Stories
Betty Jane: A Living Example of the Eye Bank Mission
Betty Jane is a bilateral (both-eye) corneal recipient who has remained dedicated to giving back to the organization and community that provided her a precious gift-her sight. more
Dan: Merci Beaucoup
Dan, high school French teacher, received a new lease on life when a transplant transformed his vision from 20/400 to 20/25. more
Katie: A Family Honors Her Wish
Katie was a senior in high school when her life was cut short in a fatal traffic accident. Katie's parents, through their sadness, honored Katie's donation wishes. more
Paige: A Recipient Raises Her Sights-and Successes
Paige was only six years old when a vacation Bible school session took an unfortunate turn. A carelessly-wielded pencil ripped a diagonal tear across her cornea, drastically marring her field of vision. more
Bob: A Creative Spirit Lives On
Bob was a prolific artist who had an exciting and rewarding career. Painting, advertising management, commercial art, product development-Bob could do it all. more
Brian: Cornea transplants saved his career
Returning home from his first cornea transplant, Brian Salisbury, now a 50-something sales engineer, could for the first time see well enough to notice handprints all along the hallway wall. more
AJ: His father was a cornea recipient and AJ wanted to help others like him
Student, musician, beloved son, brother, and fiancé, AJ was diagnosed with alveolar soft part sarcoma, a rare cancer at age 24. more
Mary: Beloved great-grandmother helps countless others
Mary Blahnik's family remembers her as an inquisitive and attentive woman with a brilliant memory, a quality that came in handy for knowing the names, birthdays, and gift preferences of 14 children, 50 grandchildren, and-at the time she died in July 2005 at age 86-34 great-grandchildren. more
Cindy: Transplant makes the world 3-D again
Right after graduating from college, Cindy Christian Rogers learned she had keratoconus, a condition that causes the corneas to steepen like the ends of a football. more
Bill: His eye donation allows two people to live as enthusiastically as he had
A country boy who longed to live in the city, Bill Skluzacek found his dream lifestyle when he married Cheryl, a Twin Cities native. more
Carol: A cornea transplant changed her lifestyle and her life
Each work day, Carol Mulder peers through a microscope and diagnoses other people's diseases in a hospital, all the while contending with her own degenerative corneal condition called keratoconus. more
Mark: A star to many people before and after his death
Mark Berkeland was a quiet man who didn't like to be the center of attention. Yet after Mark died in 2006 at age 56, the victim of a drunk driver, his wife received notes and letters from people she had never met, telling how he had touched their lives during his rounds as a mail carrier. more
Rob: Grateful to the cornea donor who gave him back sight
In his early 20s, Robert Lafrentz learned he had keratoconus, a degenerative condition that causes corneas to change shape and distort vision. more