Stubborn, in a good way -



"On August 19, 1949 I became sick.  On August 21 I was taken to a hospital in Knoxville by one of Fred Weaver's ambulances.  It was in this hospital my case was diagnosed as polio.

...On January 3, 1951 I stood up for the first time since August 19, 1949."

Since I spend so much time in my car, I particularly love this time of year for the mere fact that wisteria is everywhere!  I drove past the scene above on my way to one of my daughter's soccer games.  Since my camera was in the car, I absolutely had to go back and snap a shot.  I love the delicate blue-purple flowers that hang from its creeping vine.  I have been warned though not to plant this beautiful plant in my yard because it is quite persistant and difficult to control - stubborn, I guess I would call it.  Maybe I like it so much because we are similar.

Eleven year old Ann Fay Honeycutt is just the same, persistant and difficult to control.  She is the main character in a wonderful children's novel I read last summer called Blue.  The book is set in the 1940s around Hickory, North Carolina and involves the little known Miracle of Hickory.  Ann is faced with incredible challenges.  Her favorite hideaway spot to sometimes escape those challenges is her wisteria mansion in the woods behind her small house.  Unfortunately, she faces one challenge that prevents her from running to her wisteria hideaway - polio.

The quote at the beginning of this blog wasn't taken from Ann Fay though.  It was taken from my uncle Jimmy's autobiography that I only recently knew he had written.  My uncle Jimmy, like Ann Fay, was one of the thousands of children effected by the virus called poliomyelitus and infantile paralysis, or polio as it became known.  As I have read more and more about this virus and the circumstances surrounding the epidemic in the United States during the 1940s, I am utterly amazed at the courage these children displayed.  This was even more evident when I read my uncle's autobiography.

I was excited to read it - I just knew so many of my questions about his illness would be answered.  How difficult it was, how painful, how hard it was to overcome!  Boy, was I wrong.  His 1953 biography, written so shortly after his experience, only contained a brief account of his polio experience.  Most of the autobiography was about his family and about how he planned to live in the future - plans that were important to him.

I learned so much from my uncle Jimmy - courage, determination, contentment...  I could go on and on.  Never once did I hear him speak negatively about what outsiders perceived as his limitations.  I guess that's because to him, there were no limits to what he could do.  He too, like wisteria, was persistant and did not give up - stubborn, in a good way.  Maybe I loved him so much because we are so similar.



Uncle Jimmy