Memoir of NC woman who lived 61 years in iron lung to be released nationally

From the Charlotte Observer:

LATTIMORE, N.C. - Folks in this small Cleveland County town still talk about the community’s most famous person – the woman in the iron lung.

Polio victim Martha Mason – paralyzed from the neck down – died in 2009 after spending 61 years in an airtight tube that breathed for her.

Her 2003 memoir, “Breath: A Lifetime in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung,” (pictured) released by a small N.C. publisher, has just been reissued by a national firm with a foreword by novelist Anne Rivers Siddons, who called it a story of “hope and heroism.”

Also, the community is raising money for a town historical museum that will include Mason’s 800-pound yellow iron lung.

She had no close relatives and asked her friend Polly Fite to dispose of her property.

A week after Mason’s funeral, Fite got calls from all over the country about buying or borrowing the device.

She turned down all requests.

“I decided there was no question – it stays in Lattimore,” said Fite, 71. “Martha never told me what to do with it, but I felt like that’s what she wanted. The iron lung was her life. In our museum, we need to have a Martha place.”

At the time of her death, Mason was one of fewer than 20 people in the U.S. still living in iron lungs and one of the longest survivors.

A few days after the polio epidemic of 1948 killed Mason’s older brother she came down the same virus and never walked again. Despite her fragile condition, she graduated first in her class from Wake Forest University.

Mason wrote her memoir on a voice-activated computer.

When she died at age 71, her obituary in the New York Times caught the eye of Nancy Miller, an editor with Bloomsbury USA. The account mentioned Mason’s out-of-print memoir and Miller found a copy.

A former executive editor at Random House and HarperCollins, Miller had worked with such authors as Gail Godwin and Mary Doria Russell.

When Mason’s book arrived “I don’t know if I was expecting much,” Miller said. “But I fell in love with her voice.”

A native New Yorker who knew little about North Carolina, Miller felt an instant connection with Mason and the community she wrote about.

Despite the author’s paralysis, Miller felt she was more joyful about life than most people who weren’t disabled.

“We decided this would be a great book to reissue,” Miller said.

Mason’s friend from childhood and former Davidson College English professor, Charles Cornwell, encouraged her to write the memoir and edited it.

Seeing the book reissued in paperback “is an enormous pleasure,” he said. “But it’s bittersweet. I wish she was alive to see it happening.”

The book grew out an old friendship between Cornwell and Mason. It not just about her battle with illness, but life in a small Southern town.

That part of the story is “every bit as idyllic as Martha made it sound,” said Cornwell of Charleston. “Nothing was exaggerated.”

Founded in 1899 at the intersection of two railroads, Lattimore was in the middle of cotton country. Mason grew up there in the late 1940s and wrote that she felt “secure and accepted.”

When polio struck, the community didn’t forget her. Visitors dropped by the home where caretakers looked after Mason. Conversations touched on politics and religion, literature and food.

“Martha was absolutely the most intriguing person I’ve ever met in my life,” said former State Rep. Jack Hunt, 87, of Lattimore.

He brought over hot meals – along with an occasional bottle of wine - to share with Mason on Wednesday nights.

“She had a fetish about not wanting pity,” Hunt said. “She looked on the upbeat side of things and didn’t dwell on the negative. She taught me to appreciate life. I miss her everyday – especially Wednesdays.”

For many, Mason’s iron lung is a powerful symbol of her life. The machine is stored in Steve Cornwell’s income tax office in downtown Lattimore.

Polly Fite remembers how people were often startled when they saw Mason for the first time – her head sticking out of a strange machine. As they talked, they focused on the person – not the contraption she was in.

When the nonprofit museum opens, Fite hopes the iron lung will help keep her friend’s story alive – not only for local residents but for people who never met her.

“Martha’s influence is still here,” Fite said. “She can be an inspiration to others.”