The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (68 page)

For years, Mother Dolores and I wondered about three large film cases gathering dust in a Corpus Christi cupboard. In 2004 we discovered they contained kinescope reels of the live
Playhouse 90
production she did in 1960. James Douglas found a lab that transferred the kinescope to videotape. It is now part of the abbey library, and it may be the only existing copy of that live performance outside the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City. How she came by it is an absolute mystery to her.

The tape gave me the opportunity to screen
To the Sound of Trumpets
for my Community. I was surprised that the intervening four decades hadn’t dulled the memory of working with that extraordinary company in such a challenging undertaking. For my part, especially in my present situation of neuropathy, I was totally undone by the fact that I could remember that many lines. In live television, there are no retakes
.

In May of 2004, I accompanied Mother Dolores to Fairfield University in Connecticut, where she received an honorary doctor of law degree at their fifty-fourth commencement exercises.

She and the other honorees would be seated on the stage, but she hadn’t been told that she would have to walk around a quad the size of a football field to get to there. She had been free from dependency on a wheelchair for only a few weeks, and I was concerned that she might not make it. But she did, with little sign of discomfort, even waving to the graduates who were calling out congratulations en route.

Her introduction that afternoon, extolling her accomplishments, went down in the Fairfield annals. She stood at the podium and heard a litany of her achievements that ended with these words: “She has the distinction of being the only nun in the world whose resume can be found on the website SwingingChicks.com.” When the kids heard that, they burst into a roar. Mother Dolores stood and waited for the enthusiastic reaction to die down. When it finally did, she acknowledged it with a sheepish shrug of her shoulders which ignited another eruption of cheers.

—I have never been told what or who was responsible for the Fairfield honor, but it means a lot to me. I have the greatest reverence for education and had always envisaged myself a college graduate. I never will be—but, thanks to Fairfield, like the Scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz,
I have a diploma
.

   
PS: The first letter I received from my bother Martin, after I had been honored, began with “Dear Doctor Mother Sister
.”

I learned from my old friend Winnie that Anthony Quinn lay in a Boston hospital bed, close to death. I wanted so much to speak to Tony and to let him know how much he meant to me, but the only way to contact him at that time was by letter. I wrote to tell him a Mass was being said for him. The letter, which was signed by the entire Community, did get to him in time, and his daughter Katy taped it to the hospital wall. She told us her father saw it and was comforted. I could only hope that it signified the same comfort that his note—the one I found pinned to my dressing room door so long ago—had given to me
.

In 2005, we laid Lady Abbess Benedict Duss to rest from the Church of Jesu Fili Mariae. Archbishop Mansell celebrated the traditional monastic liturgy of burial as she lay in the cedar coffin that Sister Alma had made—with a replica of the Third Army star, which she had kept close to her heart in life, on its cover
.

Throughout the day, a single thought recurred. During my entire formation, even when I was so outspoken and would challenge things that I did not think were correct, Lady Abbess had accepted my challenges. There had always been respect between us. She was the one who made it possible for me to stay
.

On the day I visited the Neuropathy Association Bulletin Board on the Internet, I took another spiritual leap. There, I was stunned to see, were numberless accounts of fellow sufferers, many in far worse straits than I, which now called me personally into a new community, one that was almost unknown
.

Although neuropathy had been around always, it needed to be better known. Most of what we know about diseases reaches us because somebody is trying to do something about them. Traditionally, that has come from hospitals and universities. But patients with neuropathy do not get hospitalized frequently; they are seen as outpatients. Universities are involved with research, but they had not done much research into neuropathy. The disease really had no constituency to spread the word
.

That is, until the formation of the Neuropathy Association in 1995 by patients with the disease who met during their treatments in a doctor’s office. Realizing how much they learned from listening to each other, they decided to form an organization to provide patient support and education and to promote research
.

What distinguishes the Neuropathy Association from other organizations of this sort is the fact that many of these were started by people who had the means to help them. The March of Dimes, for example, started with President Franklin Roosevelt, who put the US Post Office at its service. The Neuropathy Association started with a group of ordinary, not wealthy, people who put their time and skills together and made use of the Internet to promote the organization. It’s truly a grassroots outfit
.

Ten years after its founding, the association decided it was long past time to establish a neuropathy awareness program with a fund-raising dinner—albeit it a modest one—at Manhattan’s Le Cirque restaurant, formerly the personal residence of New York’s Cardinal Francis Spellman. It was a sold-out event for only 150 guests and appropriately named “An Intimate Evening”.

