Warm Springs, GA

(First of all, Shreve put that picture of the high heeled shoes on my blog. It is a ridiculous picture and like some of you commented, far from realism. I have never painted sitting down. I have never painted in a dress. This was a publicity photo, taken by the publisher of a very fine paper called The Valley Pioneer in Danville CA. I had painted two portraits from photos sent by the staffs of California Governor Brown and Richard Nixon who were running for governor. I was hired by an interior decorator in Los Angeles whose name I have forgotten. She used the two portraits at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The rooms she created were called THE BODOIR OF MRS BROWN and THE BODOIR OF MRS NIXON. Both of the portraits were in front of me when the photo was taken but instead of concentrating on them, the photographer featured my shoes. Go figure. Someone asked for the year it was taken. Google the year Nixon ran for governor of CA.)

Warm Springs Foundation Hospial is a fair distance from the town of Warm Springs. The town consisted of a rail road station, a hotel and I suppose a gas station and a grocery store. If you wanted more excitement you had to go to Macon or Atlanta. There were two of us PTs on the train when I arrived. we did not know then that we would be living in the same cottage. Her name was Phyllis Mortimer, and alwas was called 'Snerdie'. If it weren't for that, I would have bet you that Charlie Mac Carty & Mortimer Snerd were not yet popular that early. We were picked up by the chauffeur.

Warm Springs was a wonderful, thriving institution. Morale there was higher than any I had seen before. Two teenage boys were lying prone on their stretchers one day, arguing which of them was better off. It was a long argument, and as far as I was concerned it was a heroic occurence. Neither boy had much muscle power but one had a hand he could use almost normally, and the other could shrug his shoulder. I am sure they both eventually used ther muscles and much more to live a fruitful life. That attitude really impressed me.

Our lives were full of excitement. We had breakfast in a huge dining room were patients arrived on crutches, in wheelchairs and on stretchers. Most of the Doctors had their meals there and all the nurses and PTs and I suppose the office staff also.
After the meal we PTs had classes and then we had fascinating practical work on paitients in their rooms or patients in the gym or patients in the pool. They had much time to rest and we were free to do what we wanted. some of us liked to play Bridge and the grown up patients were allowed to bypass that rest period and could play. There was a very attractive engineer from Proctor and Gamble who was a super Bridge Player. He used to call me 'Olga the beautiful Spy' I could not understand how I got that name. But soon even I noticed that no matter where I sat in the dining room, there was a strange man sitting near enough to her the conversation at our table. It turned out that President Roosevelt was coming for a visit, and since I was fairly new in the country, I was to be investigated. Apparently I passed whatever test I was taking for suddenly one day 'there he was.

Next time.