Heart

“I see Hope, and where she came from,” says Patti Urban; it seems as much a statement of philosophy and faith as a story about her 11-year-old daughter, Hope.

“Hope was a premature baby,” Patti says, “born two-and-a-half pounds. She was always very inward and quiet.” It’s hard to believe she’s talking about the effervescent little girl sitting next to her, dressed from head to toe in pink “Girls on the Run” gear and sparkling with tales of miles run and victories hard-won.

Lately, our increasingly complex society, with an economy in rapid transition, can leave even the most educated among us feeling adrift on foggy seas. But for kids who leave school unable to decode a menu or a bus schedule, how much the harder must it be to navigate the modern world, without written words and the information they hold as a beacon?

For a fortunate few of those kids, there’s Christie Andrews, a lighthouse beacon piercing the darkness.

A car arrives at Angel Heart Farm, and a timid little girl emerges from the backseat. She’s bald from chemotherapy, but her cancer is the last thing on her mind. She’s dressed in a pink outfit and cowboy boots and has a huge smile on her face. Today she’s going to ride a horse for the first time. A woman, Tracy Kujawa, asks her, “Do you want to meet some ponies?” And they walk hand-in-hand to the barn.

Cooper Cook was only 8 weeks old when his mom Missy noticed a lump below his jaw. Thinking it was just a lymph node, she wasn’t too worried. Her husband, Rod, however, insisted they go to the doctor. Rod and Missy took Cooper to see his pediatrician, who then sent them to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt (VCH) for an ultrasound. Missy says that during the ultrasound, it became clear that something wasn’t right. “I knew as soon as I saw the looks on their faces that we were dealing with something more serious,” she says.

In the beginning, Diana Stewart did what most mothers would. Desperate to soothe a rash on her newborn daughter’s skin, she launched a mad search for a cream that would do the trick.

“Even as a child, I was a compulsive label reader with an aversion to chemicals,” Stewart says. “[When my daughter was born,] I just couldn’t find products that wouldn’t aggravate her skin — everything contained artificial fragrances, dyes, and parabens.”

When Barbara Tidwell offered to help her friend, Eleanor Simpson, with her Meals on Wheels route, she had no idea that simple gesture would help so many people. That was 15 years ago, and Barbara has been delivering weekly Meals on Wheels ever since.

Michelle Prichard is very blessed. She’s a talented singer/songwriter. She has a wonderful husband, family, and career as a controller for Integration Services Corporation. And to look at her, you’d never know there was anything different about her. Until you watch her walk across the room.

Even before Lena Levendoski and her husband Geoff set foot in Baptist Hospital on that 20th day of July, 2007, to give birth to their precious baby boy, they knew that he’d passed away in the womb. Levendoski was 36 weeks pregnant when an ultrasound revealed that Strick’s heart had stopped beating. No warning. No explanation. Just the excruciating pain of losing a child before they even got to say hello.

Candy Markman grew up in St. Petersburg, Fla., in a “Leave it to Beaver” kind of family. “I had every possible advantage growing up,” says Markman. Her father worked for Allstate, and her mother was a preschool teacher. It was her mother’s passion for education that led Markman to start tutoring others when she was still in elementary school.

November is National Hospice Month, a time to honor those who provide care and comfort to people in the final stages of life. And to this local woman, hospice work is hardly depressing. In fact, it’s an honor.