NC senator takes eye care global

N.C. Sen. David Curtis is helping the world to see, one patient at a time.

And after 50 mission trips over 16 years, he figures he’s treated a whopping 48,000 people around the world, fitting them with glasses and treating their eye infections.

And that’s not counting the 500,000 people in developing countries who he says have been helped by people he’s trained to lead clinics of their own.

“You can change their lives, no question,” says Curtis, 66.

The soft-spoken Republican is a Mooresville native who ran an optometry practice in Lincolnton for three decades before selling it in 2009. He was elected to the Senate in 2012.

Last week, Curtis returned from a visit to the Dominican Republic. On his 50th overseas trip, he treated 305 people.

“They were very thankful,” he says. “Some of them could read for the first time in five to 10 years.”

Like his first trip, a 1999 visit to India, most of Curtis’ trips are part of Christian missions. They’re supported financially largely by his church, Denver’s Westport Baptist.

On each trip he brings 2,000 pair of glasses donated by the Lions Club, along with antibiotic drops and artificial tears for dry eye. He says he’s been to at least a dozen countries from China to Kenya to Chile.

With all that, he knows he just scratched the surface of the need.

That’s why he created what he calls “Eye Doc in a Box,” a program of one-day seminars that trains lay people to conduct their own eye clinics in developing countries.

He figures he’s trained 1,000 people at seminars around the country. His work has a clear Christian focus or, as he say on his website, “communicating the love of Jesus Christ through providing eye care.”

Curtis has made up to five trips a year. Because of this year’s marathon legislative session, he’s just been able to fit in one, though he’s looking at a trip to South Sudan after Christmas.

Ever since his first mission trip in 1999, he’s known that’s what he wants to do.

“I came away just blown away with the incredible need,” Curtis says. “The only way to avoid needing eye care is to die young.”

Heck of a job, Cintra!

Back in 2005, Patrick Rhode was acting deputy director of FEMA, the top aide to then-Director Michael Brown.

Though Brown was widely criticized for his agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina, he got a pat on the back from President George W. Bush.

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” Bush told him during a tour of the devastation.

Rhode, who’d come into government after a role in Bush’s 2000 campaign, later had his own memorable quote. In 2005 he called FEMA’s response to Katrina “probably one of the most efficient and effective responses in the country’s history.”

Now Rhode is the vice president of corporate affairs for Cintra, the Spanish company building the controversial Interstate 77 toll lanes.

This story was originally published November 17, 2015 at 5:39 PM with the headline "NC senator takes eye care global."