring for people.

AR: Any particular stories, incidents in that charitable work that really stands out as a representative case of the work that you do and of the gratification that comes with it?

Well, you know, when people who are literally blinded, for disease conditions that we insist we get together with local surgeons, or surgeons in the proximal area to have them get their cataract surgeries or any kind of surgeries done, but also to provide glasses when they have no access to glasses, all, most of their lives, coming out of the jungle or some of the remote areas had never been with doctors of any kind. And to be able to see for the first time in their lives, to look at their faces like that. I mentioned a young boy who had a disease process called retinal blastoma and we certainly we caught it and saved his life because he would've had cancer that would've spread to his brain and he would've died. But it's gratifying.

AR: You also mentioned that a lot of the physicians you were working with were very much into the treatment of the symptoms and the diseases and not so much into the prevention and you pushed things like what?

RE: That's correct, yeah. When I first started a few years ago in this mission... missions abroad, I inquired whether there were any kind of education materials or any educational programs that would allow these people to understand that they can prevent these conditions from occurring because of the environment in which they lived in.

AR: What are some of the environmental dangers that...

RE: Well, one of the worst things, in Central America, in the northern part of South America, it's near the equatorial area. The equator in nearness to that, they would be exposed to three times the amount of ultraviolet radiation than we would up here in our hemisphere. So that that in itself, the ultraviolet radiation would cause all kinds of irritation both internal to the eyes as well as external, combined with wind, dust and so on, would create abnormal tissue growth across the eyeball, which eventually would blind these people without surgery. But having surgery would not guarantee that they would have good vision again for too long. Cast in the same environment without protective devices on the eyes would bring back the same thing even with vengeance so that 70 percent of the people who have had surgery would certainly succumb to bad vision again. So I developed a brochure in simple Spanish to explain that sunglasses are not just for attractive looks, it has a practical utilization.

AR: Does your group bring sunglasses down and distribute them?

RE: Yes, we would bring thousands and they would be gone in a matter of days. I'm embarking on fundraising in the Ohio, greater Ohio area, with Lions Club to be able to purchase good quality sunglasses of all things coming out of China. And so if Wal-Mart sells them for $4.99, we can get 'em for fifty cents apiece. So, that's remarkable.

AR: You're probably shaking up the anthropologists over there who showed up one year and the next year everybody's got sunglasses on.

RE: [Laughs] We certainly... I'm so grateful that there's the existence of International Lions Club who helps us out to distribute all of these things and distribute those brochures to educate these people.

AR: Well, what do you think is your greatest personal achievement?

RE: I don't know. Educating people about good health, practicing good health measures, I think that's what's necessary in America today to reduce the cost of health care is getting into more preventative medicine. We need to do that and we need to work effectively in that area. I mean we can't go on with continuing, rise and high cost of health care. But if I've done anything good, I think I've done my share of educating people that good health means so much, even for the eyes.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2008 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.