Forrest “Daryel” Ellis, MD, Professor Emeritus of Ophthalmology, Indiana University School of Medicine, died on April 26, 2025. He was 93 years old.
When you read Ellis’ obituary, you get a sense of a determined, dedicated, fearless, and hard-working pediatric ophthalmologist (one colleague said: “He was the GREATEST. Would see any child any time.”), ever determined to help children everywhere battling all kinds of eye problems. Recognized for his general knowledge and expertise across the broad spectrum of pediatric ophthalmology, pediatric ophthalmic surgery, and adult strabismus surgery, Ellis was best known as an educator and mentor.
Ellis, like many Hoosiers, was born in a small town. A native son of Deputy, Indiana, he was the only one in his 15-member high school class to apply to college. He attended Indiana University where he graduated with a BA in Anatomy and Physiology in 1954 and subsequently earned his MD degree from the IU School of Medicine in 1957. After he received his medical degree, he entered the United States Air Force where he served as a flight surgeon stationed at Homestead, Florida and accompanied B-47 crews of the 379th Bombardment Wing, on flights over North America, the Caribbean, the Atlantic Ocean and Western Europe. He also flew with the Coast Guard on a rescue mission to South America.
After military service, it was on to another small town, Aurora, where Ellis laid down roots and practiced general medicine for nine years. Aurora was also home to Edwin A. Gresham, MD, who left Aurora to build a ground-breaking career and leadership as a pediatric neonatologist at Riley Hospital for Children. A desire to pursue interests initiated by his flight surgeon training led Ellis to a residency in ophthalmology at Indiana University. Upon completion of this residency in 1972, he began general practice of ophthalmology but returned to Indiana University as a Fellow in Pediatric Ophthalmology. He then joined the IU School of Medicine full-time faculty. As a new subspecialty, Pediatric Ophthalmology stimulated Ellis’s intellectual curiosity and afforded him opportunities for organization, leadership, definition, and discovery and opportunities to use his skills as a gifted eye surgeon. Riley Hospital’s multidisciplinary Craniofacial team led by plastic surgeon Michael Sadove, MD included Ellis from ophthalmology and neurosurgeon John Kalsbeck, MD, and others. Ellis remembered that time:
“In 1975, I came to Riley and worked with Eugene Helveston, MD. During the 1970s, the most common condition we saw that required surgery was crossed, or misaligned, eyes. At the beginning, we also saw adult patients who needed strabismus (eye muscle) surgery – but we preferred to see children.
“When we started working together, very few people across the country did pediatric ophthalmology, and the field had not been well defined. I operated on several patients with Dr. Kalsbeck, a neurosurgeon—such as someone with a big hemangioma, (a collection of blood vessels in the eye socket), I learned a lot from him, and he probably learned a little bit from me.
After completing a fellowship in pediatric ophthalmology at Indiana University in 1975, Ellis worked in partnership with Helveston until 1997 and participated in the training of many medical students, ophthalmology residents, and over 60 pediatric ophthalmology fellows. His teaching emphasis was first and foremost the recognition and associations attendant to children’s ocular and genetic disorders. During his career he published over one hundred peer reviewed scientific articles and numerous book chapters. For Riley Hospital’s 100-year history book, Cherishing Each Child, Ellis talked about how “We did a lot of research and wrote a lot of papers. We weren’t like other programs that restricted themselves to eye muscle surgeries and 90 percent of the most common things. Those hemangiomas we were talking about were not typically done by most pediatric ophthalmologists. So, this program had great breadth, and that elevated it a lot.”
Ellis followed Helveston as the second pediatric ophthalmologist at Riley Hospital for Children and in the State of Indiana. Much like the team of Don Girod, MD and Roger A. Hurwitz, MD (late 1960s-early 2000s) whose work together powered Cardiology’s growth as a worldclass provider of pediatric heart care, the partnership between Helveston and Ellis did the same for defining pediatric ophthalmology at the level of worldclass care offered at Riley Hospital. As Eric A. Yancy, MD, now an affiliate provider for Riley Hospital, recalls, “Helveston and Ellis was the team! Great Riley days.”
Throughout his life, Ellis found himself in many places where he provided needed care to many, not only at Riley Hospital for Children but around the world. One story shows Ellis to be a good-natured and amiable soul who tried to help his fellow crew-mates when he could. Ellis served in the Air Force as flight surgeon on a large B-47. The crews brought liquor back to the United States because it cost less in Europe. The crew asked Ellis to do this – so he brought 67 cases to Homestead Air Force Base in the United States. They were met at the base with an ambulance to haul the cases; the officer in the ambulance in charge of inspecting everything “looked the other way” but said “half the booze is mine.”
And then, there was the time that Ellis served on the surgical team for ORBIS International that traveled on a mission to Fidel Castro’s Cuba in June 1991. This visit to Cuba put the ORBIS team in an international spotlight. The famous ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital was the first plane from the Western Hemisphere to travel to Cuba since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The ORBIS mission to Cuba brought Fidel Castro to the Flying Hospital and received national and international television and newspaper coverage, including an article in the New York Times. Ellis, who performed a surgery on a child at the Flying Eye Hospital, gamely kept the focus of this mission on being there for patient care and was quoted in the New York Times as saying: “The cases presented to me would have been difficult ones in any clinic in the world” after he surgically corrected an eye muscle in a 6-year-old girl that his Cuban counterparts thought was congenitally absent. Later, Ellis was a guest on the NBC Today Show where he talked about his observations of the health system in Cuba.
“Forrest “Daryel” Ellis, who we all knew as “Daryel,” was a brilliant doctor and gifted teacher and friend whose life and work touched many. He will be missed,” wrote Ophthalmology Professors Emeriti David A. Plager, MD and Helveston, in their joint announcement of Ellis’ passing.
No truer words ever written.
By: Richard L. Schreiner, MD and Karen Bruner Stroup, PhD
Photo courtesy IUI University Library Special Collections and Archives.
References
Candace O’Connor, Cherishing Each Child: Riley Hospital, 1924-2024, Indiana University Press, 2024, p. 170.
Flying Eye Hospital Uses Tact to Reach Cuba, New York Times, July 14, 1991, section 1, page 7, courtesy Indiana State Library.
Forret Daryel Ellis, Obituary: https://www.morgan-nay.com/obituary/forrest-ellis
Dr. Eric Yancy, e-communications to Dr. Richard L. Schreiner, March 14, 2022.
Dr. Richard L. Schreiner to Candace O’Connor, e-communications, August 27, 2022.
Dr. David Plager, e-communications to faculty and staff, April 27, 2025. AAPOS, Forrest D. Ellis, M.D: https://aapos.org/meetings/lectures/hall-of-fame/silver-medalists/forrest-ellis
Orbis: Our History, https://www.orbis.org/en/about-us/our-history
Orbis, International Women’s Day: How Holly Peppe’s Leadership Put Orbis on the Map: https://me.orbis.org/en/news/2021/international-womens-day-how-holly-peppes-leadership-put-orbis-on-the-map#:~:text=In%201991%20Holly%20invited%20a%20group%20of,quality%20of%20the%20Cuban%20eye%20care%20system.
A Tribute to an Extraordinary Man (Oliver Foot, former ORBIS Executive Director and President), see NBC news footage clip at 2:54-3:05: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToP1nJg7dvA&t=199s (Tom Brokaw’s opening remarks to news clip: “The United States and Cuba have been adversaries ever since the Cold War began. But there’s a warming trend. Doctors are now working together to save the sight of Cuban children.”)
