Witnessing a Miracle

For about twelve years I wrote one or two human interest stories per week for a local newspaper publishing company. Each week I would be responsible for finding someone doing something fascinating, interviewing (and often photographing) him or her, and writing it all up for publication. There were weeks where I banged my head against the wall, trying to figure out who the heck I could find, and there were other weeks where little pieces of magic would just drop into my life.

Like Odetta. I won't use her last name, but she was an amazing lady. She was 84 years old when I met her, and had been in the United States for about three years. She was barely five feet tall, and couldn't have weighed more than 100 pounds. She was nearly on her way back to Romania when I heard about her, but a friend of hers called and told me I needed to meet her. The caller didn't say why, just that there was one heck of a story to be had.

So, intensely curious as I am, I met Odetta, her younger brother (in his sixties), another Romanian-American family, and a local family who lived about 2 miles from me. We gathered in a beautiful old stone house on farm land that contained a large pond full of geese, and the house had a wall of windows so you could watch the birds' antics. I would have moved in immediately, no invitation needed.

Anyway, there we sat, about eight of us, with me doing the listening and furiously taking notes, while an amazing story unfolded in multiple versions and about three different languages. Odetta spoke no English, but she found out I spoke a little French, and she was off, chatting away in complete fluency. I think I got most of what she had to say, so here goes:

A few years previous to when we met, she had received a disturbing letter from her brother, who had emigrated to the U.S. with his wife. Evidently, once they had established residency she had no use for him any more, and left him. He had written to his big sister in distress, feeling very abandoned and alone. Odetta, wanting desperately to help, started the papers in motion to come to the U.S. and help in any way she could.

She arrived in New York, and was terribly frightened of the hustle and bustle of the city. It didn't help her much that her eyesight was very poor, and she had trouble with directions. Her angry sister-in-law had told her she would be arrested for coming here, so when a friendly policeman took her arm to guide her through traffic, she panicked. She was eventually able to find her way to Philadelphia, and she and her brother were happily reunited.

Shortly after her arrival, Odetta and her brother were in a small local grocery store, and were overheard speaking Romanian by another family who had emigrated ten or twelve years before, and who befriended them immediately, actually having them give up the brother's apartment and move in. The friendship flourished, and the brother found new employment, a new apartment, and was doing a good job of getting his life together. At this point Odetta felt she could go home.

The family who had taken her in decided that they wanted to give her a proper going-away gift and set her up with a local optometrist to get a brand new pair of glasses. Things did not go well, and the optometrist told her (through her friends' translation) that she had advanced glaucoma and was very close to losing sight. It was determined that her left eye was irreparable, but the right eye could be saved if she had surgery immediately.

Here's where they story started to get complicated. The "adopting" family had a son with severe cerebral palsy, who attended a nearby university. He had a scribe, a young man who came to all of his classes with him and took his notes. Since the two had become quite good friends, the Romanian lad shared the story of this tiny lady and her vision emergency.

The scribe went home that evening and sat down with his father. "Dad," he explained, "do you think it would be all right if I called my sister and asked her husband, the ophthalmologist, what he thinks of the situation?"

Of course the ophthalmologist was interested, and arranged to see Odetta at his office very shortly thereafter. He agreed with the original diagnosis, and set her up for surgery, with all of his services free. The hospital agreed to admit her as a free patient, and in she went to repair her right eye. That part by itself is pretty remarkable, but it doesn't end there.

About two weeks after the surgery Odetta and her translation team (the second family) went back to the doctor's office for a post-surgical check-up. Through her friends' halting English she told the doctor that she was pretty sure she was seeing things with her left eye.

"No," was his reply, "we talked about the left eye and the fact that it couldn't be helped. It's the right eye you are seeing with."

She insisted that her left eye was at least perceiving lights and shadows, so he sat her down and tested it. Sure enough, the left eye, the hopeless one, was starting to see. Within six weeks after the surgery on her right eye, the left eye had all but healed itself. Her vision in both eyes was, with glasses, almost perfect. To this day her doctor swears he has no medical explanation for the returned vision in her left eye. It was, to him and all of his staff, nothing short of a miracle.

So, Odetta eventually went back home to Romania, but did so with new glasses and and a smile ear to ear. I met her a couple of weeks before she was due to leave the U.S., and I have never seen so much energy in such a tiny package, wearing a huge grin and newly styled pure white hair. The story came out in English, choppy Romanian, a good chunk of French, and a lot of waving of hands. The mix of people from different parts of the planet and different walks of life was fascinating, and through them the story made perfect sense.

This little lady was determined to help her brother. The second family was determined to help both of them. The young scribe and his family were determined to make a generous gesture of friendship to someone from a different part of the world, and somewhere in there was the perfect mix for a miracle.

As the reporter, I was challenged by the language differences, fascinated by the people involved, and thrilled that they had called on me to be a witness to it all. It still stands as my all-time favorite piece of news gathering. I can't imagine a better story.