Telethon Gives New Meaning to Phoning In

While celebrities offered telethon plugs Saturday night for eye disease research, citizens in Woodland Hills were offered telephone plugs.

Retinitis Pigmentosa International asked volunteers to bring their own telephones to the six-hour fund-raising telethon.

Twenty-five lines were installed at the charity’s Woodland Hills headquarters rather than at the television studio, as is customary for telethons. That saved about $12,000, said Roz Glick, the charity’s office manager.

The telethon’s goal was to raise $500,000 for research into retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary condition that causes blindness.