By PENELOPE McCLENNY
Mobile Register Staff Reporter
Eugenia Metzler Malone once dashed through Mobile streets in the middle of the night, transporting carefully packaged, solution-filled canisters holding human eyeballs.
Sometimes she met state troopers, who would race the donated tissue to the Mobile airport. Other times, she called amateur radio operators to find someone who needed her precious cargo. Always, the operating room nurse was in charge of taking care of a gift that would give sight to someone who had lost it.
Nearly 50 years later, Malone admits it was not the way she had envisioned her nursing career, but she proudly holds on to memorabilia marking her role in laying the groundwork for the future Alabama Eye Bank, now one of the most successful in the country.
Malone, who is now 86, said her tissue-gathering trips were full of her own nervousness, especially at the beginning.
''You've got someone's eyes, someone's blindness in your hands,'' she said.
The bank celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2005 and its 50,000th tissue donation. In 2004, the organization, now based in Birmingham, ranked sixth nationally in the number of donor tissues provided, according to the Eye Bank Association of America.
The bank has grown from an operating budget of $150,000 in its first year to a $2.5 million budget in 2005, according to spokesman Joseph Beckham, director of marketing. The bank's donations have helped restore sight to more than 30,000 people, according to its Web site, providing tissue for traditional transplants and more advanced procedures as well as materials for research.
Those numbers emerged from humble beginnings, however. In 1959, Malone was working at Providence Hospital when an administrator asked if Malone would learn how to package and transport eye tissue. She said yes.
As an operating room nurse in the late 1950s, Malone knew about the need for donated eye tissue. Working with Dr. Eugene de Juan, who would become the founder of the state's first eye bank, Malone would see patients with a need for new corneas, but there were few resources for donated tissue.
By agreeing to donate eye tissue upon death, a donor supplies corneas for those with damaged sight and additional tissue to help with research. Although the cornea - the clear lens that covers the eye - is the only tissue that can be transplanted, research using other donated parts of the eye has been instrumental in medical advances, doctors say.
Before Malone and others began organizing donations, doctors had a difficult, if not impossible, time locating donor corneas.
In those early days of the bank, Malone was the first to know if a deceased person had agreed to be a donor. She would meet a doctor at the hospital or funeral home where the body was being kept. A physician - or later, as they were trained, a funeral director - would remove the donor tissue, and Malone would place it in a canister with solution.
Regardless of the hour, Malone drove down Mobile streets, shuttling eyes from the person who donated them to the person who needed them.
''Nobody ever died in the daytime,'' Malone said, smiling and recalling many nights when she would leave her family. ''You got up, got out of bed, got dressed and went.''
After getting the tissue, Malone would begin trying to find a person who needed the corneas. That process had to be started immediately since the solutions and preservation process mandated that the tissue be used within a few hours after being removed.
Using a list of doctors who needed corneas based on the priority of the patient, Malone would begin making phone calls.
In the beginning, the bank operated only locally. As it began growing, however, Malone made connections outside of Mobile. If no one in the area needed the tissue, she would contact a local HAM radio operator, who sent a message through the airwaves that tissue was available.
Malone began sending eyes throughout Alabama, to Atlanta and even throughout the country. She would meet state highway patrol officers, who would rush the packaged tissue to the Mobile airport.
''We were going several nights a week to get eyes. It took off, it mushroomed. I have shipped eyes all over the United States,'' Malone said. ''That eye had priority over everything.'
As the bank continued to grow and gain prominence, so did the number of people it helped.
Malone can still vividly recall the day, soon after the bank began, when she met a man waiting for her in the hospital lobby. When she walked downstairs, she saw a patient who had regained his sight following a recent cornea replacement surgery. As the man stood there with a large smile across his face, Malone said, he opened a brown paper bag to reveal a dead rabbit.
After years of blindness, the 38-year-old patient, whose name she can't remember after so many years, had finally been able to see well enough to enjoy one of his favorite pastimes - hunting.
''I was just thrilled to death that I could be involved with something that meant so much to somebody,'' Malone said.
While the Alabama bank makes tissue available to people throughout the state and world, local residents have also reaped the rewards of the organization's success, said Dr. Richard Duffey, a Mobile ophthalmologist who performs cornea transplants. Other states lacking successful banks often don't have the same quick access to tissue, he said.
''As a consequence, there's a waiting list for cornea transplants,'' Duffey said. ''You may wait six months or longer. I pretty much can schedule a patient for a transplant when they come in and have a date set within three weeks. For the most part we can get a cornea in the state of Alabama right when they need it.''
One of Duffey's patient's, Roosevelt Harris, knows how beneficial having a successful eye bank can be. For 23 years, the Mobile resident has been able to see the world through the generosity of a donor's eyes.
At 15 years old, Harris was an avid athlete and active high school student when doctors told him he was losing his vision. The teenager was diagnosed with keratoconus, a condition in which the cornea develops a cone-like bulge.
''I was kind of scared,'' Harris said. ''You've got to realize, you were talking about a 15-year-old kid at the time, still in high school, had been living a productive life, playing sports.''
In 1982, Harris received his first corneal transplant in his right eye. By 1989, he had received a transplant in his left eye. By last year, Harris' vision in his right eye had started to weaken again, and he had his third corneal replacement in July.
The surgeries gave Harris a strong appreciation for those who decide to donate organs following their death. Between his first and second transplant, at the age of 22, he became a donor himself, he said.
''Whatever they can use of mine, take it,'' he said.
Harris, now a father of three daughters who transports prisoners as a Mobile County corrections officer, spoke at a recent event celebrating the eye bank's success. Being on the edge of losing vision is a tough situation, he said.
''Really, it's kind of hard to explain,'' he said. ''Just being that close to it, it's remarkable, and I thank God for the doctors and the eye bank.''
A special thanks to the Mobile Register for permitting AEB to run this article.
**Pictured is cornea recipient Roosevelt Harris
