“It’s a small world.” We say this, usually, when we run into people who know people we know. The world is even smaller when we run into these people halfway around the world. Hence, “It’s a small world.” And it’s getting smaller.
July closed a chapter in optometric history, when Dr. Newton Wesley (Uyesugi) passed away in Freeport, Illinois. You might think, ’What does that have to do with our little world here in Seattle?’ It’s a fair enough question. And here’s where the world gets smaller.
Newton was born to Japanese immigrants in Westport, Oregon in 1917. By 16 he’d graduated high school and by 22 he’d earned a degree in optometry from the then North Pacific College of Optometry, and had his own practice in Portland. Uyesugi is a difficult name to navigate to, and so he borrowed his wife’s name, Wesley, for his practice.
Keep in mind, he had a sister.
If such success wasn’t enough, Newton and a classmate, Dr. Roy Clunas, bought their Alma Mater, only to see the start of World War II, which wasn’t kind to Japanese Americans in the West. Newton’s family was interned at the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho. Newton, with so much momentum behind him, was allowed to attend further education at Earlham College in Indiana. He went on to establish himself in Chicago, where his family joined him after The War.
The fateful twist here is that at some point Newton learned he himself was afflicted with keratoconus, a condition that if left alone would render him blind. Treatment for the condition included the use of contact lenses, which at the time were big and uncomfortable.
Newton’s search for his own cure led he and partner George Jessen to establish Jessen-Wesely, Inc, where they pioneered soft contact lenses, the predecessors to what we have today. Their company was bought by Schering Plough in 1980, which in turn was bought by Ciba Vision in 2001. Small world.
But what happened to North Pacific College of Optometry? In 1945 the school merged with Pacific University, to become the Pacific University College of Optometry, from where Dr. Greg Chin, Dr. Lund Chin, and Dr. John Kikuchi graduated from before joining the family business at Seattle Vision Clinic.
Now remember Newton had a sister. Her name was Corrine Uyesugi. Corrine married Terrance Toda, and in 1945 they established Seattle Vision Clinic.
Corrine Toda also passed away recently, and together their memory will live on for future generations of doctors and patients here in our little corner of this great big, but small world.
