Dorothy Harrison Eustis
| Dorothy Harrison Eustis | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
May 30, 1886 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US |
| Died | September 8, 1946 (aged 60) New York, NY |
| Organization | The Seeing Eye |
| Spouse(s) | Walter Abbott Wood Jr. (died 1915); George Morris Eustis (divorced 1928) |
| Children | Walter Abbott Wood III and Harrison Wood |
Dorothy Leib Harrison Wood Eustis (May 30, 1886 – September 8, 1946) was an American dog breeder and philanthropist, who founded The Seeing Eye, the first guide-dog school for the blind in the United States.
In 1927, Eustis was 41 years old and living in Switzerland where she bred German Shepherds as police dogs when she wrote an article for The Saturday Evening Post, a popular weekly magazine. The piece described a German guide-dog training school for blind veterans of the first World War and sparked a flood of mail, including a letter from a 20-year-old blind man named Morris Frank who promised to help set up a similar school in the United States if Eustis would train him to use a guide dog. Eustis invited Frank to Switzerland, where he spent five weeks learning to work with Buddy, the first of his six guide dogs (all named Buddy). A year later, in December 1928, Eustis and Frank launched The Seeing Eye in Frank’s hometown of Nashville, Tennessee.
Eustis’ legacy has been long-lasting. Her work helped spawn guide-dog schools in the United States and around the world, and also paved the way for using service animals to help people with all kinds of disabilities. Because The Seeing Eye refused to see its students as charity cases, Eustis is also credited with helping to change public attitudes toward the disabled and contributing to the disability rights movement that began in the 1970s.
The sixth and youngest child of businessman and philanthropist Charles Custis Harrison and his wife Ellen Nixon Waln Harrison, Eustis grew up in a prominent Philadelphia family whose social circle included some of the most influential people of their day. Her father, Charles C. Harrison, was the grandson of John Harrison, who established the first chemical factory in the United States. Charles owned a highly profitable sugar refinery, which he and his partners sold for a reported price of $10 million. He then became the provost at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania and raised an estimated $11 million for the university over 16 years.
Eustis’s mother was the great-granddaughter of Robert Morris (financier), who helped fund the American Revolution and the great-great-granddaughter of John Nixon (financier), who was chosen to do the public reading of The Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia four days after it was signed. Ellen Harrison was also active at the University of Pennsylvania, raising money for the university hospital and overseeing the landscaping of the university grounds.
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