A Story of Determined Love

After her high school graduation, she began teaching in a two-room schoolhouse.

In 1926, the family packed everything into their Model-T and moved to McNary. Work was better in the lumber mill for her father. Eloise taught school in McNary and studied for an advanced degree in college each summer in Flagstaff. She first met Sam in Holbrook. He handled her train tickets to Flagstaff and car-ried her bags for her.

Sam walked up to the weathered train station, its wooden outside wall covered with fine, grinding Holbrook dust. He slapped his trousers clean and entered quickly before it could collect again. He slipped on his vest. Running his fingers through his thinning hair, he wondered just how he would phrase the words he wanted to use when he spoke to her.

"Sam," the telegrapher called out, "your young lady is walking up the platform."

"Thanks. I'll be right back." He hurried outside.

"Here, let me take your bag. Here's your ticket to Flagstaff."

"Thank you," Eloise responded with a smile.

"In September, when you return, let's have a picnic at the Painted Desert," he suggested.

"I'd like that," Eloise answered.

"It's always so beautiful out there."

"The ring is brilliant, Kiddo," said Mama Fain.

"After two years, I figured it wouldn't be long before he gave you one."

"We want to get married by the end of this school year," she said, smiling. She held her left hand closer to look again at the ring.

Eloise entered her first-grade classroom unusually happy that January day in 1929. By noon, she complained of a headache. She walked home with a fever. The doctor came that night. It was typhoid fever.

The epidemic swept the town. Eloise's body was twisted with paralysis. Each weekend, Sam drove from Holbrook to McNary to visit her. The hospital staff took bets that he would give up and not Show. But Eloise knew he would come. After all, he was dependable."

"I've made arrangements for you to be moved to the Santa Fe Railway Hospital in Los Angeles," Sam told her. "They have a staff of specialists who can help straighten out your body."

"But who will pay for it?"

"Don't worry about that. We just want you to get the best care," said Sam.

So it was that in June 1929, six months into Eloise's paralysis, a stretcher carry-ing her twisted figure was placed in a spe-cial Pullman berth where she started the long trip to Los Angeles.

For six long months she lay in traction, her paralyzed arms curled under her chin. Sandbags hanging like giant clock weights slowly straightened her legs. Specialists visited her daily, covering her arms with weighted hot pads. Her spindly body was rubbed and kneaded and massaged. Gradually, her body began to straighten.

"Even so," her doctor told her anxious but hopeful fiancé, "don't get your hopes up, Sam. She probably won't have the use of her hands, let alone be able to walk again."

For six months, each week, as regular as the Santa Fe train schedule, Sam visited her, taking the all-night coach to Los Angeles, spending part of the day with her and returning to Holbrook on the mail train that evening. He sat next to her bed and held her twisted hand, turning the ring around on her finger.

"You don't have to go through with this," she whispered.

"Go through with what?"

"You know. You can break the engagement," she said.

"I'd certainly understand."

"Eloise, I'll marry you if I have to carry you to the altar."

By November 1931, she could sit at the family Thanksgiving table, the canes propped next to her chair, and feed herself.

The sun broke over the eastern mountains. Brilliant pastel rays sculpted the shapes of the surrounding desert as Sam opened his notebook and began to write.

Some time later, he closed his notebook, removed his vest-pocket watch and checked the time, stood and brushed his trousers. There was a spring in his step as he climbed into the shiny 1930 Cabriolet, shut the door and stepped on the starter. He turned the car down the dusty road, back to U.S. Route 66 and Holbrook. A smile lit his face. Today was his wedding day....

In 1941, Eloise put away the canes for good, gaining full use of her hands and, except for a slight limp, her legs. Her doctor visited her at the Grand Canyon and said her recovery was a miracle. Eloise earned a master's degree at Northern Arizona University and continued teaching in Clarkdale, until 1970. She died in Tucson in 1991.