Page 41 - Southern Oregon Magazine Summer 2019

be productive. For us, providing that for someone produces deep satisfaction and fulfillment.
It’s been the most meaningful work that we’ve ever done.

TOREE: It’s exciting to put a team together. It’s a challenge too, especially going to a
new place. This last trip, to Ecuador, took over a year in preparation. We work on the project at
home—preparing the glasses, edging lenses and getting everything ready. There are hundreds
of glasses lying all over our house.

Q: WHAT TYPES OF GLASSES DO YOU TAKE?

KURT: Reading glasses are sometimes all they need, over-the-counter reading glasses.
We will usually take about 3,000 pairs of reading glasses in various prescriptions. We also col-
lect and catalogue used prescription glasses. We get thousands of pairs of prescription glasses
donated through the Lions Club. We enter the prescriptions into a computer inventory system
and match those to the patients in our clinic.

Trust.
Q: CAN YOU MAKE PRESCRIPTION LENSES ON-SITE?

KURT: Astigmatism is particularly hard to prescribe, and lenses need to be custom Nurture.
made. The lens has to be oriented to the correct axis for the patient. It’s difficult to match
a donated astigmatism prescription from a patient who lives in Oregon with somebody in Experience.
Malawi. The solution is “Wilks glasses.” We have an inventory of round lenses that are made
in progressive powers in both nearsightedness and farsightedness, with a couple of different
astigmatism power corrections. We designed a frame, which is perfectly round and contracted Words that matter when
a Chinese company to make them. The round lens can be rotated in the frame to the correct
axis. It works extremely well. you’re having a baby.

TOREE: If the axis has to be at 63°, we can make it exactly at 63°. They’re perfect At Asante, we know that giving
and look like Harry Potter glasses. We spend months in our shop preparing them. I think we birth is one of the most joyous
made 300 “Wilks glasses” for our Ecuador clinic. experiences of your life.
Let us help bring your little
miracle into this world.
Q: HOW DID YOU END UP IN SOUTHERN OREGON?
Asante Family Birth Centers
are located at:
KURT: I grew up in Iowa City. I did my undergrad at the University of Iowa and com-
pleted optometry school in Chicago. Toree was from Chicago, and earned her Bachelor in ■ Asante Ashland Community
Education from Western Illinois University. We dated for a couple of years while I was going to Hospital | Ashland
school. Chicago was fine, but I wanted out of there. Going west was always what I had in my ■ Asante Rogue Regional
mind and Toree wanted the same thing, so we decided to head west together. Medical Center | Medford
■ Asante Three Rivers Medical
TOREE: I had a car, he didn’t. We’d heard a lot about Oregon. We were looking for Center | Grants Pass
the perfect home. We wanted to be in the mountains. We wanted to be near a university and
live in a smaller town. We loved Ashland. We came into Medford and talked to a fellow at the Go to asante.org
Chamber of Commerce. He directed us to his eye doctor who told us about a practice that was to learn about our
for sale in Medford.
childbirth services.
KURT: We were living in a tent in the Applegate. We didn’t have any money, but the
optometrist selling the practice made it possible for us. It’s been 38 years and we’re still grate-
ful. Southern Oregon is unique in so many ways. You can drive two hours in any direction and
be in rain forests, snow, high desert or at the Pacific Ocean. In Iowa, you have to go 1,500 miles 16FBCA003_SOM
to experience a different environment.

summer 2019 | www.southernoregonmagazine.com 39