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as told by Sam Besl  clearly remember the details of my trip to North Carolina a few years ago. But if it wasn’t for the hard work of a dispensing optician in the Gundersen Lutheran Eye Clinic - Onalaska, my memories could have been very fuzzy.
 It was the summer before my freshman year of high school and my parents let me go with a friend’s family on a trip to a North Carolina beach. Four days in to the week-and-a-half vacation, my friend’s younger cousins were playing racquetball in the ocean. When their mom called them to come in the house, they left the racquets in the water. One of the boys noticed the racquets floating away and tried to go out and get them. The water was much too deep for him, so I ran down from the house with my glasses on and brought him to shore. Then I went back out to retrieve the racquets.
The trouble all started on my way back to shore. The first wave came at me quickly, but I remembered to hold onto my glasses when I got hit. I wasn’t so lucky the second time around. I heard my friend’s mom scream, “Sam, watch out! There’s another one coming and it’s bigger!” I turned around and this wave was so big I had to look up at it. The next thing I knew the wave took me down, I washed ashore and my glasses were gone - never to be seen again.
We called my parents and they sent me an old pair of glasses right away. Unfortunately, they were just enormous. I looked like a dork and I was so embarrassed to be seen in them. That’s when my mom called Sharon Felt at the Onalaska Eye Clinic. She’d fitted me since I started wearing glasses and when my mom told her what happened Sharon told her not to worry, she’d take care of me.
The next day, my new glasses arrived in North Carolina. They were identical to the ones I’d lost. It was such a relief to see that package arrive in the mail. Sharon knew how important it was to me and she went above and beyond to get me the new glasses. Clearly, she saved my vacation. |