Eye opener for Hugh Downing

After surviving two heart attacks and a stroke over the years, the next surgery Thursday for retired Beacon Journal printer Hugh Downing should be a piece of cake.

He’ll have cataract surgery in one eye, then return in two weeks for the other eye’s surgery.

He plans to play golf with BJ Guild retiree John Olesky for a 5^th time between the surgeries.

Three million Americans have cataract surgery every year.

Hugh and wife Sharon have lived in The Villages retirement community in Florida for more than a dozen years. 

That’s the city where there are 50,000 golf carts for 100,000 people and 540 miles of golf cart paths.

Hugh Downing

Sharon, married to Hugh for more than a half-century, grew up in Galion, Ohio. 

Their sons Chris,  Mark, Ben and Jonathan reside in Hudson, Toledo, and Vienna, Virginia and Erie, Pennsylvania.

Hugh and Sharon were reunited with my late wife Monnie and I more than a decade ago on Siesta Key, which is adjacent to Sarasota, Florida. 

We were in our usual February hangout, Sea Castle, and the Downings rented an apartment once owned by the late BJ printer Bill Gorrell, whose two-building Poor Bill's complex got a lot of BJ visitors over the decades. 

Fun-loving folks like Terry Dray, Dave White, Don Bandy and Don Pack, all -- unfortunately -- deceased.