Barry Casler was only 14 when he first realized something was wrong with his eyes. Growing up in Kalamazoo and later living abroad in Japan, Hong Kong and Korea, he suddenly faced a diagnosis that would shape the rest of his life—and ultimately connect him to the gift of sight through corneal transplantation.
“We came back for the summer to visit family and a vision specialist ophthalmologist. He said, ‘you may have keratoconus,’” Barry recalled. “He referred me to a gentleman in Indianapolis, a cornea specialist who eventually referred me to Dr. Roger Meyer at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center.”
Keratoconus is a progressive eye disease where the cornea thins and bulges into a cone shape, distorting vision. For a while, hard contact lenses helped Barry manage, but by his junior year of high school, everyday activities were becoming nearly impossible.
“I started having difficulty reading books,” he said. “I had a lot of difficulty with sports. I was playing rugby in Hong Kong and guys behind me were telling me which way the ball was going. That was an indication my vision had started to digress.”
With keratoconus in both eyes, Barry was legally blind and unable to participate in daily tasks at his high school in Decatur, Michigan, so a woman from the Van Buren Intermediate School District came to his home multiple times a week to give him his homework and administer his tests.
Waiting for the gift of sight
Eventually, Barry’s vision declined so severely that he was placed on the cornea transplant waiting list at Kellogg Eye Center. At that time, before modern eye banking and donation practices, donor tissue recovery and cornea transplantation followed a very different process. Patients awaiting sight-restoring surgery were placed on a list much like organ transplant candidates are today.
Barry spent the summer of 1978 carrying a beeper everywhere, waiting for the moment that could change his life.
“Dr. Meyer said a young man had died in a motorcycle accident. That I was next on the list to get a transplant, and so he wanted me to stay at the hospital, check into the Kellogg Eye Center and have my transplant the next morning,” Barry said. “And so, I had my first transplant.”
The surgery was successful, but recovery was long. With stitches in his eye for a year and limited vision in the other, Barry needed to have all his schoolbooks in large print or on tape. He felt isolated his entire senior year of high school.
But then after being fitted for a contact lens, Barry’s transplanted eye achieved nearly 20/20 vision.
“To me it was a miracle, you know, after all those years of not being able to see certain things, struggling to see my books and the board,” he said.
Two transplants, a lifetime of impact
Five years later, as a senior at the University of Michigan, he underwent a second transplant. Both surgeries were successful—and Barry has lived with the same two corneas ever since.
The impact was life changing. “It gives you your dignity back.”
Barry met his wife, built a career, raised two children, and is now a proud grandfather of three. Nearly 50 years later, he still has the same corneas—something he considers remarkable not only because of the gift itself, but also because of the continuity of care he’s received.
“Being able to see individual blades of grass, individual leaves, my wife more clearly, all the little things you take for granted, were amazing to me,” Barry said. “On a bigger picture, I worked for Johnson & Johnson for 34 and a half years, so I was able to provide for my family in a way that would've been much more difficult if I didn't have my vision.”
Barry says Eversight has been the constant in his journey. He knew that his surgeons could trust that they would receive exactly what they needed, and that gave him stability with his care for nearly five decades. From his first surgeon to the physician who follows him today, and even the specialists who fitted his contact lenses, Barry has had extraordinary continuity of care—two surgeons, two corneas and the same dedicated support for over 50 years.
Barry knows none of his success and joy would have been possible without the two strangers who gave him the gift of sight.
“I get quite emotional whenever I talk about it. It’s hard not to get emotional. I think for someone to give the ultimate gift and the donor families to carry through under so much grief, it's life-changing,” Barry said. “There’s no way to ever fully express gratitude for a gift like that other than to try to give back and make sure you’re doing the right things in your life.”
Giving back through Eversight
For Barry, giving back means serving as vice chair of Eversight’s Michigan Advisory Board, helping to advance the mission that gave him his sight more than four decades ago. The board comes together every year to help organize and support local Eversight outreach events and fundraisers.
“Well, the biggest thing was, you've got to give back,” Barry said. “I've been given so many blessings that for me it was important to get involved. When I understood the Eversight mission, I definitely wanted to be involved to make sure that more people can continue to have the same benefits I've had.”
He also supports Eversight through a retired employer match program, making sure every dollar he gives is doubled to help more people see.
“What I give is doubled and I hope more people take advantage of employer match program,” Barry said.
Treasuring life’s once-in-a-lifetime moments
Today, Barry treasures every moment as a once-in-a-lifetime gift.
“When I’ve talked to the Lions, I’ve always say there’s an old Japanese saying, ‘ichi-go ichi-e,’ which when roughly translated means ‘once in a lifetime, never again,’” he said. “The way I look at each of those moments is these are once-in-a-lifetime moments. We all take them for granted, but because of my cornea transplant, I take those less for granted.”
Barry’s story is a powerful reminder of the ripple effect of donation and transplantation. One donor, one cornea, one decision in the midst of grief—it can change the course of a life, and countless lives around it, forever.
“It sounds like a small thing, one little cornea, but the ripple effect goes on forever,” he said.
Looking back, Barry often thinks about how different his life would have been without those two transplants and how grateful he is to have built a full life, all because of the gift of sight.
