THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 9, 1994 TAG: 9411090495
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY HARRY MINIUM, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GREENVILLE, S.C. LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
Listen to the story of a brave young woman, one that might prod you to plunk down a few dollars to watch a football game this weekend at Foreman Field.
A decade ago, her mother was burned to death in a house fire. The daughter, then in grade school, sustained burns over 90 percent of her body.
After initial treatment, she was transported for therapy to the Greenville Shriners Hospital for Crippled and Burned Children.
The therapy, in which she exercised to regain full use of her damaged muscles, took months and was painful. But it was necessary before plastic surgery could be performed.
``She had a picture beside her bed,'' said Vernon Wade, a 65-year-old Shriner who is a volunteer for the Greenville hospital. ``It was a picture of a pretty, blond girl. She would show it to anyone who came by and say, `That's how I used to look. Wasn't I pretty?'
``It was so sad. It would tear us apart to hear that.''
But this story has a happy ending. The Shriners hospitals performed extensive plastic surgery. Her father donated skin tissue. It took years, but surgeons reconstructed her face. Some scars still show, but she is attractive again.
Because of regulations at the Greenville hospital, she must remain anonymous. But suffice it to say there are a half-million stories similar to hers. That's how many boys and girls have been admitted to Shriners hospitals, founded in 1922 to deal with victims of polio. Millions more have been treated as outpatients for burns, injuries, lost or broken limbs, and back disorders.
All have two things in common: They are from families of modest incomes and were treated free of charge.
The 19 Shriners hospitals and three burn clinics subsist entirely on donations, including proceeds from Norfolk's Oyster Bowl game.
The Citadel and VMI square off at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in the 48th annual Oyster Bowl. While that isn't the best matchup in college football, no game is played for a better cause. The Oyster Bowl has provided more than $3 million for the Shriners hospitals since the first bowl game in 1946.
The game's motto is: ``Strong legs run so that weak legs may walk.''
I saw some of those weak legs last Saturday when I visited the Greenville hospital. You can't spend time with those children and leave without tears in your eyes.
The first patient I met was a teen from Alabama. She was standing at a nurses' station, chatting and laughing, when I was introduced. It took several minutes before I noticed she had an artificial right leg.
I didn't have the heart to ask how she'd lost her leg. Wade says he thinks it was cancer.
I saw other children playing with toys or lying in bed. Some were missing limbs, others were paralyzed or sick. Most had a smile or a friendly comment. They left me wondering why young children who are fighting disease or a handicap always seem to be so cheerful.
Wade, a Navy veteran who served in Norfolk during the 1950s, once was one of those smiling children.
In 1939, when he was 9, he took a fall from a tree while playing hide-and-seek. All of the bones in his left forearm snapped and were sticking out. Blood was pouring out, and most of his nerve endings had been severed. After doctors stopped the bleeding, they took him to the Shriners Hospital.
Doctors there at first wanted to amputate Wade's arm. One even had a bone saw at his side.
``But my father went crazy,'' Wade said. ``So they said they'd try to save the arm.''
They operated and set the arm, even though medical orthodoxy at the time said it would never heal.
But it healed almost perfectly. The surgery was so radical that it was the subject of several stories in medical journals.
Wade, a retired computer programmer, has been a Shriner and a hospital volunteer all of his adult life.
``I've never forgotten how good they were to me here,'' Wade said. ``We had cake and ice cream and Cokes. And this was during the Depression, when nobody had anything.
``It was a place where you didn't get homesick. It was so friendly.''
It still is, even though the hospital in which Wade's arm was saved is no more. The Shriners moved into a $26 million building six years ago.
Fashioned from polished iron, stone and cut glass, it has an atrium designed to be kid-friendly.
On the first floor, where outpatients are treated, is a huge fountain with a concrete elephant and a play area, including a playhouse and oversized stuffed animals.
On the second floor are the dining area, treatment rooms and a small school. Greenville County teachers hold class in the hospital for long-term patients.
The hospital has its own prosthetics lab, where the most modern techniques are used for fashioning artificial limbs, with arms that move and hands that clutch.
There is a motion-analysis lab, where cameras and computers are used to design limbs to match a child's body. Pictures of clowns and balloons adorn the walls there and virtually everywhere else.
Volunteers, called Road Runners, use hospital vans to transport patients from a dozen states to Greenville. Hundreds of children from Hampton Roads have been treated there.
For long-term patients, there is a game room, a library and a chapel. Parents of some long-term patients stay free at the hospital's four-suite hotel just yards from the rooms where their children are staying.
More than 400 surgical procedures are done and 12,000 outpatients are treated each year in the Greenville hospital.
As I left the city, I was reminded of a tragedy that has touched us all. Greenville is less than an hour from Union, S.C., where where the bodies of two young boys were found in the family car, in a lake. I noticed yellow ribbons everywhere. The people of Greenville are still in shock.
Many of us us had our faith in humanity shaken after learning of the boys' terrible fate.
One hour at the Shriners hospital was all it took to restore mine. MEMO: GAMEWATCH
What: The 48th Annual Oyster Bowl football game.
When: Saturday, 3:30 p.m.
Where: Foreman Field.
Who's playing: Virginia Military Institute (0-9) vs. The Citadel
(4-5).
Who benefits: Shriner's Hospitals for Crippled and Burned Children.
Ticket info: $10, $12.50, $17.50 and $20. Available at Oyster Bowl
Office, 645 Woodlake Drive, Chesapeake (420-4560). by CNB