Addison walkathon nets $4,000 for sight research

ADDISON – Sponsors of the 82 people who participated in Saturday’s Gift of Sight Foundation walkathon are still sending in their pledges, but the event raised at least $4,000, President Phillip Farren said Monday.

“It was a wonderful response, particularly since it’s our first walkathon and we had the sponsorship papers out for just two weeks,” said the 62-year-old former lobsterman.” I am very grateful to everyone for their support.”

Farren has been visually impaired since 1977 when he lost the sight in one eye because of an infection. He has been totally blind since March 1988 when his second eye was removed after he developed a life-threatening infection after a cornea transplant.

He formed the Phillip Farren Gift of Sight Foundation in mid-June to help raise money for research to prevent or reverse blindness.

Farren and his Seeing Eye dog, Anna, led Saturday’s walk from the Addison library to Columbia Supermarket, a 2-mile trek that Farren covered in just over a half-hour.

The money raised by the walkers will be used to support the work of Dr. William Bromley, a retired ophthalmologist who is researching genetic factors in open-angle glaucoma for the nonprofit Center for Human Genetics in Bar Harbor.

Bromley’s research is done in Africa, where he collected blood samples from families who are stricken with the disease. The University of Michigan’s Kellogg Eye Center in Ann Arbor, a partner in the project, is conducting the genetic analysis on the samples.

Open-angle glaucoma is the most common form of glaucoma in the world, but among blacks, it tends to begin at an earlier age and is more severe and more difficult to treat.

Bromley said last month that he became acutely aware of the problem of blinding glaucoma in the African population and the familial association of the disease when he participated in a volunteer mission to the continent in 1997.

Farren said the foundation is planning a second walkathon in Ellsworth on Sept. 8, and he is working with staff from U.S. Rep. John Baldacci’s office to arrange a spaghetti dinner fund-raiser for the foundation.

For more information, call Farren at 483-4453.