Lion Michael collects 20,000 pairs of glasses
Viroqua Lion Eye Glass Project collects 20,000 pairs in 48 Months
Viroqua Lion member Michael Stephen is well known in Viroqua and the surrounding area as The Eye Glass Collector – the leading individual collector in the entire nation. You may recognize his van more than him, as his van is a moving advertisement for the Viroqua Lions Club Projects and Mission. He has been recognized for several awards, including the Melvin Jones Award, the Night of Sight Fellow, and the Birch-Sturm Award. Each month he spends many hours collecting eye glasses (also collecting used hearing aids, new hearing aid batteries, and used printer ink jet cartridges) in 138 eye glass containers located in 15 area towns.
He is famous at the Wisconsin Lions Foundation main office as he makes 1 trip per month delivering glasses over the years. Typically he spends 7 hours each month driving to WLF and then working at that location sorting glasses, 100 hours each month picking up donations from his 138 containers, and 16 hours at home working on separating the glasses for delivery. Michael has connected with, and has great thanks for several area Lions Clubs and local individuals that assist him in collecting glasses that he takes to Rosholt.
All glasses are taken to the Wisconsin Lions Foundation Recycling Center in Rosholt, Wisconsin. This Center is one of 19 Eye Glass Recycling centers in the US. The Wisconsin Center collects all glasses from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Florida. The glasses are sorted and inspected for scratches. They are read for their prescription and filed into their appropriate boxes. Broken metal frames are sent out for their metal value. All these glasses are used for mission trips and distribution to those who need them after a proper screening to determine the prescription a person needs.
Michael organized his plan and set a goal over 4 years ago. In the past several years, he has been diagnosed with bladder cancer and has been receiving health care and has been in a fight for his life. He is absolutely sure that his Lion’s mission of collecting glasses has given him strength to continue living and working as a very involved Lion Member. He is a 20 year US Air Force Veteran, serving from 1956 – 1977. While he avoided Vietnam, he served in South Korea during the early 1960’s.
Even though he has met the goal he set of collecting 20,000 pairs of glasses in 4 years (originally 10 years), he continues his program as long as his health allows him, and is asking people to turn in unused glasses and other items to the various collection boxes. In addition to the goal for glasses, he also set goals for the other collections. His goal for ink jet cartridges was 5,000 and he has collected 4,788; the goal for cell phones was 1,000 and he has met that goal; and the goal for hearing aids was 500 and he has collected 368.
In addition, he was recently names as a CBS channel 8 from La Crosse Wisconsin as a Home Town Local Hero.
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