By Susan Gallagher

A lot of people served by the Diocese of Helena mission in Guatemala can see because eye surgeon Dr. Keith McKenzie contributed his expertise in a series of visits over the past 15 years. Now the Santa Cruz, Calif., doctor who playfully credits “an angelic nun” with pestering him to volunteer says it’s time to retreat, and let younger people take his place.

In 1995, McKenzie organized a volunteer- based ophthalmology program at the mission’s clinic and since 1996, he has organized about 25 visits by teams of physicians, nurses and other medical professionals. Those teams have examined more than 5,000 Guatemalan patients and performed nearly 1,000 surgical procedures, most of them sight-restoring cataract removal.

With McKenzie not planning further trips to Guatemala, the work he established at the mission will continue under other medical coordinators from the United States. Meanwhile, his humanitarian contributions are being heralded by the diocese and by the City of Santa Cruz, where the mayor proclaimed Dec. 4 “Dr. McKenzie Day” and well wishers gathered at a reception.

“So many lives were enriched through the work of your hands,” Mark Frei, the diocese’s Helena director of the Guatemala Mission, wrote McKenzie in a letter of thanks.

McKenzie got involved with the mission at the urging of Sister Mary Waddell when she directed its clinic. He already was visiting Guatemala to volunteer at a different clinic, which he began assisting in 1988. Whenever he and colleagues were there, he said, Sister Waddell arrived with eye patients needing care. “She kept saying, ‘You’ve really got to come and see my village’” a few hours’ drive away, McKenzie said. “She kept badgering me in her angelic way. After about five years of that, I caved in.”

McKenzie, who retired from his California medical practice 11 years ago, said wanting to give back led to his initial volunteerism in Guatemala. “I came from the Canadian prairies,” he said in a phone interview. “My family homesteaded and we were extremely poor. By the grace of God, I was able to get an education and succeed.”

Seeing what a difference eye surgery could make in the lives of impoverished Guatemalans, he returned to the Central American country again and again. The impact of the surgery wasn’t limited to the patient, he said. Rather, there often was a family dynamic: Perhaps an elderly, blind person was accompanied day to day by a grandchild kept home from school to be the companion. Restoring vision in the grandparent sometimes freed a child to be in the classroom.

In his letter, Frei said that McKenzie has been an exceptional example of service to “some of the poorest of our neighbors” and that “the number of people you have reached with your loving concern and by your medical expertise is truly remarkable.”

Although McKenzie is pulling back from the Guatemala trips, he said he expects to maintain some stateside involvement in them, through planning and other outreach.

“The whole idea is to have a continuum,” he said. “There are younger people who can carry it on, into the future. It’s important that I step aside.”


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 12, December 17, 2010.