In the Fall of 1927 Morris Frank was a blind graduate of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, working as an insurance agent with the help of an aide. His father read him an article in the Saturday Evening Post by Dorothy Harrison Eustis, who described schools in Germany that trained guide dogs for veterans who had lost their vision during World War I. She had just opened a guide dog school in Switzerland. In April 1928 Morris Frank traveled to Switzerland, the first blind American to receive training with a guide dog. When he returned to America with a German shepherd he named her Buddy, the first of several Buddys to guide him.
Along with Dorothy, Frank co-founded The Seeing Eye dog-training institute in Nashville. The name is thought to be drawn from Proverbs 20:12: “The hearing ear and the seeing eye—the Lord hath made them both.” two years later they moved the organization to New Jersey, as Nashville was deemed too hot to raise and train German shepherds. To publicize The Seeing Eye, Morris Frank traveled throughout the nation. His stops included the White House, where he and Buddy were received by presidents Coolidge and Hoover.
On the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, The Seeing Eye’s board of trustees resolved that Seeing Eye dogs would be supplied, without charge, to members of “the armed forces who lose their sight in the line of duty.” Morris Frank and “Buddy II” enlisted in this effort, touring Army, Navy and Veterans Administration hospitals. Morris Frank and “Buddy III” visited President Truman at the White House in 1949. Frank continued to crusade relentlessly for rights for the blind and full access for guide dogs until he retired from the school in 1956. By then every state in the Union had passed laws guaranteeing access to public spaces for blind people and their dogs. It’s estimated today that there are over 10,000 seeing eye dogs currently working in the United States.
Morris Frank died in 1980. In 2005 a statue of Morris Frank and Buddy by J. Seward Johnson was dedicated in Morristown. Johnson, the late founder of “Grounds for Sculpture” in Hamilton, NJ, is known for his trompe-l’œil painted bronze statues. The statue, in Morristown Green, depicts the pair in mid-stride, with Frank motioning as if he is giving Buddy the “forward” command. The sculpture is located at a spot that Frank and Buddy passed each day to and from work, a route is still used today by The Seeing Eye students and their dogs. The wording on the statue’s markers appears in English and Braille.
