“His eyes were in the stars and his feet were on the ground,” said Shimon Peres’s daughter, Prof. Tsvia Walden, in announcing that the Peres family donated her father’s corneas to the Israel Transplant Center in accordance with his wishes.
“My father left a living will –a very detailed one — so we did not have to tell the doctors. He wrote in a very orderly way what he wanted and what he didn’t want. This shows that he thought not only about the future and ‘traveled to the stars,’ but he also had his two feet on the ground,” Walden said.
Her husband, Peres’ personal physician and son-in-law Dr. Rafi Walden, told the press that Peres had signed an organ donor card several years before passing away early Wednesday morning at age 93, and had encouraged other Israelis to do so.
The Israel Transplant Center told the Jerusalem Post that corneas donated by people over the age of 80 are used for patients with glaucoma or as temporary measures for other transplant patients until more suitable corneas can be found.
Due to Peres’ advanced age, his other organs are not suitable for donation.