He was in his teens then, around the time in the late 1950s when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved from New York to Los Angeles. Nobody thought that Kenneth Westfield, the Los Angeles High School shortstop who grew up to be a dynamic, major figure in the transformation of medicine in Las Vegas, was aiming too high when he said he could see himself playing for the Dodgers. Even today, at the age of 77, he remains among the all-time RBI (runs batted in) leaders at his former high school.
The Dodgers and Baltimore Orioles both offered him contracts. UCLA and Arizona State University offered him athletic scholarships. With the guidance of an aunt, Westfield took the scholarship to UCLA, where a cousin earned a Ph.D. in psychology and Jackie Robinson became a star before becoming the first Black player in major league baseball.
A shoulder injury during college would end Westfield’s dream of a baseball career before it ever really got started. And so began a life of relying on his head — and his heart – a life that would ultimately see him move to Nevada and provide the gift of sight to people around the world even as his private practice grew to become the largest full-service ophthalmology center in the state.
The life of Dr. Kenneth Westfield, observes Dr. Joseph Thornton, a Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV faculty member and the first colorectal surgeon to practice in Nevada, is an example of America at its best. During a hundred medical missions, many of which he funded himself, Westfield traveled to such places as Haiti, Vietnam, Peru, Mexico, Zaire, Kenya, and the Philippines to perform or teach cataract surgery.
What he’s accomplished – including founding the Nevada Eye Bank, which procures, processes, and distributes donor eyes to area residents in need – is a slice of American history that can be celebrated in this Black History Month or in any month where an example is needed of an American who’s made a difference in the country of his birth and to people around the globe. In the months ahead, he will volunteer his services at the soon-to-open UNLV Community Clinic, which will provide assistance on weekends to Nevadans who have little access to medical care.
Arriving in Las Vegas
When he arrived in Las Vegas in 1980 from medical school and residency training at Michigan’s Wayne State University, he was the first Black ophthalmologist in Southern Nevada. Over the next 40 years, he would:
- found the Nevada Eye Bank and the Gift of Sight Foundation
- volunteer his services to Mission Cataract USA, an organization that offers free cataract surgery throughout the U.S. to those who cannot otherwise afford it
- be the first to perform refractive surgery (radial keratotomy) in Las Vegas
- open the first satellite eye clinics in rural areas outside Southern Nevada
- provide free eye exams to school kids in Southern Nevada who couldn’t afford to see an eye doctor
- become the first surgeon to perform cataract surgery in a freestanding ambulatory surgery center
- be the first local ophthalmologist to contract with large insurance providers to provide quality eye care at an affordable price.
“I saw need and opportunity,” Westfield said of a career that didn’t escape racism. Occasionally, he saw white patients walk out of one of his offices when they realized he was Black. “That was their loss,” said Westfield, who now is largely retired. Once, after he performed successful emergency surgery on a patient, the man repeatedly used a racial slur to referr to him. When a nurse asked why he continued to deal with the man, he said, “I believe everyone should have the right to health care.”
Westfield’s early family life – money came from house painting done by relatives – was decidedly not one of privilege. His mother died a year after his birth. His dad, depressed, left Los Angeles and returned to the Midwest. “I called an aunt ‘mommy.’ Aunts and uncles and grandparents raised me by committee. They didn’t really push me when I was growing up to study, but I saw early on that you could have a better life with an education.”
During his time at UCLA, he decided on a career as a pharmacist because “I saw a life ahead where I could own my pharmacy and be my own boss.” As luck would have it, he went out to fill a prescription for his aunt and the pharmacist told him that Wayne State University in Detroit had a good pharmacy program. “There were just a couple of expensive private schools with pharmacy programs in California then and only one state school that didn’t admit many students, so I applied to Wayne State and got accepted.”
Soon after he graduated from pharmacy school, he was drafted into the Army in the 1960s as the Vietnam War raged. He could have been an officer as a military pharmacist, but that meant staying in the Army for three years. “I didn’t want to stay in the Army any longer than I had to so I served as a pharmacist as an enlisted man for two years.”
Other than four months at a military hospital in Vietnam, he spent his time filling prescriptions at a Fort Ord hospital in California. There, he saw that physicians were largely in charge of the entire medical mission so he decided on a career in medicine. “I saw that physicians called the shots and that was something I wanted to do with a career.” During his time at Fort Ord, he also met the woman who would become his wife. They would live in Detroit as Westfield returned to Wayne State for medical school and residency. He chose ophthalmology as his speciality because it would allow him to treat patients both medically and surgically.
Busy times
After he heard that more ophthalmologists were needed in Las Vegas, Westfield visited Southern Nevada, liked what he saw, and moved with his wife to Las Vegas. Willing to take night calls for eye doctors as well as handle his own practice, he soon had all the business he could handle. “The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. I was busy from day one. I was willing to work hard.”
Other doctors treated him as a professional; he didn’t feel the sting of racial animosity from them. “Everyone in the medical community kind of accepted me as a well-trained ophthalmologist.”
His practice grew quickly. To better handle cataract patients from Kingman and Bullhead City, Arizona, he decided to take flying lessons and bought his own plane, a Piper Seneca. He opened surgery centers in Arizona and flew there two days a week to see patients. No longer would patients have to come to Las Vegas for surgical and post-operative care that often meant three or four trips on winding two-lane roads that took well over two hours each way.
Four years after starting his practice in Las Vegas, Westfield set out each year on medical missions to impoverished foreign countries, where he learned blindness from cataracts can be a death sentence. “I had a talent to help people and felt I should use it. I can think of nothing more satisfying than changing someone’s life by restoring their eyesight.”
Thornton said that when he was on a mission to the Philippines with Westfield and other medical professionals the impact of Westfield’s work became clear: “He helped a woman regain her sight who had never been able to see what her husband, children, or grandchildren looked like. You can imagine just how emotional that time was.”
Westfield, who plans on doing a mission to Africa and the Philippines this year, said, “Until you’ve made that kind of difference in someone’s life, you have not experienced true fulfillment.”
At home, he was no less generous. For more than a decade he and other medical professionals performed exams and fitted 400 Nevada low-income children with eyeglasses free of charge during each school year. “You’ve got to see to be able to learn,” he said.
Though he lost his wife to breast cancer when she was 65 — they had two boys together — Westfield’s practice continued to flourish. In 2007, when Westfield Eye Center had grown to employ nine doctors and employees, Nevada Business Magazine honored him as a Healthcare Hero for his caring, entrepreneurial spirit. By 2012, he had completed a merger with Nevada Eye & Ear to become the largest eye care center in the state — Westfield Eye and Ear would have 19 doctors at five locations in the Las Vegas Valley.
Looking forward and back
In recent years, after selling his practice, Westfield still works a couple of days a week with Las Vegas Ophthalmology and enjoys time with family; he remarried in 2013. He is growing increasingly concerned about the future of the United States. “What makes democracy work is the ability to compromise. Unfortunately, people are not willing to compromise now. I don’t care if it’s a marriage or the United States – you have to give and take and give and take — people on the left and right want it all their way. That’s not going to work.”
As he looks back on his life, Westfield is happy that he could make a difference. “I provided for my family. And I was fortunate to help some people. I always did what I could do when opportunity and need came up.”
Is there something he still wants to do?
“I want to ride the Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul. I’m saving up my money. I will do it.”
