PENINSULA BUSINESS – Family vision
A family of optometrists on the Peninsula remains loyal to the community, which held it close during a personal tragedy
The Hawleys share a laugh at Palos Verdes Family Vision. Photo
At the Hawley family’s dinner table, the topic of conversation has almost always centered on optometry — controversies, stories of patients, unsolved cases.
“I knew what a refractive error was when I was two-and-a-half,” Kathleen Hawley says, laughing.
Since recently joining her parents Jim and Terry as the third doctor in the family practice, the 30-year-old has brought her own stories to the table, like how she recently got a pair of glasses on a two-year-old for the first time and the toddler lit up with a giant smile. It’s difficult not to take their patients home with them, Kathleen says.
Since its inception in 1981, the Palos Verdes Family Vision has drawn patients from across the Hill as well as San Pedro, Torrance and other nearby cities. Lifetime patients fly in from as far Chicago and Brazil to see the Hawleys.
The family didn’t realize exactly how much that meant to them until a personal tragedy struck in 2005. The couple’s oldest son Matt was diagnosed with a type of sarcoma in his stomach. For five months, Jim and Kathleen desperately went around the country seeking treatments for him while another doctor held down the fort at their practice. That July, Matt passed away at the age of 21. Kathleen was a student at the College of William and Mary at the time.
The family held a funeral service at St. John Fisher, their home church and the place was “filled to the rafters,” Terry remembers.
“I think it was mostly our patients because we don’t have that many friends,” she says with a chuckle. “But it was a real outpouring of support. We were lifted by our patients — they got us through it.”
“The community held us in their hands,” Jim adds, noting that a framed thank you message to the community, along with a photo of Matt, is a permanent fixture on one of the walls in their office.
Kathleen adds, “Half the patients, they walk in the room and we give a hug to.”
The passion that the Hawleys harbor for eye care is evident in the constantly expanding scope of their services. Back in 1981, state law forbid optometrists from using therapeutic medications. Today, their services include treatments for injuries, dry eyes and eye diseases such as glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration and the ocular effects of diabetes.
They are particularly passionate about vision therapy, a topic of contention in professional optometry circles. The couple has seen it help patients ranging from adults with brain injuries and unexplained headaches to children who have trouble in school.
“I’m proud of my parents for getting licensed [to administer therapeutic medications],” Kathleen says. “A lot of doctors who are of an older generation decided not to.”
Terry likes working with dry eyes, a common condition, particularly in dry regions like Southern California. Kathleen has taken on her father’s specialty of vision therapy for kids. As for Jim, he “truly does it all,” Kathleen says.
For the fifth year, PV Family Vision is participating in Optometry Giving Sight, a global fundraising initiative under the World Health Organization that aims to eliminate blindness and impaired vision due to “uncorrected refractive error.” For every pair of glasses they sell, they donate $5 to the cause, which affords an eye exam and a pair of glasses for adults and children alike in Third World countries.
Jim and Terry, now 62 and 61, met at the Southern California College of Optometry in Fullerton, where they were earning their Doctor of Optometry degrees. They married halfway through their training and graduated in 1980. For six months, they visited towns up and down the California coast. They decided on Palos Verdes, where Terry grew up. At the time, there were three other optometrists in town.
“We wanted to live and work in the same area,” says Jim, who was born in New York City and raised in Anaheim. “We thought it’d be nice to be in a community where we can raise our children and get to know people.”
The couple took out a loan and rented out a space on the third floor of a medical building in Rolling Hills Estates, where the practice remains today.
“We lost money for many, many years,” Terry says. “We both worked full-time and I’d drive to Pomona a couple days a week and worked in vision therapy. … One of us was always here while the other was trying to work somewhere else.”
Until earlier this summer when Kathleen joined the team, the business has generally operated as a one-doctor practice with Terry working in the office one day a week and Jim working the other days. It’s a system that has worked out through their three kids’ upbringing in Palos Verdes. Terry got involved in the schools while Jim coached everything from baseball to soccer to tennis.
Currently both are adjunct professors of their alma mater, now known as Marshall B. Ketchum University. Kathleen recently submitted her application to join the ranks. Jim has also served as a consultant with the U.S. Department of Defense and as a clinical investigator for contact lens companies.
After graduating from Palos Verdes High School, Kathleen moved to Virginia to attend College of William Mary where she was recruited to play volleyball.
“I went there feeling probably how a lot of PV kids feel at the time, to leave California and get off the hill,” she says. “I wanted to go as far away as possible.”
After college, Kathleen, who earned a B.S. in Psychology, worked in human resources for Nestle. She says she learned a lot in this corporate environment during her two and a half years, but she became tired of delivering bad news while not being in a position to help.
So she decided to change careers. It was a significant undertaking, going back to school for a year to finish prerequisites. Meanwhile, she worked part-time as her parent’s office manager (she oversaw the transition to an electronic record system) and as a part time vision therapist.
“If my parents said, you should do optometry, I would’ve run the other direction as fast as I could,” Kathleen says. “They were good about saying, just don’t close doors.” PEN