Dorothy Harrison Eustis, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Dorothy Harrison Eustis

Philanthropist and founder of The Seeing Eye

Date of Birth: 30-May-1886

Place of Birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Date of Death: 08-Sep-1946

Profession: dog breeder

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Gemini

Dorothy Leib Harrison Wood Eustis (May 30, 1886 – September 8, 1946) was an American dog breeder and philanthropist, who founded The Seeing Eye, the first dog guide school for the blind in the United States.
She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2011.In 1927, Eustis was 41 years old and living in Switzerland where she bred German Shepherds as police dogs when she wrote an article for The Saturday Evening Post, a popular weekly magazine.
The piece described a German dog guide training school for blind veterans of the first World War and sparked a flood of mail, including a letter from a 20-year-old blind man named Morris Frank who promised to help set up a similar school in the United States if Eustis would train him to use a dog guide.
Eustis invited Frank to Switzerland, where he spent five weeks learning to work with Buddy, the first of his six dog guides (all named Buddy).
A year later, in December 1928, Eustis and Frank launched The Seeing Eye in Frank’s hometown of Nashville, Tennessee.Eustis’ legacy has been long-lasting.
Her work helped spawn dog guide schools in the United States and around the world, and also paved the way for using service animals to help people with all kinds of disabilities.
Because The Seeing Eye refused to see its students as charity cases, Eustis is also credited with helping to change public attitudes toward the disabled and contributing to the disability rights movement that began in the 1970s.