Dr. Daniel Drysdale received the Rotary Club of Christiansburg Blacksburg’s 2024 Professional Leadership Award from club Award Chair Randy Young at the club’s May 20 meeting.
Rotary Club of Christiansburg-Blacksburg has awarded their 2024 Professional Leadership Award to Dr. Daniel Drysdale, owner of Drysdale Eye Center in Blacksburg and former member of the club.
Club Award Chair Randy Young said the Professional Leadership Award “recognizes individuals who have gone beyond the boundaries of conventional professional success by demonstrating exceptional leadership in the development and implementation of programs beneficial to the community.”
The award has been made annually since 2000 to individuals in diverse professions such as technology, education, medicine, finance, and public safety. Drysdale is a board-certified ophthalmologist practicing in Blacksburg. He opened his practice in 1978, where he specializes in cataract surgery and glaucoma care.
Drysdale understands how life-changing improved sight can be for someone experiencing less than perfect vision, from opening up job opportunities to increased mobility to seeing family members and landscapes in a way they haven’t before. His interests include advanced technology for cataract surgery and lens implants, and outreach to underserved populations.
Drysdale helps others in the field of ophthalmology by serving on various state and national associations and societies. He enjoys designing new instruments to help his own work as well as that of other ophthalmologists. Rather than patenting these designs, he donates the designs to make them easier for others to replicate and use. Drysdale has fourth year medical students from the Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine regularly rotating through his office in his position as a preceptor on the faculty there.
Drysdale is on the board of directors for Hope to Walk, a Blacksburg-based non-profit celebrating its tenth anniversary, that provides low-cost lower leg prosthetics to those in need in South America, the Caribbean, Vietnam, and Africa. Hope to Walk received much of its initial funding from Rotary International Global Grants in partnership with local Rotary Clubs.
While on the Hope to Walk Board, Drysdale became involved in a program to perform cataract surgery in rural areas of Guatemala, also funded by a Rotary International Global Grant, this time in partnership with Rotary Clubs in Iowa. Drysdale said that he’d been looking forward to a time in his career when he’d be able to take part in projects like this and was glad to be able to provide the life changing gift of sight to those in need. Because there is little or no electricity and no advanced surgical equipment in the areas he is working in, he and the other doctors have to bring in battery backpacks and equipment, as well as go back to their early training to perform the surgery in a less technological manner.
Several Iowa Rotarians provided endorsements for Drysdale’s nomination for the Rotary Club of Christiansburg-Blacksburg’s 2024 Professional Leadership Award.
Comments included “Dan is a visionary who embodies the true spirit of Rotary’s motto, Service Above Self,” and “We applaud him for his dedication to restoring sight and improving quality of life in Guatemala.” However, the best summary came from Iowa Rotarian Mark Ruggeberg who stated, “Dan is truly a Rotary Ambassador of light and embodies our current Rotary International theme: Create
Hope in the World.”
Drysdale indeed creates hope both locally and internationally through the gift of sight, something that so many of us take for granted.
The Rotary Club of Christiansburg-Blacksburg has exemplified the Rotary motto of Service Above Self in the community for over 100 years. Local leadership recognition, youth development programs, and community service projects as well as participation in Rotary International programs such as PolioPlus exemplify this motto. For more information or to join us, find @ChristiansburgBlacksburgRotary
on Facebook.
Rotary Club of Christiansburg-Blacksburg