Roger and Lynn Van Vreede have been married for 35 years and have also counted 35 years of supporting charitable causes together. Their interests align well—both are lovers of the arts, and passionate gardeners and environmentalists. (As Lynn says: “When we were kids, we’d take our shoes and socks off and run in the water…. we want to make sure that future generations can do that.”) For the past five years, vision research has topped their list of interests, leading to their recent pledge of $1 million to endow the Van Vreede McPherson ERI Greatest Needs Fund.
Their interest starts close to home. Roger’s mother Lorraine, who passed away in 2023 at the age of 100, had age-related macular degeneration; as has Lynn’s father, Allen. For Lorraine Van Vreede, AMD was frustrating but not incapacitating, as she retained some vision. For Lynn’s father, AMD has been worse. “I started taking him to the Wisconsin Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired after my mother died,” Lynn says, “and the devastating effects of the disease became apparent. My dad can’t really do much at all, but he’s handled it with grace.”
Lynn herself has suffered from various eye issues over the years, a topic which came up socially with their friends Monroe and Sandy Trout. The Trouts quickly introduced them to the McPherson ERI, and the Van Vreedes were just as quickly fascinated by the range of research taking place at the Institute. “The connections throughout the world were impressive. It’s not just one lab working on one issue; the number of individual studies going on is surprising,” notes Lynn. “You’re studying diseases from many different angles.” They began supporting the Institute soon after and joined the McPherson ERI Advisory Board in 2017.
Although intimately familiar with age-related macular degeneration, the Van Vreedes decided not to focus their Institute support on only one area. Both are highly aware that an organization’s needs can change each year (Roger, whose father started Van Vreede’s appliance stores in the Fox River Valley in the 1950s, grew up watching the ever-changing needs of a retail business). They began by sponsoring successful annual matches for the Institute’s year-end giving and are fervent believers that match offers create excitement and increased support. More recently, their support switched to underwriting major research grants for AMD and retinitis pigmentosa.
In planning a large-scale gift, the Van Vreedes became interested in the idea of a Greatest Needs fund—an endowment that would be flexible enough to respond to the McPherson ERI’s research needs each year. A match offer from the Herman and Gwen Shapiro Foundation sealed the one-million-dollar amount: “That was how we came up with that big of a number,” says Roger. “The more we band together, the more synergy is created and the better the outcome,” Lynn adds.
Their hope is for transformative change. “I know it may take some time before the average person can get a transplant or other treatment that will help their sight,” says Roger. “But it’s moving along faster than I thought it would. And we want to help solve these problems.”
The Herman and Gwen Shapiro Foundation
Herman “Murph” Shapiro, MD ’32, and Gwen Shapiro, BS in Nursing (’53)—a longtime faculty member of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) and head nurse at UW Hospital and Clinics, respectively—had a strong desire for their legacy to shape educational experiences for future generations of physicians and nurses. Established in 1995, the Herman and Gwen Shapiro Foundation memorializes the couple, who worked hard, loved life and followed their hearts about ways they could assist others well beyond their lifetime, notes David Walsh, JD, chair of the foundation’s board of directors. “They wanted to improve the human condition—the words from the Wisconsin Idea—and that’s why they were involved in academic medicine,” says Walsh, whose parents were friends with the couple.
Walsh and the Shapiro Foundation Board approved the $1 million match to the McPherson ERI because, according to Walsh, the Shapiro Foundation “has continued to identify and support unique and exciting new initiatives in medicine and nursing.” He notes that, “the McPherson Eye Research Institute is home to many innovative initiatives, and the Shapiro Foundation is glad to support MERI and the tremendous generosity of Roger and Lynn Van Vreede with this matching grant.”