Missouri foundation takes eyeglasses, food aid to Mexican poor

Published: 2005-12-08

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (CNS) -- Dorothy Lemke vividly remembers the despair she saw on people's faces the first time she ran out of eyeglasses. A Jefferson City optician at the time, she had fitted 169 people in a town on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula with eyewear that had been discarded in her office. "After I finished, there was still a mass of people looking sadly back at me," she said. "I still can't forget that look. It just intensified this burning inside of me." Now, almost a quarter-century after she first traveled to the region around Merida, capital of the Mexican state of Yucatan, Lemke and her husband, Rudy, are directing a foundation to benefit the area. The Merida Foundation, a charitable corporation founded and funded by the Lemkes, supports a number of efforts on behalf of the poor. When Dorothy Lemke first went to Mexico in 1982, she found a reason for keeping all those used pairs of glasses collected back home. She returned to Missouri and immediately began making plans for another trip to Merida, carrying about 600 pairs of glasses.

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