By: Jane Schuchardt
Special to The Elgin Review
Editor’s Note: This continues a series of monthly articles celebrating pride in our community and its surroundings shown through the experience of residents, businesses, and organizations.
The BIG E for Dr. Russell Vetick, a local optometrist, will now stand for enjoyment in retirement, not necessarily to check the quality of human vision.
Enjoyment was how this eye doctor, who retires June 30 after some three decades helping people see, described his work here. Serving this rural area “has been gratifying – helping people with eye problems, getting to know the whole family. There is such a need in rural areas.”
At 60, he’s moving on to travel, bow hunting, and eventually settling in the Twin Cities, Minnesota area to spend time with immediate family gained through marriage to his beloved wife Joanie. They celebrate 28 years of marriage in September.
His wife, a pre-school educator by training, has worked at Eye Physicians, Neligh, for a quarter century, first filling in and now there on a regular basis accomplishing a “little bit of everything,” as Dr. Vetick explained. She also is retiring.
How’d the Veticks end up in Neligh, both in the eye care business and as community members? Sitting in his cramped office dressed in his signature starched and pressed long-sleeve shirt and striking tie, Dr. Vetick dated the journey to his profession to his tender age of 15.
While growing up in Grand Island, detasseling corn was the usual summer job for youth. Hot. Dirty. Hard physical labor.
After a routine eye exam, he told his mom (Sheila, deceased) how eye doctoring looked like a fun job. She told his high school science teacher who set Russ up in a shadowing experience with a local optometrist.
Soon he was at Kearney State College (now University of Nebraska at Kearney) getting a bachelor degree in biology, then on to the Illinois College of Optometry, Chicago, with graduation in 1991.
He first started with Palmer Eye Associates in Neligh (1992-2000) and then joined Eye Physicians, P.C. (Nebraska), an eye care practice with multiple locations primarily in northeast and central Nebraska. Amongst a wide range of services offered for both adults and children is the See to Learn Program, a complimentary screening for three-year-olds.
“That dream I had in high school . . . I feel so blessed to have been able to dream that dream right here,” Dr. Vetick summarized. “I found my mission and it’s here.” Often asked if he will continue optometric services following the move north, he’s not sure yet, though he does have his sights on learning to ice fish first.
….see more at this week’s Elgin Review.
