one casualty of the midwestern storms last week was a woman in an iron lung...when the electricity went out, and they couldn't get the generator started, she just was too weakened from her disease to keep going despite the family's best efforts.
But the real story is not that she died, but in her life.
From a local reporter, Roy Exum.
as an infant before she contacted the disease, but Dianne could never remember that. So in the 58 years that would follow, she became a light to the entire town of Jackson....she wrote a children’s book from that Iron Lung called “Less Light,” which is about “Blinky,” a dim star that always wanted to be a wishing star. In doing so, Dianne became a star herself. Get this; she wrote her book by using an ancient voice-activated computer that was so rudimentary that to write the word “cat” she would have to say, “Charlie-Alpha-Tango.”...
Her dogged determination and irrepressible will to live soon became legendary and, in an interview several years ago, she said it was all because of her parents.
“I think God looked at me and said, ‘She is going to have a rough time so I’d better pick good parents.’”
So the Odells did have fun and laughter, foregoing any idea of a vacation elsewhere or ever leaving Dianne alone. They had constant parties and Christmas was always a big thing....the trick to making it in life was the Three Fs - faith, family and friends. “You can’t have one without the other,” she was quoted in the Jackson newspaper. “I would also tell others who are facing situations to never give up because there is always something over the horizon. God knows what that is … you can’t give up.”
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