15 Minutes of Fame

Haven't you heard that everyone has fifteen minutes of fame?  Well mine came at age seven.  I became poster child for the March of Dimes.  The March of Dimes was instrumental in helping those families that were touched by the polio epidemic.  Many times they came to the aid of my parents when I had a need.  So it was only logical that I be the one to help them with their cause.  I can remember them helping me even up into my twenties when I needed a new set of crutches.
I know sometimes we wonder how it is for those children who are poster children.  Is it wonderful for them or are they exploited?  I have to say that even though I was only seven at the time, I remember it very well.  Which is amazing because I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday.  There were high points and low points during my term of hanging on a billboard and I have to say, what determined that were more the people around me and how they were treating me.  Sadly, a certain television station in our area did treat me like a piece of merchandise rather then a little child who had been thrown into the lime-light.  But one night I had the privilege of singing "Jesus Love Me" on the radio.  The people at WJBC were wonderful and treated me like a little star.  The Pantagraph, our local paper did a full story on me and my family and followed me around for a full week taking pictures at school, home and church.  They were very good to me as well.  
So for the most part it was a good experience but when my parents were confronted about letting me be the National Poster Child, it was a flat "No Thank You".  So much for my Hollywood career!! 
So the next time you see a little child on TV representing an organization such as MDA or Easter Seals, pray for that child and their family because, trust me, it can be a very joyful or traumatic situation.

A Special Birthday Surprise

I love birthdays!  It doesn't even have to be mine.  If I can make someone's birthday special, it gives me such a thrill.  My mother always made our birthday a special day.  New outfit, got to pick what we wanted for dinner and pick what kind of birthday cake we wanted and then grandparents, aunts and uncles, neighbors and cousins all came for dinner.  When I turned nine I got a real, honest-to-goodness, invite your friends  birthday party.  I was so excited!  How could a girl's birthday get any better?
I talked a little before about my maternal grandparents and how special they were to me.  But the sun rose and set in my fraternal grandfather as far as my big brother and I were concerned.  He passed away when I was twelve but the twelve years he was in my life, well...I just never will forget.
Grandpa was an umpire.  He would take my brother and I to the baseball games and sit us behind home plate with a hotdog and a coke.  I can picture him today in all that black umpire stuff they had to wear, turning around to check on us every chance he got.  Sunday afternoons at his house was spent with him and I sitting in his big chair watching a baseball game on TV with our eyes closed.  Sort of like my husband does now.  After he retired, he bought a hotel.  So consequently, baseball and hotels are in my blood.  It's no wonder I ended up working for two major hotel chains.   Oh, and did I tell you he could do magic?  The first thing my brother and I did when he walked in the door was ask him to make a quarter appear behind our ears.  Amazing!!  I am also convinced that he knew Santa on a personal basis because we always got everything on our list.
So just when a little girls birthday couldn't get better, guess who showed up?  That was the best part of the whole day.  I loved him so very much and I miss him.

I Am Passionate About........

Life!    I love life and I feel every human being, from conception, deserves life.  For about four years now I have been volunteering at our local Women's Care Center.  Helping young women who find themselves pregnant, whether planned or unplanned, is very dear to my heart.  So many are left to fend for themselves with no support from family or the father.  Many are pushed into situations that are not healthy for them or their baby.  I love counseling these young ladies.
Having lived with a disability it's hard for me to understand why anyone has the right to decide whether a child lives or dies.  I know not everyone feels this way but it is how I feel and I am passionate about it.  As long as I can remember I have been Pro Life and am very proud of it.  When I worked for Ozark Airlines, 100 years ago it seems, I had a good friend who worked there too, who was also disabled.  In my eyes, her disability was not as severe as my own but she thought otherwise.  Her reasoning, because she had never married and could not have children and I had.  This young woman had an awesome, high paying job for an airline.  She owned her own home and had traveled all over the world for about the price of a tank of gas in your car.  She was very funny and was well liked by everyone.  She had some deformities internally and physically but nothing you really noticed once you got to know her.  What if her mother had opted for an abortion?  Think of the life this person would have missed but most of all, I think of what we would have been deprived of by not getting the extreme privilege of knowing her.
Today I rolled through my 4th Women's Care Center Walk For Life.  What a beautiful day God gave us.  I am honored to be a part of this wonderful ministry.  I was at the front of the 300 walkers along with the young children you wanted to walk behind the banner.  I was well entertained by their conversation.  They began a discussion on birth marks.  As one little girl was telling about her birthmark on her arm, the little boy next to her says "You don't even want to know where my birthmark is!"   Children are such a special blessing.  If you want to smile, have a conversation or just listen to the conversation of a child.  What right do we have to take a child "out"?  Who would that child have been?  He or she could have discovered a cure to some terrible disease or became a great leader.  Only God Knows. 
Several years ago God began to work in my heart about getting involved in a ministry again.  Two friends kept telling me about the Center but I thought God had a different job for me to do.   Well I was wrong.  I went to speak to the young woman in charge of volunteers and immediately felt at home.  God had a place for me here and I knew it.  Issues from my past surfaced through Volunteer Training and healing in my own life took place.  I saw, once-again, how a trial or traumatic time in a persons life could be used for good and God's glory.

