November 7, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Sunny Hill resident chosen for panel discussing challenges, adapting

JOLIET -- Mary Paine has never been one to let challenges stand between her and living the way she wanted to.

She’s risen above childhood taunting, a short-lived marriage, and physical ailments.

In fact, just surviving was a challenge when the 83-year-old was born in West Virginia with a cleft palate and lip, disfiguring abnormalities of the roof of the mouth and upper lip.

Paine’s life has been a series of rejections and successes. When she was born, there was no equipment to help parents deal with a child with her genetic defects. Her parents, William and Rachel Van Dyke, managed anyway.

“I still don’t know how (my mom) did it,” she says. “Food would go in my mouth and out my nose.”

It was Paine’s ability to adapt and face challenges that caused staff members at Sunny Hill Skilled Rehabilitation Center, 421 Doris Ave., to recommend her to be part of a panel at a recent two-day Illinois Pioneer Coalition conference in Springfield. (See sidebar.)

The theme for the second annual event was “The Courage to Move Beyond Can’t.” That could also be the title of Paine’s personal story, which was shared at the conference by Bill Keane, panel moderator.

At 4, she was hospitalized with diphtheria. While there, she developed a kidney problem; her hospitalization lasted eight months.

Before she turned 6, she had already had six surgeries. There were no plastic surgeons then, she said, but there was a neurosurgeon in Richmond, Va., who did all he could for her palate and lip.

Then came school. “… I was different from the other kids,” she said. Being kids, they were often cruel, chasing her and taking whatever they could from her.

Some of the cruelest cuts, however, came from adults, such as the woman who directed the senior play.

Having had an older sister, she knew that after the tryouts, the teacher gave backstage jobs to everyone who tried out and didn’t get a part.

“I went so I could do something with all of my friends.”

What she didn’t expect was the teacher pointedly asking her – in front of the entire group – why she would even think she could audition. “I didn’t answer because I knew I would cry.”

After high school, she again decided to follow in her sister’s footsteps. This time she wanted to attend nursing school in Richmond. She passed all the written tests. Then she was asked to come in for an interview.

By then, plastic surgery was available. She was told she would be admitted to nursing school – if she allowed them to operate on her face.

“I told them, ‘I didn’t know you had to be Miss America to be a nurse.’”

Paine was undeterred. She would become a nurse, and without the plastic surgery the school demanded.

The son of a family friend got her into a nursing school in Philadelphia. At the end of her training, a plastic surgeon approached her and asked if he could operate on her. There would be no charge. She spent four months in a Philadelphia hospital to accommodate the surgery schedule.

In 1950, she moved to Joliet to begin her career. An avid Sox fan, she was disappointed when she had to move back to West Virginia to help her parents in 1959, the last time the White Sox were in the World Series.

Along the way, she married a man she’d known since childhood. After a month, she knew it was a mistake. After 25 months, she ended it. She decided she would not marry again.

In 1962, she and her parents moved to Will County. Her parents lived in Plainfield; she was in Joliet. After her father died, she moved in with her mother and cared for her until her mother moved to Sunny Hill.

Paine visited her mother every day for the 11 years she was there. Many years later, when Paine knew she could no longer live on her own, she knew she wanted to live at Sunny Hill.

Life hasn’t stopped putting challenges in her path. Once a “voracious reader,” macular degeneration has left her with limited vision.

In spite of everything, she’ll tell you that she has had a good life, filled with travel, and nieces and nephews.

And while her body may be 83, her spirit isn’t. “Inside … I don’t feel any different than I did at 25.”

The Pioneer conference, no matter how enjoyable, left her with another possible “challenge.”

She had never spoken in public before the conference, having steadfastly refused every opportunity because of the speech impediment that remains from her cleft palate and lip. She even said no to a spot on Sunny Hill’s resident council because of it.

“I did all right (at the conference), they all said,” said Paine. “Now I’m afraid (people here will) really be after me to speak.”