Commentary: Remembering one woman's faith, battle with ALS
Jun. 19, 2006 News media contact: Fran Coode Walsh * (615) 742-5458* Nashville {371}
NOTE: Photographs and a UMTV report are available at http://umns.umc.org.
A UMNS Commentary By Randy Horick*
Every February for the past 15 years, about the time that preparations for Lent usually begin, the congregation at West Nashville United Methodist Church has observed another ritual. During the time of the worship service when members offer their joys and concerns, Dave Hormby would raise his hand, indicating that his wife, Kathie, had something to offer.
In February, everyone knew what Kathie would say. They'd wait quietly for 30 seconds or more until they heard a slightly metallic female voice from Kathie's laptop computer: "Pitchers and catchers report this week."
For Kathie, perhaps the most faithful baseball fan you could have ever met, sharing the joy of a new season wasn't just about her favorite sport. As everyone at West Nashville United Methodist Church understood, it was an affirmation of faith and hope and joy, a personal testimony like those of the old Methodist tradition.
Longtime members of the church remember how Kathie went from a walker to a wheelchair, then gradually lost her ability to work - she had been a federal public defender - to feed herself and to speak. But she never gave up. In some ways, she only seemed to get stronger.
Kathie died in April, the week before Easter, after a long battle with ALS - Lou Gehrig's Disease. She was 56 and had lived with the disease for 18 years. Gehrig lived only two or three. Few people last five. Virtually no one with this illness lives as long as Kathie did.
She was diagnosed when her son Tom was very small. She said she was determined to see him graduate from high school.
There was a symmetry about Kathie's illness, her faith and her love for baseball. As a true fan, she understood that hope endures against all odds. Her beloved Los Angeles Dodgers reached the playoffs just twice in the past 20 years. But every spring brought another chance. Hope does not die. In baseball, as Kathie once wrote, as long as you can keep fouling off pitches, you're staying alive.
The strength of Kathie's faith hit home for her pastor, Dennis Meaker, during a Sunday service when worshippers could request their favorite hymns. Kathie requested the old standard that begins, "Because He lives, I can face tomorrow."
"That hymn took on even deeper meaning for me," says Dennis, who is entering his seventh year at West Nashville United Methodist Church. "It was truly a statement of her faith. I can no longer hear that hymn without thinking about Kathie."
Kathie didn't call out her hymn request. She had lost her speaking ability years ago. But she had slight movement with her head and one toe. They outfitted her wheelchair with a laptop whose keyboard she could control with her slight movements. A fellow parishioner taught her Morse Code. She was so eager to communicate that she learned it in one afternoon.
Kathie could "type" messages that the computer's voice processor turned into spoken word. She corresponded with friends by e-mail. She wrote a column, "Kathie's Hot Corner," for the church newsletter. She would read up about the Dodgers on the Net. (Her last act before she died was to check the previous night's box score.)
"She didn't have a Pollyannaish sense of God's providence - that everything, including her illness, happened as part of a divine plan," Dennis says. "But she cherished God's gift of life and never viewed her illness as an excuse to retreat from it."
On Kathie's last Sunday, during joys and concerns, Dave indicated that Kathie wanted to offer up a joy. After half a minute, the computer's robotic voice intoned: "Life begins on Opening Day!"
From the congregation there was the kind of laugh you hear when people
expect a familiar punchline and are rewarded. "Now Kathie," teased Dennis, holding up his Bible, "I missed where that's covered in here."
"Hope," said Dave. "That's in there."
Opening Day is about hope, and few things are more biblical than that.
On May 23, Tom Hormby graduated from Nashville's Hume-Fogg High School. When she was diagnosed, no one but Kathie had dared to imagine she might see it.
After his diagnosis, Lou Gehrig told the crowd at Yankee Stadium not to feel sorry for him. He said he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth. They called him the Iron Horse because he played in 2,130 consecutive games - a record people assumed would never be broken. It's hard to say whether Kathie considered herself lucky. But she was the real iron horse. And those who had the privilege to know her and be inspired by her faith were very lucky indeed.
*Horick is a journalist and a member of West Nashville (Tenn.) United Methodist Church.
News media contact: Fran Coode Walsh or Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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