Finding the joy in going to the office

Local doctor celebrates more than a half a century of working in the Puyallup region

Chris Albert

For the last 60 years Dr. John Corliss has been practicing optometry in the Puyallup Valley.

Since 1972, he has practiced at the same location on 4th Street in Puyallup.

“I don’t think he’ll ever get out of town,” said Dr. Ken Corliss, his son and partner.

The area has been Corliss’ home since his birth in 1921 in Sumner. Even after all these years he couldn’t imagine doing anything else with his time.

“I keep telling people I’m retired on the job,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to get up in the morning when you have something you love to do and people you love to do it with.”

Last week, Corliss celebrated his decades of work with colleagues, family and friends.

He shared his thoughts with The Herald about his many years of service in the area.

It’s a pretty big thing to not only work in an area for 60 years, but live in an area for 60 years. What has kept you in the Puyallup Valley all these years?

Well I was raised here and my family was raised here. And my grandfather was an M.D. in Sumner until WWI and then he started the gravel business.

I like the town. I like the area. The area’s been good to me. I love to live here. This is a good town.

You were saying your Grandfather was an MD. What drove you to be an optometrist?

That’s another story. My wife’s brother (George) was an optician. He wrote to me from India when we were both in the service and he said he wanted to come home and become an optometrist and I needed to find out what I could about getting into school.

And I wasn’t too very far from the Los Angeles School of Optometry, so I looked at it and I wasn’t impressed. It was a good school, but the campus was in a crummy part of town. So I started writing letters to find out all I could. And I found out there were seven colleges of optometry. I found out that Northern Illinois college of Optometry in Chicago had more graduates than anybody else.

So I wrote to them and found what I had to do and got all the information. And by the time I got all this information for George I was interested. So when I got out of the service I went to PLU (Pacific Lutheran University)...then I went to Chicago and I got my doctorate in Chicago. I came back to Puyallup and I decided I wanted to practice in Puyallup.

When you reflect on your 60 years of practicing here in the area what has been your biggest joy?

Well the thing that really I think has impressed me the most is my involvement with the state association in changing a lot of the laws to make optometry what it is today. When I was in practice in the beginning we couldn’t do a lot of the stuff we could do now. And the motivating thing for the whole thing was patient care. If you compare what we did 60 years ago to what we do today, you’re comparing calling the phone and getting an operator in Orting to a cellphone in your pocket. You can’t compare them because what we do today is primary eye care. What we did back then I don’t know what it was. We made glasses I guess.

I imagine after 60 years you’ve had plenty of opportunity to retire if you want. What has made you always want to keep going?

I love people and I like to come to the office. Each patient has a different problem. There’s no two alike. You figure out what that problem is and if you solve it for the patient you’ve made a friend for life.

I tell people everyday if what you’re doing for a living isn’t fun and you don’t enjoy doing it you’re in the wrong profession. Do something else.

I noticed you have a practice with your son. How has that been, as far as having an opportunity to work with him?

That’s the greatest thing that ever happened...When he graduated I wanted him to come practice with us. So he did. Eventually he took over the entire practice.

So, actually it’s his practice I just work here.