 |
|
His mission helps
them see clearly |
| By
Terry
Loney - Daily world writer |
| Saturday,
March 25, 2006 4:58 PM PST |
 |
|
DAILY WORLD /
TERRY LONEY Dr. James Weyrich and
his wife, Mary Ellen, pose at their
Montesano home. They work together on
the EyeCare, WeCare Foundation to bring
vision services to the poor in the
Philippines. |
|
|
|
 Print
Version |
 E-mail
This Story
|
|
|
 |
Montesano — Sometimes
making a house call means Dr. James Weyrich has
to travel bumpy roads through stifling, humid
jungles of the Philippines.
He has also taken a small boat, a little bigger
than a canoe, down the Rio Coco River in
Honduras because there aren’t any roads in the
area.
Besides the huge tropical insects and leeches,
Weyrich has had to deal with rebels and the
stench of dumps where many of the poor make
their homes.
The journeys are just the means to the end.
Weyrich, an optometric physician, endeavors to
help some of the world’s poorest people see the
joys of life they might otherwise miss due to
bad eyesight.
“To help somebody else see is one of God’s
greatest gifts,” said Weyrich, who is the doctor
of optometry at the Vision Center inside
Wal-Mart in Aberdeen.
Weyrich started his own medical mission
foundation, the EyeCare, We-Care Foundation
based in Montesano after spending several years
working for other medical missions operated by
various church groups. The foundation’s
philosophy is “delivering the ultimate vision
plan to the poor.”
He said he likes to perform medical missions to
“give back what was given to me.”
As a teenager growing up in Montesano, Weyrich
said his eyesight was about the worst of his
class.
 |
Weyrich family photo Weyrich adjusts a
light to help a patient at his his
EyeCare, WeCare Foundation read an eye
chart during an examination. Patients’
eyes are tested with an autorefractor
first, and those needing additional
testing for bifocals have their eyes
examined with traditional equipment. The
clinic, which was established in 2005,
is near Bago City, Philippines.
|
“My eyesight was so
bad, one time when I was playing football I ran
down the field and tackled one of my teammates,”
he said.
The Bulldogs had kicked off and the receiver on
the opposing team fumbled the ball, he said.
“One of our guys picked it up and I nailed him.”
The coach pulled him out of the game and said,
“You’re not going to do that anymore,” Weyrich
recalled.
“The coach said, ‘You can’t see.’ ”
Weyrich said he responded, “You’re right, I
can’t.”
Soon after, Dr. Lawrence Ellison fitted him for
a pair of contacts to correct his vision. It was
the moment that put Weyrich on the path he has
followed for the rest of his life. “I said right
then and there I was going to be an
optometrist.”
Weyrich has 38 years into his practice. After
earning his optometry credentials in 1968, he
was drafted into the Navy for a two-year hitch.
After he was discharged, he moved to the Yakima
Valley and operated a clinic in Toppenish for 30
years. He moved back to Montesano a few years
ago to help his ailing father, who recently
passed away.
He started going on medical missions 15 years
ago.
Focus on the Philippines
Weyrich’s foundation focuses on the Philippines.
The reason is the island nation has a special
place in his heart; it is where he met his wife,
Mary Ellen, when he was on a mission with Mercy
Ships, a medical mission run by Youth with a
Mission for Christ, a multi-denominational
organization. That was in October, 1999.
She was working with Philippines’ Congressman
Charlie Cojuangco, who helped the mission
organize the trip to the country.
His wife processed his paperwork for his license
to practice in the country.
“I always joke she found me,” Weyrich said.
Buy Mary Ellen, who prefers to go by Ellen, said
while they saw each other working around the
mission, they did not actually meet until they
were on a weekend retreat organized for the
benefit of the Mercy Ship volunteers
“I wasn’t even formally introduced to him,” she
said.
Weyrich said he noticed she always had a smile
and a cell phone.
But once they had a chance to talk, they
couldn’t stop, they said.
They married in January 2001, after a
traditional courtship that included formal
meetings with her family and chaperones.
She said at first she was reluctant because she
didn’t plan to marry a foreigner, but “it seems
like we were meant for each other,” Ellen said.
“If God wants to put you together, you can’t
stay away from it.”
Weyrich added they tried to think of reasons why
their relationship wouldn’t work, but couldn’t.
Helping the poor
In 2005, he performed his first mission to the
Philippines under the EyeCare, WeCare banner.
He spent five days caring for patients in a
poverty-stricken area near Bago City, in the
west central Philippines.
