David Paton, Creator of Flying Eye Hospital, Dies at 94

New York Times

25-04-2025

David Paton, an idealistic and innovative ophthalmologist who started Project Orbis, converting a United Airlines jet into a flying hospital that took surgeons to developing countries to operate on patients and educate local doctors, died on April 3 at his home in Reno, Nev. He was 94.
His death was confirmed by his son, Townley.
The son of a prominent New York eye surgeon whose patients included the Shah of Iran and the financier J. Pierpont Morgan's horse, Dr. Paton (pronounced PAY-ton) was teaching at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the early 1970s when he became discouraged by increasing cases of preventable blindness in far-flung places.
'More eye doctors were needed,' he wrote in his memoir, 'Second Sight: Views from an Eye Doctor's Odyssey' (2011), 'but equally important was the need to beef up the existing doctors' medical education.'
But how?
He considered shipping trunks of equipment — almost the way a circus would — but that presented logistical challenges. He pondered the possibility of using a medical ship like the one that Project Hope, a humanitarian group, sent around the world. That was too slow for him.
'Shortly after the first moon landing in 1969, thinking big was becoming a reality,' Dr. Paton wrote.
And then a moonshot idea struck him: 'Could an aircraft be the answer? A large enough aircraft could be converted into an operating theater, a teaching classroom and all the necessary facilities.'
All he needed was a plane. He asked the military to donate one, but that was a nonstarter. He approached several universities for the money to buy one, but administrators turned him down, saying the idea wasn't feasible.
'David was willing to take risks that others wouldn't,' Bruce Spivey, the founding president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, said in an interview. 'He was charming. He was inspiring. And he didn't quit.'
Dr. Paton decided to raise funds on his own. In 1973, he founded Project Orbis with a group of wealthy, well-connected society figures like the Texas oilman Leonard F. McCollum and Betsy Trippe Wainwright, the daughter of the Pan American World Airways founder Juan Trippe.
In 1980, Mr. Trippe helped persuade the United Airlines chief executive Edward Carlson to donate a DC-8 jet. The United States Agency for International Development contributed $1.25 million to convert the plane into a hospital with an operating room, recovery area and a classroom equipped with televisions, so local medical workers could watch surgeries.
Surgeons and nurses volunteered their services, agreeing to spend two to four weeks abroad. The first flight, in 1982, was to Panama. The plane then went to Peru, Jordan, Nepal and beyond. Mother Teresa once visited. So did the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In 1999, The Sunday Times of London's magazine sent a reporter to Cuba to write about the plane, now known as the Flying Eye Hospital. One of the patients who arrived was a 14-year-old girl named Julia.
'In developed nations, Julia's condition would have been little more than an irritation,' The Sunday Times article said. 'It is almost certain she had uveitis, an inflammation inside the eye, which can be cleared with drops. In Britain, even cats are easily treated.'
Her doctor was Edward Holland, a prominent eye surgeon.
'Holland uses tiny knives to make openings that allow him to get his instruments into the eye, and soon he is pulling at Julia's scar tissue,' The Sunday Times article said. 'As the tissue is pulled away, a dark and liquid pupil, unseen for a decade, is revealed. It is an intimate and moving moment; this is medicine's chamber music. Next, he breaks up and removes the cataract, and implants a lens so that the eye will keep its shape.'
The Cuban ophthalmologists watching in the viewing room applauded.
But after the surgery, Julia still couldn't see.
'And then a minor miracle begins,' the article said. 'As the swelling begins to go down, she makes discoveries about the world around her. Minute by minute she can see something new.'
David Paton was born on Aug. 16, 1930, in Baltimore, and grew up in Manhattan. His father, Richard Townley Paton, specialized in corneal transplants and founded the Eye-Bank for Sight Restoration. His mother, Helen (Meserve) Paton, was an interior designer.
In his memoir, he described growing up 'among the fine, intellectually sharp, widely traveled persons of the Establishment.' His father practiced on Park Avenue. His mother threw parties at their home on the Upper East Side.
David attended the Hill School, a boarding school in Pottstown, Pa. There, he met James A. Baker III, a Texan who later became secretary of state for President Ronald Reagan. They were roommates at Princeton University and lifelong best friends.
'David came from a very privileged background, but he was down to earth and just a very likable guy,' Mr. Baker said in an interview. 'He had his objectives in life straight. He was a hell of a lot better student than I was.'
After graduating from Princeton in 1952, David earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University. He worked in senior positions at the Wilmer Eye Institute and served as chairman of the ophthalmology department at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
In 1979, while still trying to procure a plane for Project Orbis, he became the medical director of the King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
'Among my duties,' he wrote in his memoir, 'was providing eye care for many of the princes and princesses of the kingdom — about 5,000 of each, I was told — and it seemed that all of them insisted on being treated exclusively by the doctor in charge, no matter how minor their complaint.'
Dr. Paton's marriages to Jane Sterling Treman and Jane Franke ended in divorce. He married Diane Johnston in 1985. She died in 2022.
In addition to his son, he is survived by two granddaughters.
Dr. Paton left his role as medical director of Project Orbis in 1987, after a dispute with the board of directors. That year, President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal.
Although his official connection with the organization had ended, he occasionally served as an informal adviser.
Now called Orbis International, the organization is on its third plane, an MD-10 donated by Federal Express.
From 2014 to 2023, Orbis performed more than 621,000 surgeries and procedures, according to its most recent annual report, and offered more than 424,000 training sessions to doctors, nurses and other providers.
'The plane is just such a unique venue,' Dr. Hunter Cherwek, the organization's vice president of clinical services and technologies, said in an interview. 'It was just an incredibly bold and visionary idea.'