Albany optometrist speaks of helping Haitian people

ALBANY — Dr. Kerry Reeves, an Albany optometrist, says that his service to some of the poorest people in the world has helped him find the true meaning of Christianity.

Originally from Thomaston, Reeves earned his doctor of optometry degree from the University of Alabama and later moved to Hickory, N.C., where he owned three optometry practices, as well as considerable real estate, he said. But in 2009, after several trips to Haiti to assist the people of the world’s poorest country, he sold his home and most of his possessions to move there with his family.

“We loaded everything we hadn’t sold, all the optometry equipment, on a short bus we bought from the school system and put it on a boat to Haiti,” Reeves told members of the Exchange Club of Albany Friday. “Then we got on a plane to meet it, to begin doing eye care and working with the orphans.”

But on Jan. 12, 2010, disaster struck the tiny nation, in the form of magnitude 7.0 earthquake. Although Reeves and his team were working some 50 miles from the epicenter, they were surprised that the walls of their orphanage remained upright, he said.

“We were all OK,” Reeves said, “but our cook had family in Port-au-Prince and needed to see that they were safe. There was no communication of any kind. The U.S. State Department warned missionaries not to travel to the city, but to wait for evacuation.”

Reeves said the missionary team spent the first night praying together and, despite the warnings, left for Port-au-Prince the next day.

“The first place we went to was a hospital where we found some 200 people dead on the sidewalk out front,” Reeves said. “It was like a war zone, with dead and dying everywhere. From time to time we’d stop and set up a tiny clinic, just to try and help the people, to sew them up or do whatever we could. I probably held 20 people as they died, and I saw thousands.”

Reeves said that although missions from the United States and other nations flew in food, water and other necessary items, because of violent riots, much of it remained undistributed on the tarmac.

According to Reeves, as he was praying over a little girl, hopelessly crushed by falling debris, he experienced a turning point in the development of his faith.

“As I prayed, I begin think, ‘God, this is not what I signed up for, it’s not what I was taught in optometry school. I’m just an optometrist and this is not my job.’ And God basically said, ‘Shut up. you’re not just an optometrist, you’re a Christian, and that’s what Christians do. They pour out their lives for others. They do the hard stuff.’”

Reeves said that through the aftermath of the quake, he and his team were able to minister to “a lot of people.” Before he returned his family to the U.S. in 2012, the team had founded a home for children orphaned by the earthquake, established a refugee camp and helped them find work and housing, as well as start a prostitute rescue program.

Through New Vision Ministries, a not-for-profit organization founded by Reeves and his wife, Joy, in 2009, Reeves continues to provide Haitians with eyeglasses and to screen for various eye disorders. According to Reeves, although Haitians are genetically prone to a certain type of aggressive glaucoma, there are only three optometrists serving 11 million on the island.

Reeves said that even though he and his wife had intended to make their home full-time in Haiti they left after three years because one of their adopted children was found to be autistic and another to have a learning disability.

“We felt our primary job was to be Christians to our children and to pour ourselves into them,” Reeves said, “In 2012 we sensed we needed to return to the United States.”

In 2013 Reeves joined Berg Eye Group in Albany as an optometrist. He also serves as interim pastor for Byne Memorial Baptist Church.