One of the joys of retirement for many of us is the opportunity to travel around this amazing world we live in. Having spent our careers trying to help others enjoy the gift of sight, we may appreciate more than most the good fortune of being able to see clearly the beauty that our world has to offer.
One of our colleagues, Dr. Kenneth J. Hoffer, has not only made it possible for thousands of people to enjoy better vision through his innovative contributions in cataract surgery, but he has gone yet another step further in helping all of us more fully enjoy what we may see as we travel about.
Dr. Hoffer grew up in Troy in upstate New York, but an internship at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, Calif., convinced him that this was where he wanted to be. So, after his ophthalmology residency at Kresge Eye Center of Wayne State University in Detroit, he and his wife, Marcia, returned to Santa Monica, where he began his practice. He had not been there long before his interest in lens implants led him to perform the first phaco and IOL implant in the area in 1974.
Dr. Hoffer and his wife Marcia in Paris, 1997.
Later that year, he founded the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) and, the following year, he established the society’s journal, The Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, for which he served as editor during its first six years. He also helped start the society’s Annual Scientific Sessions, which he chaired for the first seven years.
His contributions to cataract surgery have included teaching as a clinical professor at UCLA and inventions of instruments, intraocular lens designs, surgical techniques and formulas for lens power calculations. He has had over 200 scientific papers published, along with 60 chapters in textbooks and his book, “IOL Power,” was published in 2011. Now, after 45 years, he is “slowing down” and concentrating more on advances in IOL powers and the IOL Power Club, which he helped start in San Sebastian, Spain, with some international colleagues.
And that brings us to the second way in which Dr. Hoffer is helping others see the world.
EU Map of countries (in purple) that Dr. Hoffer has visited.
If you are planning a trip to Europe this winter or anytime in the future, you may want to take a look at Dr. Hoffer’s website, KHoffer.com. There you will find an extensive collection of excellent photographs and accompanying comments on travel throughout virtually every country and region in Europe, including Russia. It is a remarkable resource to help you plan your trip and a hobby to which Dr. Hoffer has devoted countless hours in its ongoing development.
It began in 1997, after the Hoffers’ three children were grown and they took their first extensive European trip that summer. They went to Italy and spent three months driving around the country. It was such an enjoyable experience that they continued to take three-month European trips every other summer, with the most recent being to Greece and Bulgaria in 2017. In all, they have visited 30 countries in Europe, with Romania and Malta being the only two they have yet to visit.
In the days before social media became popular, Dr. Hoffer began by keeping his “diarios” (“diario” is Italian for diary) of their travel experiences on his Palm Pilot. Each night, he would send his notes along with a few photos by AOL email to family, friends and colleagues, the number of which soon grew to more than 150. In 2003, he met an IBM employee who helped him start distributing his diarios on an IBM email, and this continued through 2005, following which the same friend encouraged him to launch his current website.
Anyone who has fought with digital technology, which I guess is about all of us, can appreciate the challenges that Dr. Hoffer has faced.
“Fighting technology changes is a huge challenge,” he bemoans. For example, there was the time that AOL shut down his account because they accused him of spamming, and he had to call them from Spain to get his account reopened. And, since all his photos before 2003 were nondigital, he has had to convert all of his slides to digital files.
Dr. Hoffer also had to alter his procedures over the years. He found he was spending too much time writing his travelogues during his journey, so he changed to taking photos and notes while traveling and writing when he got home. Working in Adobe Photoshop and editing is very time-consuming (one page can take up to three months), so he was not able to finish one trip before taking off on the next. His solution has been to write at least 10 pages for a new trip before adding one page to previous trips.
But he has persevered and reaped the rewards of his diligence. Although he doesn’t have a counter to know how many read his website, he has many positive anecdotes, like the time he was doing a Google search for a building in Munich and was taken to one of his own diarios. Or the time an import/export dealer in China was searching for a person in France, who happened to be an acquaintance of Dr. Hoffer’s, and found him on Dr. Hoffer’s website.
Dr. Hoffer and his wife Marcia in the Swiss Alps, 2009.
So why does he continue? I suspect there are many reasons, not the least of which are his obvious love of traveling and his pleasure in helping others make the most of their travels. But Dr. Hoffer offers additional reasons.
“It will be great reliving these trips someday in a nursing home,” he says with a smile. He also recalls a program on “60 Minutes” some 20 years ago in which several people over the age of 100 were interviewed, and it was noted that a common trait of each was that they had “something they needed to finish.”
So, Dr. Hoffer’s hobby will hopefully keep him going for many more years to come while providing each of us a way to enhance the enjoyment of our travels.