Our special guest speaker this evening was Lion Diane Willingham from the Wake Forest Lions Club. Lion Diane is also the district 31-G representative for Clinical Eye Research. As we get older we face many physical changes. One of the things that typically changes is the health of our eyes. Many of the lions in the room this evening were wearing eye glasses or contacts, in fact, to correct vision issues. North Carolina Lions and Lions internationally have a long tradition of raising awareness for and financially supporting clinical eye research. Some eye issues can be corrected with glasses or even lighting changes. But some other issues are more serious and require other treatments that range all the way from vitamin and mineral supplements to eye injections to laser or other surgery. There were some questions and some discussion about eye injections that didn’t set very well after dinner. Some common issues that people have as they grow older are things like: Macular degeneration which is typically seen people 60 years or older and causes blurry vision and sometimes straight lines to look curved, Cataracts which is a clouding of the lenses and is the most common surgery performed in the USA, Diabetic Retinopathy which is caused by blood vessel damage in the retina due to diabetes and can cause blindness if left untreated, and glaucoma which is caused by damage to the optical nerve and could cause pressure to build up inside the eye causing issues with peripheral vision. Lion Diane shared a fairly long list of financial contributions that North Carolina Lions have made over the years to fund facilities and research projects.