ANOTHER HISTORIC DEATH

This seems to be the week for me to write about the deaths of great men. First FDR and now Father Damien of Molokai. My book Healing Water was initially inspired by Father Damien. He was the Catholic priest who chose to live among Hawaii's leprosy patients. As I researched, I realized the story was so much bigger than this one man. But still, he was such an incredible man. Pia, my protagonist gives us a glimpse of him.

I looked at Father Damien, and for the first time I thought about his family. It must have been a long time since he had seen them—it was now nearly ten years since that day when I first saw him get off the ship in Honolulu. That was before the government had even created this leprosy prison.

Why had he come to Hawai‘i? And especially to Moloka‘i?

"Did that bishop send you here?" I asked him.

The Father stopped digging and looked at me then. "The bishop asked several of us to take turns," he said. "And so I volunteered."

"Oh." I wondered if that meant he would be leaving after all. "When will it be someone else’s turn?" I asked. "Will you go back to Kohala?"

Father Damien shook his head. "I cannot leave my children in these conditions."

"But you don’t have leprosy. What if you never get to leave?"

Damien turned away from me then, and I saw his eyes moving about, looking over the scattered cottages of Kalawao. "If I never leave this place," he said softly, "I will be the happiest missionary in the world."

Happy? In Kalawao? Never seeing his family again? Never traveling to Honolulu or Kohala? How could anyone love God that much? How could anyone love me that much? I just didn’t understand.

"Pardon me for the questions, Father, but, but … do you plan to die here?"

Damien looked up to the pali then, and I could see that he was remembering something. "I died before I came," he said. "When I took my religious vows, I prostrated myself before the altar and my brothers placed a funeral shroud over me. On that day I died to my own will. God’s will became my will."

These words from my novel are based on a letter Damien wrote to his brother soon after his arrival.

"So remembering that on the day of my profession I had already put myself under the funeral pall, I offered myself to his lordship to meet, if he thought it well, this second death."

The truth is, Father Damien did contract leprosy. And then, some time after he knew he had leprosy, he wrote home again.

"The joy and contentment of heart... make me consider myself the happiest missioner in the world. Consequently, the sacrifice of my health...appears after all but a slight affair, and even profitable for me."

On April 15, 1889 Father Damien died of complications related to leprosy.

On October 11, 2009 he will be canonized. From that day on he will officially be Saint Damien.

YESTERDAY IN HISTORY

Around 1:00 in the afternoon on August 12, 1945 Franklin D. Roosevelt was working at this card table in his beloved Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. An artist, Elizabeth Shoumatoff was painting his portrait.
A friend and neighbor, Daisy Stuckley was one of several people in the room at the time. Daisy was sitting on the couch (crocheting) when she noticed that something was wrong with Roosevelt. She went to his side to see if she could help.

In an audio recording, Daisy recalls that FDR said, "I'm having such terrific pain in the back of my head".

His doctor was called. Franklin Roosevelt was carried to his bed in the next room.
In her eye witness account, Daisy Suckley said, "We all knew what was going to happen."

The doctor did what he could but there was so little to be done. In just a few hours, at 5:48 pm regular radio programming across the United States was interrupted with this blunt announcement. "We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin from CBS World News. A press association has just announced that President Roosevelt is dead! The president died of a cerebral hemorrhage. All we know so far is that the president died at WS in Georgia."

In BLUE my character Ann Fay did not hear the announcement directly. But she knew the exact moment when it took place.

"It was late in the day when I heard a big commotion at the nurse's station. I was stuck in my bed, but I could tell something important had happened in the world. The nurse at the other end of the ward went rushing out of the room, saying "Oh dear God in heaven. What will America do now?"...

I was sliding out of my bed, fixing to get into that wheelchair, when Harvey stepped into the room. His lips was trembling, but he put his finger over them and we all got quiet. I seen his Adam's apple sliding up and down in his neck and I knew something had really upset him.

Finally Harvey spoke. "It's our president," he said. "Mr Franklin Delano Roosevelt died this afternoon at his polio place in Warm Springs, Georgia."

And then Harvey's face twisted, and he walked away quick before we seen him cry.

It was a day that will live in history...