Women’s History Month: Aida de Acosta Breckinridge
March is Women’s History Month, a time to highlight the achievements of women whose contributions helped to shape the world as we know it today. Here at The Eye-Bank, that change-making woman was Aida de Acosta Breckinridge, our organization’s first executive director. Those in the eye banking profession know Mrs. Breckinridge as the public relations powerhouse who partnered with R. Townley Paton, M.D. in establishing the world’s first eye bank, The Eye-Bank for Sight Restoration. But did you know that before Mrs. Breckinridge became instrumental in the field of eye banking, she had already accomplished a very significant and different kind of achievement?
Born Aida de Acosta, she grew up in a traditional Spanish-Cuban household and was sent to school in Paris, where she met Brazilian pioneer aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont. He taught her how to pilot his personal dirigible. On June 27, 1903, in Paris, Aida de Acosta became the first woman to ever fly a powered aircraft, just six months before the Wright brothers took their historic flight. Because her daredevil flight was not considered appropriate behavior for a young woman in her day, the de Acosta family asked Santos-Dumont to remove Aida’s name from any publications that referenced the flight. She did not reveal her secret until thirty years later, when she shared it with a young naval officer at a dinner party.
Mrs. Breckinridge’s interest in the field of ophthalmology began several years after her historic flight, when she was diagnosed with glaucoma and lost vision in her right eye. After a surgery to save the remaining sight in her left eye, she began to raise funds to promote the advancement of sight-restoring treatments and procedures for the Wilmer Eye Institute in Baltimore. Her efforts resulted in a historic fundraising initiative that helped to establish the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins in 1929. It was this accomplishment that impressed R. Townley Paton, M.D., who had trained under Dr. Wilmer prior to moving to New York City and opening his ophthalmology practice there. The rest is The Eye-Bank history.
Beginning in 1944, Mrs. Breckinridge was the first in a line of six female executive directors who have led The Eye-Bank for Sight Restoration for the past eighty years, expanding on her work into the eye banking field today. Thanks to her role in establishing The Eye-Bank, Aida Breckinridge left a legacy that lives on, even today, through the countless lives that have been changed for the better through the beautiful gift of sight.