THE COLORFUL CHARACTERS OF CARVILLE

by Julia Rivera Elwood

The following was supposed to be the test of my first book. (The second book will be my autobiography.) It will be printed hereby as I have written it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed these characters and how warmly and deeply they touched my life.

FOREWARD

This is my compilation of unique characters of which most communities are full and which we tend to remember. They were at Carville, Louisiana, the former site of the United States Public Health Service Gillis W. Long Hansen's Disease (leprosy) Center, but I am sure you can identify one or more of these individuals with someone you presently know or used to know.

I have to insert here that in 1999, the facility known as the Gillis W. Long Hansen's Disease Center at Carville changed. The administrative and medical staff, along with a few of the patients in the Infirmary, were move to Summit Hospital in Baton Rouge, about 30 miles away. At present, the National Hansen's Disease Programs facility is scattered into three campuses. In addition to Summit, the Research Laboratories located at the School of Veterinary Medicine at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. The third campus is located at Carville where most of the Hansen's disease patients are living. This Carville facility is shared with the Youth Challenge Program (an alternative education school for at-risk youngsters) managed by the Louisiana National Guard. The law states that HD patients will be allowed to live at Carville for as long as they wish.

I must remind you that some of these individuals suffer from Hansen's disease (leprosy), a nerve and skin disorder which has been greatly misunderstood through the years, m but is becoming accepted more currently as the mildly communicable disease it actually is.

The names have been changed to protect everyone concerned but some will be identified by people who are in daily contact with them. It is not my intent to hurt any of these brave persons - some of them my good friends - or to offend them in any way. It is my intention to give a personal view of the institution while I present for your enjoyment the colorful lives of some of its most interesting residents and the great spirit which moves them. ,

MY STORY IN BRIEF

Acting upon a firm request from one of my friends (thank you, Cleve), I am telling about myself first so you can understand how it is that I know all these wonderful people.

In 1956, when I was only 16 years old, I came to Carville as one of its exclusive clientele: a patient. Because this was the end of my junior year at Edcouch-Elsa (Texas) High School, and because I had been elected head cheerleader for the coming year, it was doubly trying for an active girl such as me. In our school, there had never been a head cheerleader who was of Mexican descent - I was first - and I was going to be robbed of the opportunity to serve! Besides, in those days, it was such an honor to be a head cheerleader.

Coming from a family of 12, I thought that so many of my brothers and sisters were left behind, that one less child to care for would not affect my parents very much. Wrong. In August two months after I had been admitted as a patient at Carville, my whole family and my grandmother carne to see me. They had to use two cars. I remember seeing them through the fence because the youngsters could not come into the hospital grounds at that time. Everyone was so filled with excitement. The doctors gave me permission to go out to visit the family in a motel in Baton Rouge, LA. I was so glad that they came, but I knew that they could not afford the trip and it was a great sacrifice.

Anytime your family visits, no matter how short the visit, the emotional high is better than a year's dose of medicine. When they left, it was back to school for me in my senior year. I studied hard; did volunteer work, such as taking some of the ladies in wheelchairs to church; and was very active in sports during leisure time. Some of the youngsters would all gather in the Recreation Building Ballroom to play ping- '', pong; pool; badminton; checkers; and sometimes outside games, such as miniature golf, a hike to the lake, or tennis. Not many played golf, except for the boys, but they wanted to be near the girls, so they stuck around the Canteen. After we were tired of playing, we would move to House 16, where all the young girls lived. Sitting in a circle around the front porch of the houses was a favorite pastime for all of us. We would sit there until our curfew, which was 10:00 p.m., talking and having cookies and milk (which the watchman would bring around on his nightly rounds). Many times he would stop to talk to us for a while.

After graduation (the class of 1957 was said to be the largest class ever in the history of the Carville school - six graduates), I went to work at The Star with Stanley Stein. The day of my interview with him was one of the most terrible days I have ever experienced. Because everyone who knew him had told me how meticulous he was about everything he did, I became nervous (although all my friends will attest I am not that kind of person). He asked me to begin my opening and reading all the mail to him. The first letter happened to be from Tucson, Arizona. With all my might, I gritted my teeth and started enunciating every letter of the postmark. I pronounced it Tuck Son,

stood up and asked, "What kind of graduates are they putting out in the high schools nowadays? That is Tucson!" There was a big pause - I think it is called a pregnant pause - and I continued, "Would you like for me to read what's inside?" Six years after he yelled at me, Stein stood there at the same place and told me that I should have graduated magna cum laude. He had been my most important teacher and being my first boss, I respected what he had to say

Many times, when he gave me more dictation than I could finish before the next day, He would really get after me. When I had enough, I would tell him that he was inconsiderate and really did not have any conception of how long it took to type letters, correct them get them ready for mail, and so on. While I was talking, his expression would change. He would get a smile on his face and tell me, "It's good that you know when to tell me off. I need that once in a while." I could not stay angry at such a person.

After working with Stein for four years, I married another patient. Two years later, I had my first child. Because children were not allowed to be with the parents at Carville until we were discharged, I had to wait about three months to leave and go to a rented house in Baton Rouge. Meanwhile, my husband's mother kept our first born. At last we were together in one house and I took a job in Baton Rouge. Two more children came. A rocky marriage became rockier - on again off again - and we did not know when it would end for good. Two separations and two reconciliations later, I found myself in Texas, seven months pregnant with my fourth child, and living with my parents.

