Fight for Sight (U.S.)
Fight for Sight is the first nonprofit organization in the U.S. to promote eye research, formed in 1946 as the National Council to Combat Blindness (NCCB). Based in New York City, Fight for Sight provides initial funds to promising scientists early in their careers in three main categories: Post-Doctoral Fellowships to those with a PhD, M.D., O.D. or D.V.M, Grants-In-Aid to junior faculty, and Summer Fellows to medical students, graduates and undergraduates.
Lead by its Scientific Review Committee selection process, the organization provides funding across multiple eye and vision diseases, and has provided support directly or indirectly to major advances in ophthalmology and vision research, including donor cornea preservation, ophthalmic lasers, glaucoma therapies, genetic research, and the Intraocular Lens (IOL).
Early on, Fight for Sight helped create national awareness and funds for vision research outside of its own fundraising when Weisenfeld coordinated testimony on eye research to Congress in 1949, leading to the creation of the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Blindness, and later the establishment of the National Eye Institute in the National Institutes of Health.
Today, numerous top leaders in research and academia once received a Fight for Sight grant early in their careers.
(Fight for Sight in the U.S. is unaffiliated with the younger organizations named Fight for Sight in England or Ireland.)
Important Leaders
The organization's identity was closely aligned with its founder Mildred Weisenfeld, who lost her vision to retinitis pigmentosa two years before starting the nonprofit. Weisenfeld lead the organization as Executive Director for 50 years, from 1946-1996. Among other important leaders at Fight for Sight were board president Herbert Tenzer, who had been a member of the United States House of Representatives, and comedian Bob Hope who was an honorary chairman.
In honor of Weisenfled, the industry group ARVO (Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology) established the Weisenfeld Award for Excellence in Ophthalmology in 1986[1], to recognize individuals for scholarly contributions to clinical ophthalmology.
History
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about the NCCB in its first year of existence, drawing attention to the goal of raising $50,000 for eye clinics and treat retinitis pigmentosa (RP).[2] Experimental treatments funded by NCCB began the first year at New York Hospital and the N.Y. Medical College of Flower-Fifth Avenue on a few hundred people with RP.
Founder Mildred Weisenfeld, along with blind attorney General William E. Powers, presented a Norman Rockwell painting to President Harry Truman on Sept. 19, 1950, to honor his signing legislation aiding the blind. In the same year, Weisenfeld and wealthy New York entrepreneur Mary Lasker encouraged adding the word "blindness" to the founding title of The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Blindness (NINDB), now the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
For a time, from 1988-2002, Fight for Sight was affiliated with Prevent Blindness America as a "research division."
Fight for Sight leagues
Early on, Fight for Sight benefited from the support of local women's leagues in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida. (The eight in New York state included one in Manhattan; three in Brooklyn: Park Circle, Bensonhurst, Shorefront; two in Queens: North Shore, Seaside; and others in the Bronx and Long Island), one for Northern NJ, four in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Greater, Main Line, Cheltenham, and Northeast) and five in Florida (South Palm Beach, Hollywood, Delray, Deerfield Beach, Miami).
"Lights On" fundraiser
The annual Fight for Sight fundraiser "Lights On" was the organization's signature event and drew numerous top celebrities into the mid 1990s.
The event launched in 1949 with the support of Milton Berle, and later lead by Bob Hope, with Earl Wilson (columnist) and Harry Helmsley as co-Chairman. Honorary Members included Sammy Davis Junior and New York City Mayor John Lindsay. Events included Barbra Streisand,[3], Stevie Wonder, Liza Minelli, Yul Brynner, Earl Wilson, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Mason, Ed Sullivan, Fannie Hurst, Pearl Bailey, Mel Allen, Peter Falk, Paul Anka, Eartha Kitt, Tony Randall, Tommy Smothers, Joe Frazier, Jerry Stiller, Carol Channing, Peggy Lee, and many others.
In 1960 Bob Hope donated $100,000 to establish the Bob Hope Fight for Sight Fund.
Fight for Sight Children's Eye Centers
A network of Fight for Sight Children's Eye Centers was established in the 1960s. The first was in New York (at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, and with funding in the mid-1990s from billionaire Harry B. and Leona Helmsley another at Mount Sinai Hospital), Miami (Bascom Palmer Eye Institute), two in Pittsburgh (Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and St. Christopher's Hospital for Children), Philadelphia (Wills Eye Hospital), and Newark, NJ (Eye Institute of New Jersey, UMDNJ-University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey).
Although a modest foundation never exceeding $5 million in annual endowment, by 2009 Fight for Sight had given out over $21 million in grants to eye research.
References
- ^ "ARVO Weisenfeld Award". Retrieved 2009-10-21.
- ^ "My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt". United Feature Syndicate/The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project. 1946-09-11.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters:|1=and|coauthors=(help) - ^ "Barbra Streisand Archives". Retrieved 2009-10-21.