A Time To Play

One of the first things my parents quickly realized was that they needed a one story house.  So I think, with the help of the GI Bill, they were able to build a huge ranch style home.  I was five years old when we moved into the neighborhood.  Up until that time, most of my days were filled with adults, my brother and my cousin.  But my new house had a family next door with a little girl, just a year older then me.  She was an only child.  I remember moving day she came over to meet the new little girl next door and went home crying to her mother because the new little girl (me) was different.  She had never seen a child who could not walk. It wasn't long though that we became forever friends.  Her and my cousin, who was the same age as she was, were instrumental in making sure that I learned to play like other kids.  They spent hours pushing me up the hill on the tricycle or sled and then jumping on the back for the ride down with me.  There were many games of badminton or ping pong and they always chased down the ball or birdie for me.  We would play hide-n-seek counting to 100 instead of 10 or 50, giving me enough time to hide.  Remember when you could play outside past dark and nobody had to worry about you.  Mom would flash the porch light and then we knew it was time to go in. 
We had a swing set out back that we spent hours on behind our house.  I had learned to crawl up onto a swing and they would push me. But they would get up on these cross bars and hang like monkeys.  I, of course, did not want to be out done and knew I could figure out a way to get up there.  So I began to swing my swing seat sideways until I could grasp the bar.  Once I had done that I was able to get one leg swung over the cross bar and then pulled myself up there.  I was so proud as I called to my mom through the kitchen window to see what I had done.  You could literally hear the fear in her voice as she said "Oh honey, that's good.  How did you get up there?"  Then I hear her yell for my dad over her shoulder that he needed to come see what HIS daughter was up too.  They have a great picture that was taken that day of me sitting up there on that bar with a look of such accomplishment and my daddy standing next to me, so proud as well.   Even as teenagers we loved that old swing set.  Setting on it at night, talking about boys and school and the boys at school and church and the boys at church.
Us three girls had so much fun growing up playing dolls, putting on talent shows, playing games in the backyard.   Always, I was included in someway. 
My little neighbor friend passed on of cancer suddenly this year.  It was devastating but I will always have the hundreds of memories that her, my cousin and I shared growing up in our little neighborhood.  Oh, remember that huge home I told you we moved into.  Well I drove by it a couple years ago and it was so small.  It must have shrunk in the dryer or something. How could that big old kitchen we had fit in that little bitty house?  Funny how things look through the eyes of a child.

First Day of School

So my mom didn't have to lug me (I mean take me) on the bus everyday to the hospital for therapy, they started me in school at age four so I could have therapy there everyday.  A cab driver came each day to pick me up and take me home.  My first day, however, my mom took me but when I realized she was going to leave me there,  I was terrified.  I couldn't get around in those braces and my mommy did everything for me. She would take me to the bathroom and feed me my favorite things.  Who would care for me there?  I remember mom sitting me on a chair in Mrs. Brown's kindergarten class.  The chairs were in a circle and all these other kids were around that I didn't know.  Now I need to point out that the kindergarten was not a special ed class.  I was the only one in there, well, like me.  When she told me goodbye, and walked out the door, I screamed like nobodies business!
I can only remember screaming like that three times in my life.  That was the first time, the second was when I was five and they were cutting off a body cast.  That doctor came at my little five year old body with that buzz saw and they heard me clear in Chicago.  The third time was the summer just before I turned six and I was at camp.  I was put in a cabin with girls about 6 or 7 years older then me and they thought it would be fun to scare me by telling me there were big spiders in the cabin.  Needless to say, I emptied out the counselor staff meeting.
So back to the story.  I started screaming and mom came back in.  She talked to me a little bit and explained how I had to stay and that I would be taken care of.  Well I showed her.  Before she could get out of the building, I wet my pants.  I knew that would get her back and she would see that these people wouldn't take care of me. Being married to a scout leader for several years she was "prepared"  and had brought another pair of panties.  So much more that idea!  So I settled down and after that day, I was fine.  I made friends and looked forward to painting and playing.

