Even at 85, Les Rumel continues to give back to the Levittown community.
Rumel has provided nearly 600 free vision screenings to children in the area, but he said he is the only one in the Levittown Lions Club, a local chapter organization focused on community service and humanitarian efforts that Rumel has been a member of since 2010, to be certified.
Rumel doesn’t know what the future holds for him, but he wants the program to continue providing kids with eye care.
The screenings detect risk factors that may lead to Amblyopia, otherwise known as “lazy eye.”
Rumel saw a need for screening in the community, so he sent letters to over 30 schools, organizations, and centers to provide the free service. He had purchased his own Welch Allyn vision screener to perform the procedure.
“I raised $4,700 and the device runs basically in the seven-thousand-dollar range,” he said. “I found a guy that would sell it to me for $6,700, so I put $2,000 of my own money into buying the device.”
Over the past six years, he has screened nearly 600 children and found that 73 needed professional attention.
He even purchased a five-year warranty for the vision screener using money raised from a fundraiser, using his 80th birthday as the occasion for people to donate.
“He told everybody that he didn’t want gifts,” Les’ wife, Lillian Rumel, said.
“If you want to give me a gift, give me money for this,” Les said.
Rumel also said he used to deliver corneas for the Lions Eye Bank and that he collects eyeglasses from the collection boxes in the local libraries and businesses.
This isn’t the first instance that Rumel has given back to Levittown. In fact, he’s been a resident for over 70 years.
Rumel moved to Levittown in 1951, just a few years after William Levitt built the suburban development. Rumel played on Levittown’s first Little League team, was a member of the Levittown Teen Canteen in the mid-1950s and is a graduate of Levittown Memorial High School.
He got married in 1961 and purchased his home in Levittown two years later. According to Rumel, he even has the second-ever porch in Levittown.
Rumel worked several jobs throughout his career. He spent 28 years as a regional manager for an apparel company called National Shirt Shops, working in 28 stores from Connecticut to Virginia Beach. He also worked as a reverse mortgage officer at Bank of America, officially retiring in 2011.
Rummel said he became involved with the Levittown Chamber of Commerce roughly 25 years ago. He was the president of the organization in 2007, and at that time, he became the third officer of a corporation formed due to a grant from the state through state Sen. Kemp Hannon to improve parts of Levittown.
“He wanted the chamber to set up a corporation to get grants from the state to do plantings on the turnpike,” Rumel said. “They just resurfaced and redid the whole turnpike, and the whole thing fell apart.”
But Rumel and the two other officers were still in charge of the money from the grants.
Rumel became the last surviving officer in 2019 when he contacted local officials and said he wanted to replace the gazebo in Veterans Memorial Park.
“The gazebo there was like a Home Depot cheap piece of crap,” he said.
They purchased a new gazebo from a local seller and beautified the park with the funding that Rumel had saved from the grants years prior.
“You have to go look at it,” Lillian Rumel said. “It’s really special.”
Rumel’s grandson will be married in that same gazebo this August.
