Document text
--> --> Remembering someone with a special vision By Norma Yovich Ashland A few weeks ago I saw an item in the Sunday paper - actually, a book review - about a horse named Seabiscuit. My mind jumped back to the 40s when I was a college student in Massachusetts. Seabiscuit was a well-known race horse of that time, and had such a catchy name that we talked and joked about him a lot. One day at college, our gym class was playing a game of field hockey. I twisted my knee and fell. It happened twice in that game and was the beginning of a permanent debilitation - a torn ligament, bruised cartilage -and it was before the time of "football surgeons" who may have been able to fix me up. Off and on for the rest of my college days and even later, I wore ace bandages wound around and across the knee, which showed unbecomingly beneath my hemline. It was before women wore slacks on a regular basis as we do now. Jokingly my classmates began to call me Seabiscuit, or Seebee, and I learned to live with and laugh at it. Thirty years later I had some knee surgery which helped some, but I never did wear high heels again after that hurtful experience. So when I saw that someone had written a book about Seabiscuit, my mind floated back to that day. I remembered lying on the field, and later dealing with the awkward ace bandages and their prickly clips, and how I learned to laugh at myself as I clunked along. One of my classmates was particularly witty and funny and I'm sure she is the one who found the nickname for me. I clipped the news article and sent it to her with a note, to New Hampshire where she's lived for many years. To my surprise she phoned me a few days later after receiving my note. We laughed together and had a nice chat. I asked her what she thought of the book review and she said, "Norma, do you not know that I am blind?" Then she told me her husband would no doubt read the article to her when he returned home. No, I did not know about her blindness, and I was stunned. It is hard to accept that tragedies can happen to us carefree people who danced around a Maypole every spring as a college tradition; who, some of us, loved and married our soldier boyfriends; who loved and taught little children to read; and who loved and knew each other's families as if they were our own. I want to feel that blindness didn't happen to my happy, charming friend, and yet I know that Marion will always have a special kind of vision, fostered by caring and dreams. Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2001 Lee Northwest Publishing