Common Sense and Uncommon Generosity

Legacy gifts show appreciation for vision care and important research at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute

Marjorie Wells Gerdine was a clinical psychologist known for her common sense, says her husband Philip Van Horn Gerdine. “She was not to be trivialized.”

While Marjorie passed away in 2019, her influence remains large in his life and his legacy, which includes two professorships at the Wilmer Eye Institute made available as part of his estate plan. Both are named the Philip and Marjorie Gerdine Professorship of Ophthalmology. One is for the Cornea Division and one is for age-related macular degeneration research. Also part of his estate plan will be the Philip and Marjorie Gerdine Precision Medicine Scholars Fund at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Philip has a connection to Johns Hopkins through his grandfather, Lynn Van Horn Gerdine, who was Class of 1895 at Johns Hopkins University and eventually became a psychiatrist. His grandfather’s career inspired Philip to study clinical psychology, which both he and Marjorie studied in Boston.

In the 1980s, he and Marjorie were living in Boston where Philip sought treatment for his eye condition and encountered Oliver Schein, MD, MPH, for the first time. Schein treated Philip for about half a year but then left to join the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

Because of Philip’s respect for Johns Hopkins, thanks to his grandfather’s educational experience as well as the progress he had made under Schein’s care, Philip chose to continue his treatment at the Wilmer Eye Institute. “I followed Oliver Schein down there because I knew he was an expert in corneal disease and this particular one.”

The disease in question, Fuchs’ dystrophy, affects the cornea — the clear front part of the eye — by causing the layer of cells responsible for maintaining proper fluid levels in the cornea to deteriorate and tiny bumps to form on the back of the cornea. When enough of these cells die, fluid builds up in the cornea, resulting in swelling and blurred vision.

Schein, now Wilmer’s Burton E. Grossman Professor of Ophthalmology, eventually performed corneal transplants on Philip to treat his Fuchs’ dystrophy, which were a success. Philip recalls regaining clear vision again. “You discover the world really does exist and it’s not a big blur. And as you improve, you’re able to do things and deliver services and all the rest again,” he says.

These services, in his case, included traveling the world — to every continent except Antarctica — to fix companies. Both Philip and Marjorie began their careers as clinical psychologists. Marjorie remained one throughout her professional career, maintaining a large private practice in Massachusetts working with children and adolescents.