Ann Arbor Commandery No. 13, Knights Templar is proud to share the following announcement from the Knights Templar Eye Foundation (KTEF) regarding a new partnership between the Foundation and the University of Michigan’s W.K. Kellogg Eye Center.
The Knights Templar Eye Foundation is supported in part by an annual assessment paid by every Knight Templar in the country, together with voluntary gifts from throughout the Masonic family. In that sense, every Sir Knight of Ann Arbor Commandery has a small share in the work announced below, and many of our members have contributed well beyond that assessment through Life Sponsorships, the Grand Commander’s Club, the Grand Master’s Club, and other opportunities to support the mission of the Foundation.
That support has long had a particularly local significance for our Commandery. Researchers and physicians at the University of Michigan, including at the W.K. Kellogg Eye Center, have received Knights Templar Eye Foundation support for work ranging from pediatric retinal imaging and inherited retinal disease to nanophthalmos and ocular toxoplasmosis.
Kellogg residents Tapan Patel and Lev Prasov received Knights Templar research awards for a smartphone-based retinal camera for young children and for research into the genetics of nanophthalmos. Dr. Warren Pan received $70,000 to study photoreceptor protection in inherited retinal diseases. Dr. Fengrong Wang, of the University’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology, received a Career-Starter Research Grant to study ocular toxoplasmosis.
In 1979, when Sir Knight Arthur B. Trevithick of this Commandery served as Right Eminent Grand Commander and brought the Grand Conclave home to Ann Arbor, Sir Knight Gilbert A. Rice told the Ann Arbor News that the Eye Foundation had by then given more than $12 million for the blind and sight-impaired. Few then could have imagined that figure surpassing $190 million, or that a permanent endowment would one day carry the Knights Templar name at Michigan.
The connection between Ann Arbor Commandery and the University itself reaches back much further. When Ann Arbor Commandery No. 13 received its charter on June 14, 1865, the University of Michigan had been in Ann Arbor for less than thirty years. In the century and a half since, generations of our Sir Knights have also served the University.
Sir Knight William G. Doty earned his degree from the University of Michigan Law Department in 1875, served as Eminent Commander of Ann Arbor Commandery in 1885–86, and later became Michigan’s 34th Grand Commander.
Sir Knight Mortimer E. Cooley, who helped build the University’s College of Engineering and whose name remains associated with the first building constructed on North Campus, was a member of Ann Arbor Commandery for more than fifty years. In December 1943, Cooley was honored with a Grand Commandery citation at our annual inspection, eight months before his death.
Sir Knight Junius E. Beal, publisher of the Ann Arbor Courier and a Regent of the University for more than three decades, was likewise a member of this Commandery. During his long service to Michigan, he championed projects including Hill Auditorium and Michigan Stadium.
Sir Knight Richard H. Sands chaired the University’s physics department and later served as Grand Master of Masons in Michigan.
When Ann Arbor hosted the 103rd Grand Conclave in 1959, the largest Masonic gathering the city had seen, our Commandery did so with the cooperation of the University, establishing headquarters at the Michigan Union and holding exhibition drills on old Ferry Field. Today, Ann Arbor Commandery minute books from as early as 1865 are preserved in the University’s Bentley Historical Library.
That relationship is not merely a matter of history. Sir Knight Brandon Mullins and his wife, Lady Puja Mullins, have both worked with the University of Michigan Center for Digital Curricula, a research center in the College of Engineering that develops free, standards-aligned digital curricula for K–8 classrooms across Michigan.
That present-day connection reflects a much broader pattern spanning generations. Ann Arbor Commandery has counted among its members University faculty members, administrators, Regents, and men whose work helped shape the institution itself. The University, in turn, has been part of the life of the Commandery, from hosting Templar gatherings at the Michigan Union and Ferry Field to preserving our records today in the Bentley Historical Library.
The two institutions have grown alongside one another in Ann Arbor for more than a century and a half. Their histories have crossed in education, public service, scholarship, civic life, and through the Knights Templar Eye Foundation, in medical research. The establishment of a permanent Knights Templar endowment at the University is therefore not an isolated connection, but a new chapter in a relationship reaching back nearly to the founding of Ann Arbor Commandery itself.
For Ann Arbor Commandery, then, the announcement below is more than news from our national Templar charity. It brings together institutions with which our members have been connected for generations and establishes a permanent Knights Templar presence at a University intertwined with the life of this Commandery since its earliest years. We are grateful to have played a small part in the work of the Knights Templar Eye Foundation, and prouder still to see that work take permanent root here in Ann Arbor.