Everyday I got to play with the therapist, or I thought that's what we were doing.  I loved her a great deal.  The whole 13 years I went to school, I only had two therapists so I got very attached. They taught me so many things and challenged me everyday to do more.  I will be forever grateful.

Nothing Like a Great Set of Grandparents

All of my grandparents were awesome but today I want to focus on my mom's parents, my Grandma and Grandpa R.
Remember me telling you how my grandpa made me a little four wheel skateboard to use right after I had polio.  Well two years later, when I received my first pair of braces, he made me this amazing little desk with wheels.  It was like a babies walker only for a four year old.  He would go on to make many keepsakes for our family.  I have passed on to my grandgirlies some of my most precious gifts from him but the toy box he made me still graces my family room.  It's hard to believe I use to empty all the toys out and climb inside and shut the lid when an MRI machine terrifies me today.  
My grandparents lived in a huge three story house with a large backyard.  That yard was lined with a brick wall along the back that was flooded with my grandpa's roses.  He had built a little rock garden with a small goldfish pond.  Next to the pond was a concrete bench with a rose trellis over the top.  It was beautiful!.  Then he made us our own goofy golf game that we played in their backyard with croquet ball and mallets.
Now grandma was the master at games.  It didn't matter if it was a board game, card game or golf game, she was out for blood.  So needless to say, when our family gets together to play games, it's serious.  Thanks to grandma and her "no mercy" genes that she has passed on to most of us.  I loved that house.  I have so many fond memories of sleepovers with my cousins in that house.  Grandma and Grandpa both were great cooks.  Grandpa had gotten hurt and had to quit working so Grandma opened a Hat Shop in our town and Grandpa took over preparing the meals.  Even today, when my husband and I are out at a restaurant and they bring french fries peeled and fried just the right way, we lick our lips and say "Mmmm, Grandpa R. fries." 
I have, on many occasions tried to follow one of my Grandmothers recipes to make one of her famous dishes and it never tastes like hers. I don't know if she spit in hers or what but there diffinitely was another ingredient. Must have been made with love. 
So I mentioned Grandma's Hat Shop.  It was downtown, right across from the Montgomery Wards.  You talk about play land for a little girl..there was nothing more fun then a Saturday at the Hat Shop.  Mom would take my cousins and I there and we would try on every hat in the store.  EVERY HAT!!!!  My cousin would be the clerk and I would pretend to be a million different customers.  It was such fun.
My grandmother was a woman of huge faith.  She would put a bible tract in every hat bag.  She was a wonderful example of a prayer warrior.  She loved missionaries and would spend hours a day praying for them.  
Grandma led me to the Lord one Sunday afternoon after church.  We remained in the car after everyone had gone on into the house.  I don't know if I had questioned her about something that I had heard that morning or not but what I do know is that I trusted Jesus as my Savior that day.  I was seven years old.

Grandma and Grandpa loved Oral Roberts and just knew if they could get me there to see him, I would walk again.  So when I was five we took a rode trip to the New England States to follow Oral Roberts Tent Meetings.  My Grandpa would stand in line every night holding me in his arms, as Mr. Roberts made his way down the line to lay hands on people.  At age 16 she was still dragging me off to see a faith healer.  Thank goodness for his honesty and he told her that there was nothing he could do for me.  She knew God could heal me if He wanted to, but she was determined she would see me walk in her lifetime and she was running out of time.  This picture was taken the day we left on our trip.  Grandpa had built a platform for the backseat so I could lay down or play.  Even at such a young age, I remember that special time I had with my grandparents. 