Dr. Latov told Mother Dolores the association would honor key individuals who had supported the organization’s efforts, and he wanted to add her name to the list of those recognized for helping to focus attention on this disease—of course, pending permission for her participation.

“At that time,” Mother Abbess recalled, “we got only so many permissions a month to leave the enclosure, so this was something I had to weigh. The association didn’t have a big funding operation, and if her participation could help, well, I thought she should go. If she had to go to one dinner a year, that wasn’t so bad.”

Permission to attend the benefit was granted. It was only the second time since her entrance forty-one years earlier that Mother Dolores was outside the enclosure for other than for medical reasons. Coincidentally, the benefit was held on her sixty-sixth birthday.

Maria Janis organized the program, pressing her husband, Byron, into dual-piano service with the entertainer Bobby Short, offering Patricia Neal in a dramatic reading and Tammy Grimes, the original Unsinkable Molly Brown, in a rousing reprise of that show’s signature tune, “I Ain’t Down Yet”. The honorary chairperson for the event was another friend of Mother Dolores—Mrs. Bob Hope. “An Intimate Evening” raised over $180,000 for the association and achieved its goal of increasing awareness on behalf of its members.

Among the special guests that evening was a big surprise for Mother Dolores. During the pre-dinner reception, Brad Dillman, her costar in
Francis of Assisi
, walked into the room. Brad had secretly flown from Santa Barbara just to attend the event. He flew back home on the red-eye that same night.

The two friends had not seen each other since 1961. It was one of those movie-reunion moments: the leading man slowly making his way through the crowd, the leading lady rising, waiting—the embrace, the tears.

—
I could hardly believe that Brad had come all that way just to see me. We had last been in touch when his wife, Suzy Parker, had died, just the year before. I knew Brad. Under his smiles and hugs, I saw a man who still felt the loss of the woman he greatly loved
.

Shortly after that evening, Dr. Latov spoke to me about his search for someone to represent the group—perhaps from the entertainment world who could do for neuropathy what Michael J. Fox was doing for Parkinson’s disease. I told him I would investigate possibilities for him. I had been in casual contact with Gregory Peck, who also suffered from neuropathy, and Andy Griffith, because he had Guillain-Barré syndrome, another autoimmune condition. I checked with both, but neither was able to take on the commitment
.

Dr. Latov then asked if it might be possible for me to undertake the role of spokesperson. It would be the first time a member of the Community would be allied with a secular group, and it would make demands on my time that were not centered within the enclosure. It could, in fact, take me out of the enclosure for personal appearances. The ultimate decision would be Mother Abbess’
.

“The enclosure is what caused an obstacle, nothing else”, Mother Abbess said. “Mother Dolores had given interviews for the
Women in Chant
CDs, but they were all conducted at the abbey; they didn’t require going out of the enclosure. Initially, that problem was solved when Bobby Short, another neuropathy sufferer, agreed to partner with Mother, taking on the ‘out’ part. Mother, then, could do the ‘in’.”

I had long admired Bobby Short’s talent but had gotten to know him as a friend because we often took our infusions at the same time and chatted during the procedure. Sharing the duty of speaking for the association with Bobby was an honor, albeit of short duration. Tragically, that marvel of a gentleman died just months later
.

“Still, what Mother was asked to do”, stressed Mother Abbess, “was a mission. She was being helped by the treatment, and there was a specific need. The thing is, I trust Dr. Latov. He really reverences Mother. If the mission takes her out of the enclosure, so be it. I gave my consent.”

My appointment as spokesperson was announced during the first official Neuropathy Week, and I was immediately plunged into a media tour with seventeen reporters by way of back-to-back interviews via satellite feed from a studio in New York City. I began telephone and in-person interviews conducted at the abbey and made appearances on Catholic TV programs, on which questions from viewers often concerned neuropathy. Personal correspondence jumped in bulk with the announcement of my connection to the association
.

Elaine Williams, Mother Dolores’ secretary, took on the extra responsibility of writing the replies. “Questions regarding Mother Dolores’ treatment”, she said, “are predominate in the mail we receive because of shared pain and suffering. In the approximately 4,500 letters that have been given to me to date, there is a recurrent theme—expressed or implied—that Mother has become a source of hope and inspiration. Our responses are standard language, but there’s a personal touch always.”

I tell the people who write not to suffer alone with the illness, but to reach out to others, share personal experiences. There are many regional neuropathy groups forming across the country. These can serve as a source of strength and reassurance for all of us and are vital if we are to inform the vast public about this illness—as well as the medical community, which will lead to greater professional understanding and more effective treatments
.