A $4 Million Partnership with the University of Michigan’s W.K. Kellogg Eye Center Establishes the Knights Templar Eye Foundation Endowed Pediatric Research Fund
A $2 million gift from the Knights Templar Eye Foundation, Inc. (KTEF), has forged a partnership with the W.K. Kellogg Eye Center at Michigan Medicine’s Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, establishing the Knights Templar Eye Foundation Endowed Pediatric Research Fund. A pioneer in inherited eye disorders, the University of Michigan established the first Heredity Eye Clinic in the world in 1940. In tandem with the foundation’s philanthropic support, the university will match the gift with an additional $2 million for a total of $4 million that will fuel innovative children’s vision research and advance leading-edge care.
“Our pediatric vision physician-scientists are already making life-changing inroads in children’s eye care,” says Shahzad I. Mian, M.D., Chair and F. Bruce Fralick Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Director of the W.K. Kellogg Eye Center. “This partnership will further enhance our work and accelerate our efforts to bring about scientific discoveries that improve lives and give hope to people everywhere. The KTEF’s investment will help our most promising projects make their way to clinical care sooner, diminishing the threat of vision loss for many childhood eye disorders.”
KTEF’s mission is “to improve vision through research, education, and supporting access to care.” The foundation has funded innovative pediatric ophthalmic research for decades. Recently, David J. Kussman, President of the KTEF, wrote in the foundation’s donor publication about its transformational impact on strabismus. “Our research dollars have helped develop new, non-surgical treatments for this problem, and additional research and endowment programs are all being funded by your faithful support.”
The Knights Templar Eye Foundation Endowed Pediatric Research Fund will leverage the Kellogg Eye Center Pediatric Ophthalmology Clinic’s strong foundation to ensure every child with a genetic eye disease, both common and rare, receives the best possible care and vision possible. “Our leadership in pediatric ophthalmology is augmented by the complex patient population in our subspecialty clinics. We can build on our excellence as we learn from every patient, informing care and advancing treatments along the way,” says Dr. Mian.
The KTEF research endowment will provide critical funds for seed projects that bring bold new ideas in pediatric ophthalmic research to life. The endowment will also provide funding for trainees in pediatric eye research including fellows, residents, and graduate and medical students. It will support research infrastructure for patient recruitment and clinical data curation, clinical trials participation, collection of patient-derived samples, and bioinformatics analysis for patient-derived data.
Congenital eye disorders are the leading cause of childhood blindness worldwide. Many children and families go through diagnostic odysseys to find an answer. Once a diagnosis is found, it can be difficult to manage care between highly specialized physicians. Often, the correct diagnosis and optimal treatment require a team of specialists working in a center with vast experience of treating these rare conditions. Although prompt treatment may prevent blindness in most children, too many lose their vision and suffer hardship unnecessarily due to the lack of local expertise and limited access to highly specialized centers.
The W.K. Kellogg Eye Center is ranked as one of the nation’s top 10 eye centers for research and care and No. 1 in Michigan. It is an established leader in pediatric eye disease research and clinical care. Its rich history of scientific discovery has improved outcomes and quality of life for children facing vision difficulties of all kinds and is among the few academic institutions that provides world-class care from all eye subspecialties to children. This includes cornea, retina, glaucoma, neuro-ophthalmology, strabismus and amblyopia, ocular oncology, inherited retinal disease, plastic surgery, and ophthalmic genetics. Kellogg’s coordinated care extends to children with the rarest of conditions that affect eyesight such as microphthalmia, Peters anomaly, anterior segment dysgenesis, and more.
Knights Templar Educational Foundation Scholarships
The Knights Templar commitment to education extends beyond medical research.
Through the Knights Templar Educational Foundation, organized by the Grand Encampment in 1922, Templary has assisted more than 80,000 students nationwide. Ann Arbor Commandery has more than once had the privilege of helping a student see a Michigan degree through to completion.
Applications for the Michigan Division are now open and may be completed online at:
https://fs8.formsite.com/ktedf/mp2paqpfjz/index
Scholarships are considered without regard to age, race, religion, national origin, gender, or Masonic ties. They are not grants-in-aid, and students may apply regardless of their financial circumstances.
If you know a student who could benefit, please share the application. Ann Arbor Commandery’s Recorder is also glad to assist anyone in the Ann Arbor area through the process.
Completed applications must be received by February 15th.