GALION — Genevieve “Vee” TyRee is the “eye-con” at Family Eye Care.
The 93-year-old, a mainstay at the 337 Harding Way West practice for 56 years, still works two days a week. She’s the optician with an eye for eyewear. A frame fashionista.
“I think the one thing was really the camaraderie of getting to know patients because I did enjoy that, and I still like the people,” she said, after adjusting a pair of glasses for a patient, Eric Griebling of Bucyrus. “I loved the people, and I got to know the families.”
Indeed.
Vee has been dispensing glasses at Family Eye Care since April 1963. Since the practice was owned by Dr. Donald Smith, who lived in the 100-year-old building with his wife, Millie, and their children. Since the day Vee stopped in to get her son, Scott’s, glasses repaired.
“Dr. Smith approached me that afternoon and said, ‘Vee, would you like to come and work for me? You’re always up here a lot anyway,’” Vee recalled. “I told him yes, but that I would only stay for two years.”
The plan? Work just long enough to pay off a loan she and her husband, Thomas Noble, had taken out to purchase land on Chestnut Place in Galion. They wanted to build a house, only the second one on the street at that time. She took the full-time job.
In the early years, it was a two-person operation. Dr. Smith saw the patients, did eye exams and wrote their prescriptions. Vee answered the phone, did all the office billing, ordered eyewear from Interstate Optical and helped clients find the perfect “flat tops.”
It was easier back then, she said. No computers. No contacts. Not much insurance work. And very few choices. Glasses came in just three colors – black, brown and beige.
“Most eyewear at that time when I first started was glass and now there’s very little,” she said.
Since then, Vee has worked with two generations of families. She has seen countless changes in the eyewear industry. The advent of contact lenses, no-line lenses, transition lenses. And the debut of sunglasses and the designers who created them – Kate Spade, Jimmy Choo and Juicy Couture.
“Eventually, for women as well as men, they got to be very high-styling,” said Vee, who sported trendy cat-eyes in the day. “My color was always white because my hair was platinum, and everyone knew me for my glasses. When I worked for Dr. Smith, I got about every color we got in.”
Before Dr. Smith retired, he welcomed Dr. Randall Hieber to the longtime practice. Other optometrists have come and gone over Vee’s tenure until, in 2001, Galion native Dr. Christina Hickle joined the staff, which has now grown to 11.
But Vee has fond memories of simpler days. When little girls, for example, always received a pair of plastic glasses for their baby dolls after their appointments.
“People still come in today and say, ‘You used to give me those doll glasses, do you remember?’”
One of those little girls was Dr. Hickle who, as an eight-year-old years ago, stopped at Family Eye Care with her parents, Robert and Carolyn Hickle, to pick out her first pair of glasses. And she met Vee.
Now they work side by side.
“It’s a wonderful blessing,” Dr. Hickle said, smiling. “You couldn’t ask for anything more.”