“We usually go where there has not been anyone
(providing eye care),” Weyrich said. The
villages are usually “out in the boonies,” at
the end of a one- or two-day-drive from the
nearest city.
There the needs for eye care are many and
sometimes extreme.
Jobert Tagobader, Weyrich’s brother-in-law and
volunteer who helps with his mission in the
Philippines, said last year Weyrich helped a
woman who went blind from cataracts during her
last pregnancy.
“She was blind for two years and had never seen
the face of her youngest child,” Tagobader said.
Weyrich turned over every stone to “find a local
doctor to operate to remove cataracts,” he said.
“That was one of the momentous efforts … the
foundation has accomplished.”
Tagobader said at other times Weyrich has gone
into his own pocket to buy glasses for those who
cannot afford them.
The mission relies on donated used eye glasses.
Tagobader said patients are usually given the
closest match they have to the prescription they
need. But if none of the donated glasses are
close, Weyrich will just buy them himself, he
said.
There are lot of people in the country who can’t
fix their eye problems due to financial reasons,
Tagobader said, adding that compounds the
problems they face in everyday life.
It is hard to find a job and provide for a
family when a person can’t see, he said.
Their desperate situation is matched only by
their enthusiasm for being given corrective
lenses.
Weyrich said one young man he helped, Paticio
Gagnao, 17, suffered from a birth defect where
his left eye didn’t develop at all and his right
one was about the size of a large pea. He was
essentially blind.
Weyrich had to dig through his stash of donated
glasses to find the strongest prescription he
had.
The heavy, thick “coke bottle” lenses were just
large enough to allow him to see.
“He jumped out the door and ran out into the
street,” the doctor said, adding the young man
stayed around the mission for several days
helping out and telling everyone how happy he
was to see them.
Like clockwork
Weyrich said he and his wife had a house built
in Maao, part of Bago City, as a staging area
for the medical missions.
All the equipment they need is stored there as
are the donated eye glasses.
His wife flies over two weeks before him and
works with members of her family to prep the
donated used eye glasses and all the equipment.
“All I have to do is fly there … and set up a
clinic,” he said.
Once a clinic is set up, Weyrich and the
volunteers work on an assembly line-like plan.
Patients are brought in and their eyesight is
checked with an autorefractor, which sends an
ultrasonic soundwave into the eye. How the wave
bounces back indicates the shape of the eye and
cornea.
“That computes what they need for eye glasses,”
Weyrich said.
The auto refractor is like a computerized
optometrist.
He manually checks for bifocal needs.
From there, they are set up with the closest
match to their needed eye glass prescription
available among the donated glasses.
“We really have a smooth system,” said Ellen,
adding it is not uncommon for medical missions
to care for a large amount of patients in a day.
Tagobader said the process runs so effortlessly
they can “take care of 120 patients in a day.”
The endeavor is to help as many people as
possible in the limited amount of time, Weyrich
said.
His wife said they do stop for lunch, but that
is about it.
By comparison, at his office in Aberdeen he sees
at most 18 patients a day, he said.
Weyrich has hopes of making his foundation self
supporting and mobile.
He is seeking donations of cars, trucks, vans,
RVs and boats.
An RV or bus would be converted into a mobile
clinic, and the other donated vehicles would be
auctioned off to raise the funding needed to
convert the RV or bus — about $50,000.
“It is so much easier if we could be
self-contained,” Weyrich said. “That way we can
go from island to island quite easily.”
Currently he and the volunteers have to move the
optical equipment in pickup trucks. That can
take four to five trips to move all the
equipment, he said.
He also plans to start an optical lab to make
eye glasses.
While he receives a lot of donated glasses, the
donations do not cover all possible
prescriptions. There are times when a rare
prescription is needed, and that type is not
often donated, he said, adding it would be great
to be able to make those for his patients in the
Philippines.
All the equipment needed to make lenses for any
type of prescription has been donated to his
foundation by optometrists in Washington. But it
will take another $50,000 to build the lab, he
said.
Remote reaches
In the past, Weyrich has been on missions that
have taken him to some of the worst places
imaginable in the farthest reaches of the globe.
His first mission took him to the Rio Coco River
on the border between Nicaragua and Honduras.
Since then he has made 20 trips to the
Philippines as well as other mission visits to
El Salvador, Spain, Morocco, Algeria and Mexico.
His first mission, which lasted a month, was at
a time when Nicaragua was engaged in a bloody
civil war. Weyrich said armed men were
everywhere.