The Dentist!

Today I had to do one of my least favorite things, go to the dentist.  I didn't hate it as a child.  In fact, I looked forward to it.  Our dentist was one of my best friend's dad.  My friend had Muscular Dystrophy.  We went all the way through school together.  He was the first person I ever met with that dread disease and at the young age of six, I never dreamed it would take his life.  We were the best of buddies.  Everyday through grade school, we were forced to have rest period.  I remember he was taken out of his wheelchair each day and laid flat on a table.  I always made sure I had the cot beside his, and we would talk and giggle the hour away.   He was very, very funny.  He couldn't move any of his limbs and even had difficulty holding his head up.  His father, being a doctor, had hired a college student to be his aid.  He had a personal aid till the day he died. 
His dad was a wonderful man.  Going to see him at his office was always fun.  It was easy to see where my friend got his sense of humor.  Father and son, were very close.  It was difficult for my dentist to deal with the diagnoses of his son and facing a future without him was overwhelming.  So much so, that one fateful evening, my dentist shot himself.  We were just young teens.  I don't think he could bare to watch his young son die.  My friend and his sister were the one's to discover the body.  If he had only known that his son would make it all through high school, graduate from college and have a well respected position at the university.   MD did eventually take his life but he and his daddy would have had many, many more years together.  Ever sense then, I have hated going to the dentist. 
By the time I was 25, I had lost many wonderful, precious friends to that disease. Watched them wither away until God called them home. 
I pray that God will continue to give wisdom to the men and women who seek a cure. 

Always A Marine

I wanted to continue my dad's amazing story of God's perfect plan in his life.  When we are affected by a tragedy or trial in our life all we can think is, this can't be good. Maybe we question God and want to know just what He is thinking!  I always told dad he had to endure all of that because one day he would have a little daughter who would need him to show her how to survive a tragedy in her own little life.  As true as that was, little did I know that there was going to be so much more to his story.
About 16 years ago on a cold February day in the Midwest, my dad had my mom drive him out to scout camp so he could meet some guys to haul some down trees out of the woods so they could be split.  The other guys didn't show up but dad figured he wasn't going to waste the day, so got the tractor out and proceeded with the task at hand.  My dad loved to drive the tractor.  I think because he couldn't drive a car, he got a certain amount of satisfaction from driving a tractor.  Anyway, dad had chained up a log and it got snagged.  So he got off the tractor to roll it loose and climbed back up on his seat to give it one more try.  As he looked over his shoulder to see that all was going well, the tractor flipped over backwards, pinning him underneath.
We don't know how long he laid under that tractor but his watch broke at 9:30AM.  Somehow he managed to dig himself out.  We are thinking the blood from his head injury had thawed the ground enough that with one hand, he was able to free himself.  Did I say head injury?  Oh yes, major head injury.  The gear shift and steering wheel from the tractor literally destroyed half his face and forehead.   One eye was out of it's socket.  Upon digging himself out, somehow he made his way another 1/2 mile to the lodge where he administered his own first aid by wrapping his head in kitchen towels and then calling my mom at work to tell her he had hurt himself and that she might want to take him to the hospital.  That call was made at noon. We really don't know how daddy made it out and to the lodge.  We feel his guardian angel carried him and I think he does too. To this day, there are still so many unanswered questions.
So mom arrives to find him sitting in a chair with a towel wrapped around his head....she has no idea the extent of the injury.  He won't allow her to leave without locking everything up and then off they go to the ER.
The young neurosurgeon that is assigned to my dad had been attending a brain symposium that just happened to be in our town that very week and the #3 neurosurgeon with Mayo Clinic was the keynote speaker.  He  asked him if he wouldn't mind staying to oversee dad's surgery the next day.  He agrees and then when they were done he hopped on a plane and we never heard from him again.  Dad's brain surgery was tricky because of the old war injury.  There was a cavity in my dad's head where the bullet had been removed and then a steel plate was placed over it to protect the area.  That cavity cushioned the blow to his head that cold February day and the steel plate protected his brain.  My dad had no brain damage!!!  His eye was put back in it's socket and he could see, he went through hours of plastic surgery and guess what?  He still looks like daddy.  So the tragedy that touched his life 50 years prior, saved his own life that day.  Just don't take him through a metal detector!
I am very blessed to still have both my parents and they both continue to amaze me with their strength and love for family, friends and most of all, their Lord and Savior.

