my most inspiring moment Tnis popular novelist
learned about living life
to the fullest from a
Frai
Conqueror
courageous woman who, for 30
years, teetered on the brink of death
By EDWARD STREETER
Author of "Chairman of rha lorad," "Father of If Irlch," and "Mr. HobbV Vacation"
IN 1928 a brown-haired, merry-eyed
young woman of 18 was training in
a New York hospital to become a nurse.
She was gay, sought-after, ambitious,
and life was spread before her like a
lavish banquet.
Suddenly it was discovered that she had tuber
culosis, a dread disease in those days. Her fam
ily had little money, but they scraped the barrel
bottom and sent her to a nursing home in Sara?
nac Lake, N.Y. She resigned herself unhappily
to several months of "curing" but she was
destined to remain in bed for 21 years.
To most, that would have been the end of the
banquet Isabel Smith decided differently and
gradually achieved a life richer than that of most
people who are blessed with good health. During
those years, she approached the very threshold
of death on several occasions, but through it all
she never ceased to pursue the art of living.
Perhaps her greatest triumph was in her rela
tions with people. They came to cheer her but
went away cheered themselves.
I first met Isabel in the early 1930s while
visiting Dr. Francis B. Trudeau, son of the late
Edward E. Trudeau who founded the famous
sanitarium at Saranac Lake that bore his name.
He told me of the tuberculosis research being
carried on there.
"Tomorrow I'm going to introduce you to a
young patient," he said. "I moved her in recently,
but she has been a patient of mine since 1928."
"She hasn't been in bed all that time, has
she?" I asked.
"All that time," he said. "Five years. I think
she'll interest you; she's different."
She was. I dread visiting sick people. There is
something about the sight of a person lying help
. less which leaves me speechless. But Isabel Smith
was neither wan nor drooping among wrinkled
pillows. She was not even in a dreary hospital
room. Her bed was on a sun-drenched porch over
looking the panorama of the Adirondack Moun
tains. She was curled up on it like a kitten, read
ing Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain.
"This is the most wonderful book I've ever
read," she said, without wasting time on prelimi
naries. "Do you know it?"
From that moment, she took the conversational
initiative and never relinquished it, pouring out
her opinions on books, describing the seasonal
changes that took place in her beloved mountains,
commenting on events in the outside world. When
I left her an hour later, I realized that it was
she who had given me a fresh sense of awareness.
I puzzled over that visit for days. What made
it so different from dozens of similar, less happy
experiences? Suddenly it occurred to me that
she had not expressed a single negative thought
during our entire conversation.
Sick as she was, she seemed to have achieved
complete acceptance of her world and had learned
to live in it creatively and positively. It was a
tiny world whose horizons had contracted until
she could almost reach out and touch them, yet
she seemed to sense no boundaries.
As the years passed, I saw her frequently, and
we kept up a nonstop correspondence. She loved
to write letters, and she had more adventures to
pass on to me than I could possibly match. Never
did I have occasion to change my first impressionj
and I never ceased to wonder as I watched her
spirit grow and her circle of friends expand.
She once wrote me about those early days when
complete rest was a matter of life and death:
"I had a frustrated feeling of time slipping away,
of wasted hours and days that would never come
again. I knew I must in some way or other utilize
every precious moment of this life that was mine
to live but once."
How Procioua Moment War Uaod
She had every reason for discouragement. For
a period, she would improve until she dared to
hope only to fall back to where she would have
to lie flat for weeks and even months. Operation
followed operation and always with the same re
sult: slight improvement followed by a slow
descent into the valley. She was human; she had
moments of black despair. But never did she lose
her eager interest in all that went on about her.
Isabel was one of those rare persons born with
a fierce thirst for life. She had to drink deeply
from its waters or perish. Even when the stream
shrank to the merest trickle, she did not permit
it to become bitter on her tongue. Rather, she
savored it with immense appreciation.
In 1938 a magazine printed an article on tuber
culosis which featured Trudeau Sanitarium. In
it were three large pictures of Isabel Smith and
the story of her decade in bed. Letters poured in
from all over the world. There were more than
3,500 of them, and the odd thing was that a large
percentage of the writers wanted to tell her their
troubles and seek her advice and help.
The next 10 years saw the same heartbreaking
cycle of recoveries and setbacks. Once she pro
gressed to such a degree that she was transferred
from her familiar room in Ludington Infirmary
to a rest cottage. There, deprived of her moun
tain view, she trained a chipmunk to jump
through a hoop, and she studied geography.
A Climb from a Stoop Doscont
Cottage life was more than her overtaxed heart
could take, however, and eventually she found
herself back in Ludington facing her worst crisis.
Bound to life by the most fragile threads, she
spent months in an emergency room, where only
her doctors and the cleaning woman were per
mitted to enter. One day Bhe discovered that the
latter could neither read nor write, so as her
strength began to return, Isabel undertook to
rectify this, and did.
Shortly after, she wrote: "My senses Beem to
have attained razor-sharpness. I am seeing and
hearing as I never have before, and sniffing,
tasting, and touching as well. A far-away stone
dropping into the river with a plop is as distinct
to my ears as the snap of a nearby twig, and the
aroma of newly turned earth in a garden beyond
my sight drifts as readily to my nose as the
sharp scent of Mount Pisgah's pines."
In the early 1940s Isabel regained sufficient
strength to visit her home in Bradford, Pa., which
she had not seen for 13 years. To her dismay,
she found she was no longer in tune with the
noise and bustle of a large town. The tempo of
her life had taken on a new and deeper beat.
After a few days, she returned to Saranac Lake
exhausted not sorry she had ventured out but
glad to be back.
"I am well content," she wrote, "to be in this
place where I feel happy just to be alive; where,
what little of the world I know, I know infinitely,
endearingly well; where it is not so much the
number of yards I can cover that matters, but
the beauty which unfolds at every step; where I
need not hurry through the hours but can pause
to taste the richness that a moment offers, know
ing that it will never return."
(Continued on page 6)
luumuTioM it Ofoici mm
Family Weekly. March 10, 1M1
J