There was no way to tell a government soldier
from a rebel “and you didn’t ask. You just went
and did your work,” Weyrich said. “It was kind
of weird.”
While giving exams, Weyrich said he would hear
about atrocities committed by soldiers and
rebels. Patients, often covered with scars, told
stories of rapes, destruction of homes and
deaths of relatives.
The mission became surreal as it took on the air
of being a real-live version of “Apocalypse
Now,” he said.
“You have to have faith,” he said, explaining
his willingness to go to such areas.
While working with the Mercy Ships, he treated
the residents who lived in squalor in the
Payatas landfill near Quezon City in the
Philippines. Weyrich said it is the second-worst
place he has been. Honduras was the worst.
The small island nation off the coast of
Southeast Asia endures rampant poverty. Many
people have taken to eking out an income by
living in the country’s huge dumps, such as
Payatas, where they scavenge for reusable
materials.
“When the garbage trucks (arrive at the dump)
those people scavenge right off the truck,”
Weyrich said. “Every truck that comes into the
dump is like a prize of gold.”
They use what they find to build their homes or
sell as a recyclable material.
Scraps, such as paper, wood, plastics and
anything else that will burn, are used as fuel
for cooking and heating fires.
He said the dump occasionally catches on fire.
A fire in 2000 swept through the dump, killing
about 200 people.
Many of the dead were people Weyrich had
treated, he said.
The stench and the flies at the dump made giving
eye exams challenging, to say the least.
But not everything was bad about the experience.
The joy his patients express after he fits them
with glasses so they can see clearly is why he
keeps going back. Many have eyesight so bad they
could no longer thread a needle to sew or tie a
hook on a line to go fishing, he said.
People cry and thank him repeatedly, he said.
“They are really grateful.”
But Weyrich does not like to take the credit.
“God sent me there and he is working through
me,” he said. “I tell them to ‘thank the guy who
sent me here.’ ”
Big part of life
In the past 15 years, missions have become a
large part of his life.
Those years have been very fulfilling
spiritually. Not just because he has helped
people see, but because they have helped him
see, as well.
Despite living in poverty “they are happy,”
Weyrich said. “Here we have everything and we’re
not. You try to minister to them, but they
minister to you.”
Eventually, Weyrich hopes to expand his
foundation to countries beyond the Philippines.
“We are going to try to get satellites going in
… Singapore and Taipei,” he said, adding he
hopes to take the mission worldwide some day.
Weyrich hopes to go on his next mission in June,
if he can make the time, while his office is
begin remodeled, he said.
Recently Wal-Mart opted to take over offering
eye care services at all its stores, and the
Vision Center will be shut down for several
weeks this summer.
Weyrich said the office will be remodeled and
reopened and he will remain as an independent
optometrist.
On the Net:
Anyone wishing to donate to Weyrich’s foundation
or sign up to volunteer can do so by visiting
the EyeCare, WeCare Web site at
www.eyecarewecare.org
Snapshot
James Weyrich
Occupation: optometrist at Vision Clinic inside
Wal-Mart, Aberdeen.
EARLY YEARS: Born: April 25, 1944, in Cathlamet,
but his family moved to Montesano in 1951.
Education: Graduated from Montesano High School
in 1962. He graduated from Pacific University in
Forest Grove, Ore., in 1966, where he studied
pre-optometry and earned a Bachelor of Science
degree in psychology. He received his optometry
license in 1968. He earned his doctorate from
Pacific University in 1968.
Military: He was drafted into the Navy as a
lieutenant j.g. in 1969 and served two years
working as an optometrist at Bethesda Naval
Hospital in Maryland.
Family: Weyrich met his third wife, Mary Ellen,
36, while on a mission to the Philippines. They
have been married five years. He has one sister,
Peggy Fasano, who lives in Seattle. His parents,
Heston and Gladys Weyrich, are deceased.
Driving concern: Most of his spare time is spent
working on the foundation he started, the
EyeCare, WeCare Foundation, to help meet the eye
care needs of people in developing nations.
Hobbies: Scuba diving, skiing and singing.
Church: Member of Couples of Christ.
Favorite book: The Bible. He reads that more
than anything else.
Terry
Loney, a Daily World writer, can be reached
at 532-4000, ext. 137, or by e-mail:
tloney@thedailyworld.com
More profile photos for this story |
Copyright © 2007 The Daily World.
This content may not be archived, retransmitted,
saved in a database, or used for any commercial
purpose without the express written permission of
The Daily World.
|
| Search Archives: |
 |
 |
Front
Page 
