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Unlike the characters in a book of fiction, just because I put a period at the end of their chapters didn't mean that the amazing people in my new book stopped challenging themselves, achieving new goals, or facing life's complications.
In addition to posting photographs of them on my new website, www.brucefrankel.net, I'm planning to continue to update their lives from time to time with blog posts. In the meantime, here are a couple of recent bits of news:
- Nashville runner Margie Stoll was determined at the close of her chapter, The Natural, to win her way back into bold type in the annual Running Times Masters Awards. With the magazine's March issue Margie, 68, does just that. She's ranked #3 among 65+ women runners in the United States. And, as if that wasn't enough, on Feb. 7, she took first place for her age group in the 2010 USATF Half Marathon in Melbourne.
- Writer Harry Bernstein, on the verge of turning 100, is at work completing his fourth book. This one is a fictionalized memoir of his sister Rose.
- Teacher Nancy Gagliano retired in late 2009 as a teacher at the Banyan Elementary School in Sunrise, FL. just three months before her husband, James F. Gagliano died in February. He was 70.
- Betty Reid Soskin, at 89, the oldest ranger in the National Park Service ranger, whose extraordinary life makes up the chapter Living Color, has among other things lately:
- Accepted an invitation to receive an honorary doctorate and to deliver the commencement address in May to the graduating class of 2010 from the California College of the Arts.
- Agreed to take a role in a benefit performance of Eve Ensler's award-winning "Vagina Monologues" in a production to be held in the historic Craneway Pavilion of Ford Point in Richmond. The proceeds will go to violence prevention programs in the city.
- Has been featured in TV and print news reports on legislation signed by President Barack Obama to help bring renewed awareness to the worst home-front disaster of World War II, the horrific munitions explosion at the Port Chicago on July 17, 1944. Three hundred twenty men- two thirds of them African American- perished. The controversial mutiny that ensued after the disaster helped bring an end to the racial segregation of the U.S. military.
The Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, located at the mouth of the Sacramento River, will become a full unit of the National Park System, following approval by Congress.
For Betty, the tragedy is deeply personal. A dozen of the dead had attended a lemonade party at her house earlier in the day.
"Each time I'm at the memorial site and re-positioned in that deceptively tranquil setting," she wrote recently on her blog, "I can feel the presence of the unseen, and the stories flow and -- it's almost as though we've brought the life with us to this monument."
There has, sadly, also been fresh anguish for Betty to deal with.
In late November, a car struck her 54-year-old daughter Dorian in Hayward, California as she walked to a local mall to begin Christmas shopping. Dorian, brain damaged at birth, suffered two severely broken legs, a fractured nose, and bruised head. She had been recovering, but now faces another operation to reset her legs because the bones have not fused properly, Betty told me by phone the other night.
For Betty, who has fought relentlessly to help Dorian achieve an independent life, the accident and injuries to her daughter have created a new set of worries about Dorian's future. Despite it all, Betty remains her resilient self.
"My world continues to bring more assorted newness than anyone has a right to expect," she wrote me in an email. "But the contrasts are so extreme right now that much of the time I find myself with little sense of control -- simply reacting to whatever is coming in. But I seem to keep enough balls in the air that I manage to keep a sense of balance."