Once A Marine

My daddy is the ultimate example of God's plan at work.   He is a World War II Disabled Veteran. A Marine who was shot in the head on the beaches of Okinawa. This left the nerves on one side of his body paralyzed, no feeling whatsoever.  Sometimes this worked to his advantage.  At age 82 he broke out with shingles on his back but he didn't even know he had them.  Mom just happened to spot the rash.  Shingles is a very painful condition for most.  As children on a long trip we would amuse ourselves by trying our best to hurt him.  We would pinch him or stick him with something and say "Did you feel that?"  His answer was always "no".  What a good sport he was and still is.  Daddy never drove a car after his injury but really, other than that, he did not let his disability become an excuse for not being all that he could be and he became quite a man.
My grandfather thought it would be good therapy for my dad to become involved in helping him with his Boy Scout Troop.  Daddy retired from being a scout master after 55 years.  Had it not been for dad's injury, he may have never gotten involved in scouting.  I am in awe at all the young men's lives he as influenced over 55 years time.  He even had the one millionth Eagle Scout in the nation in his troop.  He has been given every possible award that can be given in scouting.
Not only did his injury jump start this passion for scouting but it also prepared him to be the father of a disabled child.  My daddy has always been my example of how living with a disability can spark an ability in you to do other things.  Therefore you are not disabled but enabled. 
So now the Lord has put me in a loving Christian home with a mother who is physically able to care for me and emotionally able to not shelter or over protect me and to let me fly. He has given me a father who will instill in me the "no limits" attitude to make it in this world.  God has put me in a town with all the resources I  need to learn my independence.  Can you see God's hand yet?  Well there is more to my dad's story.  Something that will leave you without question, God's plan.  There are no coincidences in life people.  Just God's perfect plan.  He makes no mistakes.

There Really Is A Plan

The Lord has given me the awesome opportunity to do some public speaking.  So many people see this as a huge fear, I love it.  Now don't put me in an MRI machine or a cave but telling what God has done for me and how he has used my life, is such a honor.
We are made by the Master Designer. He has a plan for each one of us and is continually preparing us for what lies ahead. When I had polio, God allowed it.  He didn't strike me down with it or it wasn't a punishment of some kind.  But He allowed it so it could be used to bring honor and glory to Him.  He did not leave me helpless.  He made sure I had the parents I needed to have, lived in the town I needed to live in and gave me the talents and abilities I needed to have.
 I was born in a Midwestern college town.  This college had a school for disabled children on campus.  So God's plan was for me to live in this town and go to this school.  He provided my mother with the strengths and abilities she would need to care for a disabled child.  She was the second girl in her family and grandpa was sure she would be a boy.  When she wasn't, he tried to do the next best thing, turn her into a tomboy.  He nicknamed her Billy and he taught her to be strong.  She could fix anything, lift anything and even drive anything.  As a child she might've been a little resentful of this tomboy lifestyle but little did she know that God was preparing her to be the mother of a child that she would need to carry, years past the time of lifting a child.  My son worked in a nursing home for awhile.  He said, "I don't know what God is preparing me for but I'm sure it's something."  I told him it was to take care of me. 

Most importantly, God gave me a Christian family.  Without the faith that I witnessed in my parents and grandparents I may not have been so willing to take it as my own.  I am sure if you look back on your life and some of the challenges you have experienced or may be experiencing now, think of how God has prepared you, because I know He has. 

Boot Scoot Boogie

Christmas Eve I sat up for the first time and Christmas Day I was allowed visitors.  I was so excited to see family.  Especially my big brother.  He had gotten a cowboy outfit as a gift and he wore it to the hospital.  He looked amazing.  I wanted one too.  I was a huge fan of Hop-A-Long Cassidy.  I just knew someday I too would have a great outfit like his and a pair of six shooters.
Soon I would get to go home.  My grandfather R. made all kinds of contraptions for me to get around in.  I probably had the first skateboard.  He made a square board with wheels on the bottom for me to scoot around on.  It wasn't long and I left the board behind and was scooting around on my own.  Even after I got my braces, I would come home after school, and kick them off, much like you kick off your shoes, and scoot where I needed to go.  I am sure some of my girlfriends and family will remember those days.  My mom spent a lot of time cleaning tar and grass stains off the bottom of my clothes.  Nothing stopped me.  Barriers are things we create for ourselves.  Were there things I could not do?  Of course. But I didn't dwell on it, I just found another way to be involved.  But trust me when I say, if there was something I really wanted to do...I found a way.

