Counterculture Of The 1960s Provided Pennsylvania College of Optometry Grad With Some Unique Experiences

Counterculture Of The 1960s Provided Pennsylvania College of Optometry Grad With Some Unique Experiences

When Charles Klein, OD ‘67, arrived at the Pennsylvania State College of Optometry (PCO) in 1963, the Philadelphia area was becoming a hotbed of political and civil change, with a vibrant emerging folk music scene. While studying at PCO, Dr. Klein had scored a gig writing about the Philadelphia folk music scene for a few folk music magazines at the time.

One night while at a performance, Dr. Klein, whose media credential allowed him to get backstage, re-acquainted with a young folk singer he had met the year before named Joan Anderson and the two struck up a conversation. Anderson had been doodling while she waited for her turn on stage and during the conversation, she shared with Dr. Klein doodling gave her headaches, and she revealed she did not wear glasses because she had never had an eye exam.

As luck would have it, he explained to the singer that he was in optometry school and was at a point in his training where he could bring his own patients in for exams. 

The following Monday, Anderson and her then-husband, Chuck, walked into the PCO clinic and Dr. Klein performed eye exams on both of them in the summer of 1966.

When she arrived, she registered under her married name, which had become Joni Mitchell. A few years later, she would become one of the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music scene. Now 80-years-old, she has been nominated for 10 Grammy Awards, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, and been called by Rolling Stone magazine, “one of the greatest songwriters ever.”

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