In 2025, Iowa Lions Eye Bank will celebrate its 70th anniversary. To celebrate, we are posting occasional features about people who have either had an impact on, or been impacted by, the eye bank over the years.
George Carsner grew up in Marion, Iowa, received his first ham radio license in 1949, and by the time the 1960s rolled around, was at the top of the amateur radio license scale.
By then, Carsner was living with his wife and two children in Iowa City, where he became acquainted with fellow amateur ham radio operators Ted Hunter and Dr. Alson Braley, founder and first medical director of Iowa Lions Eye Bank.
In 1962, Hunter and Braley created the Eye Bank Network, utilizing ham radio operators to coordinate the exchange of donor eye tissue between eye banks in the United States. The two recruited Carsner to participate.
“When they were busy, or Dr. Braley was out of town, they would have me call the Eye Bank Net for that day,” Carsner says. “So, I was sort of a backup operator for the network.”
Carsner says he and most of the other amateur radio operators built their own ham radio transmitters and receivers; he had a 1,000-watt amplifier that would reach “quite a way” but it only went so far. However, an amateur radio operator named Wayne “Chubby” Walters, whose call sign was W9DOG, was able to receive messages from the east and west coast and acted as “net control” from his home in Indianapolis.
By 1966, there were more than a hundred amateur radio operators taking part in the operations of the Eye Bank Network, twice a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year.
Carsner has fond memories of being part of the Eye Bank Network.
“It was a lot of fun, and there was pride in that we could do something to save somebody’s sight, by providing information and getting the eyes to where they were needed,” Carsner says.
Carsner also has positive memories of working with Hunter and Braley.
“Al Braley was a doctor, and he was very skillful at surgery, and he was always a jolly fellow,” Carsner says. “Every year we would have an Eye Bank Net get-together some place, either in Iowa City or Kansas City or Chicago, or some place like that, and instead of just hearing each other’s voices, we could see each other.
“And Ted Hunter was a brilliant radio engineer, who worked for Collins Radio, designing equipment. Those guys were well known around the country, so they had their friends all get on the network.”
The Eye Bank Network was on the air until 1992, after modern computing methods made it obsolete. By that time, 11,000 corneas and been distributed by the network.
Today, at age 94, Carsner continues to occasionally dabble in ham radio.
“There’s a contest of some kind every day of the week and every day of the month, but I only participate in about six contests during the year,” he says.
