Fright night becomes Sight Night for students

Clarke Middle School students are doing something different this Halloween.

Instead of trick-or-treating door-to-door just for sweets for themselves, they're collecting used eyeglasses during their rounds as ghosts and goblins to help with an international program that assists people with vision problems.

The annual Halloween program, called Sight Night, is part of a Lions Club service project to collect used or unwanted glasses or sunglasses for the poor.

Fifty students in the school's LEO Club adopted their own version of the project and have been collecting glasses around Athens since Oct. 17.

The collection drive will continue through Halloween night, when trick-or-treaters will carry an extra sack to collect glasses and frames, hearing aids and old cell phones, according to Steve Helwig, member of the Athens Lions Club.

"It really gets (children) thinking outside of, 'Oh, candy,' " Helwig said.

"It gets them to think of giving instead of getting, and at the same time, they're collecting candy."

Any hearing aids will be cleaned, repaired and distributed to people who need the

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