George Walter (South Daytona, Florida) was raised in a single parent family – a family without the means to provide him with the glasses he so desperately needed to succeed in school and in life. Now, George oversees the Eyeglass Recycling program for his Lions Club, and has the satisfaction of helping so many others who, like himself, are in need of “the power of sight.” Here is his story:

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The eyeglasses come in, the eyeglasses go out: Thick glasses with fat Grandpa lenses, delicate readers with glittery wire rims, smart designer specs that look barely worn.

George Walter sees them all. As chairman of eyeglass recycling for the Ormond By the Sea Lions Club, it’s his job to go around town to collect donated glasses. Walter packages up the glasses and sends them to Orlando for processing, never knowing where they will eventually end up. Once in a while the club gets a letter from a grateful recipient of a pair of glasses from the Lions. “Thank you,” the letters say. “I didn’t realize what I couldn’t see.”

Walter knows just how they feel. Back when he was a fifth grader and living in Elverson, Pennsylvania, he wrote a letter like that himself. “Dear Lions Club,” it said. “Thank you for the glasses. Now I can read the blackboard.”

He explains, “My parents were separated and my mother was raising seven children on my father’s military disability income of $100 a month.” When his teacher, Mrs. Macklroy, noticed that Walter was having a problem seeing in class, she told the local Lions. Soon afterward the 10-year-old became the proud owner of his very first pair of glasses.

The glasses, dark maroon with a silver stripe, were small, but their impact was enormous. “When I first put on my glasses everything became so much clearer,” says Walter, a 66-year-old property manager for a senior mobile home community. “I could look out the window and see what was going on outside. The glasses opened up a whole new world.”  

The letters his club receives today are far from fancy. They’re short and simple messages of heartfelt thanks. When Walter reads them he gets a warm feeling inside, happy with the knowledge that as a Lion he’s had a small part in opening a new world for someone, just as someone did for him. “My little bit of help helps a whole lot of people.”

The Lions Club has a huge eyeglass recycling program, collecting more than 5 million pairs of eyeglasses annually and distributing them to more than 3 million people in developing nations. Donating your old or unused glasses provides life-changing vision services for needy people all around the world. You can make a difference in the life of a vision-impaired person. Donate your glasses today!