EyeOn Patients - Illinois College of Optometry

Eye On Faculty
Leadership
Roll
Leonard Messner, OD,
runs the Illinois Eye Institute
Messner creates
scholarship in honor
of Lawrence Gray
Leonard Messner, OD, has established
a scholarship fund at the Illinois
College of Optometry in honor of his
mentor and friend, Lawrence G. Gray,
OD, who died last year.
Messner met Gray at the Eye
Institute of the Pennsylvania College
of Optometry, where Gray was chief
of neuro-ophthalmic disease services.
He was also an adjunct professor
of neurology at the Hospital of the
University of Pennsylvania, and taught
the neuro-ophthalmics course along
with Messner at ICO.
“It’s with respect and gratitude for
Larry Gray that we name this scholarship,”
Messner says. “He was a great
friend, clinician and teacher. I miss
him tremendously.”
To contribute to the Lawrence G. Gray
Scholarship fund, contact Felicia
Filbin at (312) 949-7071or
FFilbin@eyecare.ico.edu.
13 ICO Matters / Spring 2005
He may be the man behind the big desk, but Leonard Messner, OD, is really a man
of the people. Ask the Vice President for Patient Care Services at the Illinois Eye
Institute about running his multi-million dollar, 200-plus staff operation and he
generally passes credit to his team: “Everybody does the work here,” Messner says.
And when he talks about projects at IEI, he is most enthusiastic about the ones
that reach outside the walls of the clinic and into the community. “I think our work
with community health centers through the Vison of Hope Health Alliance is the
most exciting thing at the Eye Institute right now,” he says. These partnerships help
IEI coordinate eye and medical care to serve underserved populations.
Indeed, Messner’s overall orientation is to serve patients. “We want to make the
patient experience as positive and satisfying as possible,” he says. “Our continued
collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Department of Ophthalmology &
Visual Sciences and other medical partners allows for a comprehensive model of
eyecare delivery within the clinic.”
In his early days as an optometrist, Messner says he envisioned a quiet private
practice on the East Coast, where he and his wife, Stephanie, Chair for Post-
Graduate and IEI-based Education at ICO, grew up and earned their degrees at the
Pennsylvania College of Optometry in 1984.
Instead he and Stephanie headed to Chicago in 1985, after completing residencies
at PCO’s Eye Institute. Far from private practice, Messner runs one of the
largest clinical eye care training operations in the Chicago metropolitan area. The
Eye Institute is the single largest provider of primary eyecare services in the state.
Messner has had good guidance. A protégé of Lawrence G. Gray, OD, chief of
neuro-ophthalmic disease services at the Eye Institute at PCO and co-director of
the neuro-ophthalmic diseases at Hahnemann University, Messner pursued vitreoretinal
diseases and neuro-ophthalmic disorders as a specialty. He considers Gray a
mentor, and says he may have learned most from him about how to relate to patients
(see sidebar).
He learned about leading the Eye Institute from Charles Mullen, OD, former
president of ICO, who Messner is still close to. Together they fashioned the future
of the clinic back in the late 1990s, and Messner has been manning the helm as IEI
has burgeoned ever since.
“This is a great place to work,” he says. “We just have extraordinary people here.” ◆