![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Oldest Iron Lung Inhabitant dies at 71
May. 12th, 2009 10:18 amMartha Mason, Who Wrote Book About Her Decades in an Iron Lung, Dies at 71
I was very impressed by this obituary. I think the thing that impresses me most is that Martha Mason's life was so successful by *ordinary* standards. A lot of times, you read "inspirational" life stories and they feature people who became mega-rich celebrities and spokespeople for this, that and the other.
Like many people on this f-list, Martha just wanted to be a writer. And despite some massive handicaps - she was in a freaking iron lung, with no one to take her dictations - she eventually managed to write a book, one sentence at a time. And she published it.
And you know what? Barely anyone noticed. It wasn't a bestseller. It didn't land her on Oprah. But Martha was happy, because something most of us take for granted - the ability to sit down at a computer and type - was something she'd been waiting her entire life to be able to do.
From the article:
...Martha Ann Mason was born on May 31, 1937, and reared in Lattimore, a small town about 50 miles west of Charlotte. In September 1948, when she was 11, Martha went to bed one night feeling achy. She did not tell her parents because she did not want to compound their sorrow: that day, they had buried her 13-year-old brother, Gaston, who had died of polio a few days before.
Martha spent the next year in hospitals before being sent home in an iron lung. Doctors told her parents she would live another year at most.
She survived, she later said, because she was endlessly curious and there was so much to learn.
...Ms. Mason and her iron lung were transported by bakery truck to Winston-Salem, where she enrolled in Wake Forest College. There, she joined a student group seeking to integrate the campus. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Wake Forest in 1960.
...Returning to Lattimore, Ms. Mason began writing for the local newspaper, dictating her articles to her mother, Euphra. Not long afterward, Ms. Mason’s father, Willard, suffered a major heart attack and became an invalid, requiring Euphra to care for him, too. There was no more time for taking dictation. For decades afterward, Ms. Mason wrote only in her head, publishing nothing. Her father died in 1977.
...That changed in the mid-1990s, when Ms. Mason acquired a voice-activated computer with e-mail capability and Internet access. The computer brought her the world. It also let her contemplate writing her memoir, which is subtitled “Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung.”
...“I’m happy with who I am, where I am,” Ms. Mason told The Charlotte Observer in 2003. “I wouldn’t have chosen this life, certainly. But given this life, I’ve probably had the best situation anyone could ask for.”"
I was very impressed by this obituary. I think the thing that impresses me most is that Martha Mason's life was so successful by *ordinary* standards. A lot of times, you read "inspirational" life stories and they feature people who became mega-rich celebrities and spokespeople for this, that and the other.
Like many people on this f-list, Martha just wanted to be a writer. And despite some massive handicaps - she was in a freaking iron lung, with no one to take her dictations - she eventually managed to write a book, one sentence at a time. And she published it.
And you know what? Barely anyone noticed. It wasn't a bestseller. It didn't land her on Oprah. But Martha was happy, because something most of us take for granted - the ability to sit down at a computer and type - was something she'd been waiting her entire life to be able to do.
From the article:
...Martha Ann Mason was born on May 31, 1937, and reared in Lattimore, a small town about 50 miles west of Charlotte. In September 1948, when she was 11, Martha went to bed one night feeling achy. She did not tell her parents because she did not want to compound their sorrow: that day, they had buried her 13-year-old brother, Gaston, who had died of polio a few days before.
Martha spent the next year in hospitals before being sent home in an iron lung. Doctors told her parents she would live another year at most.
She survived, she later said, because she was endlessly curious and there was so much to learn.
...Ms. Mason and her iron lung were transported by bakery truck to Winston-Salem, where she enrolled in Wake Forest College. There, she joined a student group seeking to integrate the campus. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Wake Forest in 1960.
...Returning to Lattimore, Ms. Mason began writing for the local newspaper, dictating her articles to her mother, Euphra. Not long afterward, Ms. Mason’s father, Willard, suffered a major heart attack and became an invalid, requiring Euphra to care for him, too. There was no more time for taking dictation. For decades afterward, Ms. Mason wrote only in her head, publishing nothing. Her father died in 1977.
...That changed in the mid-1990s, when Ms. Mason acquired a voice-activated computer with e-mail capability and Internet access. The computer brought her the world. It also let her contemplate writing her memoir, which is subtitled “Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung.”
...“I’m happy with who I am, where I am,” Ms. Mason told The Charlotte Observer in 2003. “I wouldn’t have chosen this life, certainly. But given this life, I’ve probably had the best situation anyone could ask for.”"
