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The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn Speaks Up For GRF As Campaign Goes Public
San Francisco, September, 2005 — “I have glaucoma, and I’m here to talk about my experience, the need for testing, and my hope that together we can speed the cure for glaucoma, once and for all.”
With these words, Roger McGuinn of the famed 1960’s/70’s folk-rock group The Byrds officially kicked off the public phase of GRF’s three-year $7.5 million campaign at festivities in San Francisco on September 8. McGuinn is the National Honorary Chairman of the Catalyst For a Cure campaign.
Thomas M. Brunner, President & CEO of GRF explained that the campaign was launched last year, and immediately anchored with gifts of $2.6 million from members of the GRF board, reflecting a 260% increase in their personal giving. “Our board wants to send the strongest signal to the community of the urgent need to accelerate the pace of discovery, and the measurable progress this new approach is bringing.” Altogether, the campaign is at $4.2 million, and just passing the 56% of goal mark.
A primary focus of the campaign is GRF’s entrepreneurial Catalyst For a Cure research collaboration, speeding the cure with two important innovations: by bringing together a team of four laboratories working in genuine real-time collaboration, and by applying the burgeoning promise of neuroscience and genetics research to the study of glaucoma.
McGuinn was joined by four Honorary Co-Chairs representing The Faces of Glaucoma, a reminder that people of all ages are vulnerable to this “silent thief of sight”:
Melissa Baker, a college student from South Lake Tahoe, was diagnosed with glaucoma at age 15. Today she snowboards and helps her mother Judy Molnar in an annual cycling event from which some proceeds benefit GRF.
Anabella Alvarez Denisoff, of San Rafael, CA, is President of the Blind and Vision Impaired of Marin, where she facilitates support groups, and is outreach coordinator for LightHouse of Marin.
Kim Lee, a businessman from San Francisco, blinded himself in his left eye while a child in China, much later discovering glaucoma in his right eye. “Testing is so easy. I could have saved more sight had I gone earlier.”
Michele McMillan, a student at Spelman College in Atlanta, wrote a brief letter to GRF which has inspired a comprehensive outreach to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
“There is an epidemic of blindness coming,” points out H. Dunbar Hoskins Jr., MD, Executive Vice President, American Academy of Ophthalmology, and a co-founder of GRF along with Robert Shaffer, MD, and John Hetherington, MD. “We must get ahead of this, and that’s what GRF research and education programs are designed to do. The cutting edge science our researchers are using is virtually challenging the aging process itself.”
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Pictured above (left to right): Dennis Singleton, GRF Board Chairman; Michele McMillan, Honorary Campaign Co-Chair; Roger McGuinn, National Honorary Campaign Chairman; Anabella Alvarez Denisoff, Honorary Campaign Co-Chair; Thomas M. Brunner, GRF President & CEO; Melissa Baker, Honorary Campaign Co-Chair.
This article appeared in the September 2005 issue of Gleams. Subscribe