Irene Kinsey Stare and Frank Giblin correspondence

Collection — Box: 1

Identifier: OU-ACADEMICUNIT-KINGIB

Staff Only

Scope and Contents note

The Irene Kinsey Stare and Frank Giblin correspondence consists of letters from Irene Kinsey Stare that cover personal and professional issues relating to the ERI over several decades, between 1982 and 2013. In particular, they document Irene Kinsey Stare's support of the institute and of Oakland University.

Dates

1982 - 2013

Access and Use note

The Irene Kinsey Stare and Frank Giblin correspondence is open for research.

Copyright

Copyright has not been transferred to Oakland University. Researchers are responsible for seeking copyright permissions before publishing items from the collection.

History

Irene Kinsey met Frank Giblin in 1974 when he joined Oakland University’s Eye Research Institute (ERI), which was run by her husband V. Everett Kinsey. After Dr. Kinsey’s death in 1978, and even after Irene remarried in 1984, their friendship continued. Irene Kinsey Stare continued to support the Eye Research Institute throughout her life in memory of her first husband.

Irene Mackey was born in 1913 in Pittsburgh, PA. She passed away on March 13, 2013. In 1968, she married Dr. V. Everett Kinsey who was a renowned researcher and biochemist. In 1956, he had won the Lasker Foundation Clinical Medical Research Award for his research showing that incidence of blindness in premature babies increased if they received more oxygen. Kinsey was also involved in the creation of the National Foundation for Eye Research in Washington, D.C., when he was a faculty member at Harvards’ Howe Laboratory of Ophthalmology. Kinsey was one of the original trustees for the foundation.

In 1968, he co-founded the Eye Research Institute at Oakland University with Dr. Venkat N. Reddy to conduct basic research into the underlying causes of eye diseases that result in blindness and loss of vision.

Dr. Frank Giblin joined the ERI in 1974, immediately after receiving his PhD in biochemistry, working as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Reddy. He became a faculty member in 1977. Kinsey, who was the ERI’s first director until 1975, passed away in 1978. Dr. Reddy then assumed the leadership until he retired in 1997. Giblin received continuing grant support from the National Eye Institute for years. He won the Rohto International Award in 1981 and an Alcon Research Institute recognition award in 1985. HE eventually became the director of the ERI in 2004 until his retirement in 2021.

During many years, Dr. Giblin and Irene Kinsey remained connected. After she moved to Boston to follow her second husband, Dr. Fredrick Stare, founder of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, she continued to keep informed about the ERI and to support it financially. Upon her death, she donated $3.7M to endow the V. Everett Kinsey Endowed Professorships at Oakland University.