No job, a big pregnant belly, no money, and three small kids the oldest of whom would be four soon. Who was the wise person who said, "Home is a place where, if you go there, they have to take you in?" (Perhaps Mark Twain.) Thank goodness for good old Mom and Dad. My last child was 13 days old when I took a job with the Adult Migrant Program. There I met the kindest, loving man, who also happened to have been a great friend of my father's. Albert Hughes not only hired me as his secretary, he went with me to enroll me in college. Can you picture a 27 year old mother of four with two part-time jobs taking 12 hours of college credit? My waking hour was 4:30 a.m. to study because no one else was up making noise at that time. Every minute of spare time was spent in the library studying when I was not working.

After I received my bachelor's degree from Pan American University, Edinburg, Texas, I began teaching in my old alma mater. A few months went by before I received a phone call from my former principal in Carville telling me about a vacancy for a teacher's job. I was ecstatic! An opportunity for an ex-patient to go to work at the hospital had never been offered to anyone. The weeks that followed were busy. Not only did have to make certain that I was still negative (no active disease), but I had to be selected after the interview. The competition was not as stiff as I had imagined because one of the qualifications was that you speak Spanish fluently. For some unknown reason, about 50% of the patients at Carville are Spanish-speaking. Gaston England, my former teacher and principal, was the person who fought the administration and the personnel department in order to hire me. I respect him deeply for the confidence he placed on me. My first weeks on the job were torture. To say that I felt as though I was living in a glass house is putting it mildly. He always supported me and I do not think I disappointed him. After he died in 1980, I applied for his position and became the first former patient to become principal of the school. I am the first patient who has been hired as a full-time Civil Service employee and worked there for 29 and one-half years after which time I retired. (To set the record straight, in the 1990's there was a former patient hired as one of the chauffeur, and worked for several years, but is no longer employed here.) England encouraged me to go back to school to become qualified for school administration. In 1976, I received my master's degree from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. He knew he would not be in his position forever and never got a chance to enjoy retirement. Cancer was to take him quickly and prematurely.

As I look back, I can say that I had many persons who were wonderful friends and mentors. To them I owe the fact that now I have my life in order. I have found a loving husband, Ray, and the children are all grown with families of their own. I am forever thankful for the grace of God which has brought me blessings throughout my life. Forty-five years after I was diagnosed, I find myself being grateful for my life and for the interesting people in it, and for the love I have had showered on me by them.

And now, please settle back and read about some of the most colorful characters in the Carville community.

THE CURMUDGEON

His crooked finger hugged the pipe as he sat puffing on it while he listened intently to the noonday news a ritual with him. He had finished his lunch, which was brought in a tray by one of the cafeteria workers. This 70-year-old patient of German descent, Cass Mortz, had gone through the line in his electric wheelchair selecting what he wanted to eat. Being a loner - half by choice and half because people avoided his gruff manner - he sat by himself.

Not much changed from day to day for this stocky, white-haired individual. Meals seemed to break the monotony, because this was the time when all the patients would be together, and some people here made a ritual out of them. Cass was no exception, although he was different from the others in that he was always complaining about the status of things, but at the same time an intelligent, self-educated and well-read man.

He spent many of his waking hours reading at the Patients' Library located in the beautiful two-story columned Recreation Building. The library was well stocked with fiction as well as nonfiction books, classics, encyclopedias, and at least 30 different newspapers, magazines and periodicals in English and Spanish. The New York Times, The Miami Herald, the San Antonio Express, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post were some of his favorite newspapers. Since the library was on the first floor by the Canteen, when three o'clock came, Cass would motor over for his afternoon cup of coffee - going against his German beer upbringing. (There were whispers among the gossip that he had drunk enough beer in his early years to last him for a long time!) Three-quarters of the males frequenting the Canteen at this hour ordered beer. At this time of the day, everyone who worked at their part-time jobs, available to patients who wished to work, had finished for the day.

Cass entered quickly as soon as the doors were opened because the few tables were at a premium in this 24' by 24' caf a part of the patient-operated business. The table he occupied was the last one filled. Few locals like Cass - maybe because he always said what was on his mind. Or it may have been because he did not let anyone run over him. His German temper flared at times and he made more enemies each time this happened.

He seemed to enjoy this reputation of grouch and "town terror." Most of the persons who knew him had little to do with him and some even dared to shout uncomplimentary names to him in answer to his rudeness.

One year a couple of months before the Point Clair Lions Club Annual Benefit Fair in April, Maury Locher, one of the members of the Lions Club, was in charge of selling chances for the big television raffle for $1 each. I inquired if he had sold any to Cass. Maury reared back and stated, "I don't want any spit on my face!"

"Oh, give me that tablet. I'll sell him some!" I answered impatiently. He shouted as I was moving toward Cass, "I'll buy two to his one!" What I did not bother to tell Maury was that Cass and I got along fine. After the usual greetings and inquiry about his and his family's health, I proceeded to sell him two tickets. Maury's mouth did not close until I returned waving the dollar bills under his nose. "You gotta know how to do it, Maury!" He did a bah-humbug sign as he handed over his four dollars.

Cass must have been a regular young man because he fell in love and married about 35 years before. She died, and no one seemed to know what the story was. It was not until the late Sixties that he and Liz, who was blind and lived in one of the geriatrics units, were married. He visited her every day and bothered the nurses aides for every little thing Liz needed. Liz had company and she enjoyed the attention Cass gave her. They must have both been in their sixties and as far as anyone can tell, they were happy.

It did not last long. Liz was in poor health and died of a heart attack after five years of marriage. Cass had left his mark in this geriatric unit. The nurses dreaded his arrival because they could not get their regular work done when he was there demanding attention for Liz. They finally had to impose the regular twice-a-day visiting hours for him in a desperate attempt to get him off the nurses' backs. Every once in a while one would see a human touch. Not long after Liz died, Cass went to the Infirmary to fight an acute illness. Valentine's Day was full of surprises - the place buzzed with excitement and disbelief when a dozen red roses arrived for the nurses' station with an inscription, "Be my Valentine. Cass."