The Downtown Southbridge Partnership held its annual meeting at the Southbridge Hotel and Conference Center, Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004.  Thirty members were in attendance to hear guest speaker David. A. Fleishman, M.D. give an enthusiastic slide show presentation recounting the history of spectacles.  Dr. Fleishman illustrated his talk with many photographs from his web site http://www.antiiquespectacles.com/. This is a non-commercial, non-profit site has a large offering of  glasses and vision aids of all types some of which were made in Southbridge at the American Optical Company. Anyone with an interest in local history or who worked at the AO shop will be interested in the information on the web site.

Ron Cernisky (DP President) thanking the
Southbridge Hotel and Conference Center for their hospitality in hosting the event