 

Oh and be careful what you wish for.  You just might get it.  Ride'em Cowboy!

A Mother's Worst Fear

I just had my second birthday.  I'm sure my mom was thinking, "Here we go again, the terrible two's!"  After living through it with my older brother, who could blame her.  Just kidding.  Had to get a dig in at the big brother, you know how it is!  Anyway, it was a warm October day.  It's what we call in the Midwest an Indian Summer Day.  Mom had taken us for a little walk.  Like most two year olds, everything went into my mouth along with my fingers.  I had found an enchanting piece of used gum on the ground and immediately picked it up.  My precious mommy, slapped it out of my hands and probably told me how nasty it was and so I then just put my fingers in my mouth.   Well that's life for an average two-year-old and possibly the action that caused the most inconceivable reaction.

Next morning, bright and early, my older brother and best friend in the world came to get me up so we could go downstairs and have breakfast.  That was our routine, only this particular morning I was not cooperating with him.  As a four year old, this was very perplexing.  He decided to bring mom in on it or just plain tattle.  So she took him by the hand and they were off to investigate the situation.  What she found had to have made her heart sink.  For lying in the bed, was her precious baby girl, not able to move an inch or cry a tear.

She lifted me up and carried me down the stairs.  I was a rag doll.  She called our Dr. and he said he would be there soon.  Yes, you heard me all you young people.  The Dr. was going to come to the house.  Just like Little House on the Prairie but you didn't need to send Pa.  A simple phone call would do.  Due to the polio epidemic the Dr. didn't make it there till evening.  I was taken to the hospital and put in quarantine and not even my mother was allowed in.  After a spinal tap, which I don't remember, thank goodness, their fears were confirmed.  It was polio.

It was an old Catholic hospital.  The nurses were Nuns, all in full habit.  My mom rode the bus to the hospital everyday in hopes that she would be able to see her baby girl that day.  But each day she was turned away.  "No, not yet, maybe tomorrow."  Finally she just couldn't take one more rejection.  I wonder if she feared that I was even still alive and they were all too afraid to tell her the truth.  So, she began to cry.  An elderly nun, took compassion on her and said "Come with me".  She took her to a window that led out onto the roof.  The picture I have in my head of this old nun and my mom crawling out a window of this old hospital onto the roof,  just makes me giggle.  Standing on this roof, my mom looked through my window.  She saw me and I saw her for the first time.  Her heart rejoiced and my heart cried out, for the first time.  I had made a sound.  It was time to celebrate.   So began the long recovery. 

Finders Keepers

I never really liked that game of Finders Keepers.  Somehow it just didn't seem fair unless, of course, I was the one finding.  But what you will find in my blog will be for you to keep for as long as you want or can remember it, which would be till tomorrow in my case. 

I was born in 1950 so I am a classic "Baby Boomer".  This makes me 60 about to turn 61 for all those who are math challenged like myself. It's funny how on paper you are classified as a senior citizen but on the inside you feel like you're still 20.  This is where I have an advantage over some of you.  Sense I have spent most of my life on wheels, my knees and hips are not about to give out.  It seems like everyone is getting their knee or knees replaced.  My worry is a flat tire. But bing-bada-boom and it's fixed, (a couple hundred dollars later I might add). Being disabled does not come cheap but I am so grateful for the technology of today that allows me to be very independent.

So what you will find here are some funny or touching but always true stories, some scripture that has been special to me and stories of the many wonderful people who have left their footprints on my life.  That was going to be the name of one of the several books I started, "Footprints on My Life".  Pretty good, huh?  Too bad I never wrote it.

So tomorrow we will go back to the fall of 1952.  The day that this journey began. The day I woke up completely paralyzed.  So talk to you then.  In the meantime, God Bless You