Damon Earl Allen

Background

Allen was born to John W. Allen and the former Nannie White in rural Fordsville, in Ohio County in western Kentucky.

Education

The family thereafter moved to Campbellsville, where Allen graduated in 1939 from Campbellsville High School. He then attended Ohio State University at Columbus.

Career

Allen maintained his practice in Columbia, the seat of nearby Adair County. He was also active in the American Optometric Association and its Doctors Without Borders auxiliary, a select group of optometrists chosen to demonstrate new techniques to colleagues in China. In 1949, he received his doctor of optometry at Illinois College of Optometry in Chicago.

Doctor Frank Metzmeier, a nursing home operator from Campellsville, recalls Allen as "community-oriented, very civic-minded.

He was very outgoing and caring. He always had a smile and was always interested in talking to everyone."

Allen was also an amateur aerial photographer who photographed the area that became Green River Lake State Park.

On April 16, 1944, Allen married the former Shirley Brooks (February 8, 1926 – August 18, 2006), previously of Texas. Allen died in Elizabethtown.

Services were held at Parrott & Ramsey Funeral Home in Campbellsville.

Interment was at Campbellsville Memorial Gardens with full military honors by the Marion County Veterans Honor Guard. The Senate noted that Allen also volunteered his services through the charitable Kentucky Vision Project.

Achievements

• Allen was honored by the Kentucky Optometric Association as the first recipient of its "Lifetime Achievement Award", which thereafter bears Allen"s name. The Kentucky State Senate on May 8, 2009, passed a resolution honoring Allen"s lifetime achievements.

Membership

Allen served in the United States Army Air Corps, forerunner of the Air Force, as a bombardier during World World War II and was a member of the American Legion. He was a member of the Campbellsville Lions Club, the Campbellsville Country Club, and the Taylor County Board of Health.