Concert to aid program that provides eyeglasses to school kids in St. Joe County

SOUTH BEND — Dr. Steve Gerber, a pediatric ophthalmologist, has witnessed the “instant gratification” of so many kids with bad eyesight who emerge with new glasses from the Kindness to Prevent Blindness mobile clinic.

Like one very nearsighted girl who’d gone without specs for two years. She couldn’t stop repeating, “It’s like HD and 3D.”

It motivates Gerber to keep volunteering for the clinic, which this fall expands from just Elkhart County to covering students across St. Joseph County, too. Now Gerber is taking his piano-playing skills and rounding up other local musicians for an hour of tunes and fundraising Sunday for the cause.

At 4 p.m. at the Bendix Theatre in the downtown Century Center, he will play Beethoven, and vocalist Terry Austin will belt out popular songs while violinist Travon DeLeon, a University of Notre Dame student who has performed in concert halls in New York and Europe, will play works by Bach. Admission costs $20.

Between the music, the audience will hear about Kindness to Prevent Blindness from Ashley Boling Molyneaux, director of the Elkhart Education Foundation, which had started the program with the Boling Vision Center and other partners.

The mobile clinic provides a medical eye exam and two pairs of prescription glasses at no charge for first-, third-, fifth- and eighth-grade students who fail their state-mandated vision exams in the South Bend, Penn-Harris-Madison, School City of Mishawaka and John Glenn districts. The student receives one pair of glasses while the school nurse holds onto the other pair, in case the other pair is lost or broken, Gerber said.

National statistics suggest that 40% to 60% of kids who fail their vision screening at school don’t follow up with an eye doctor. Local Lions Clubs have screened students’ vision in the schools. And Gerber said local eye doctors often offer services for families that cannot afford it. Medicaid often covers the service, too. But, somehow, families don’t make it to the doctor. Or the kid breaks or loses the glasses.

Kindness to Prevent Blindness, he said, at last provides a formal program to fill the need.

Among the elementary kids, he said: “A lot of them didn’t know there were leaves on the trees (until they got glasses). It makes such a big difference. … How can you learn? It’s such a basic need.”