|
a.
|
Note: Taken from the Waukegan News Sun-published on Wed. Jan.23,1957
LEUKEMIA TOT SETS EXAMPLE OF COURAGE Yesterday afternoon a little girl slipped carefully off a couch and inched across the living room of her home to lean on the arm of a chair where a reporter sat scribbling notes. "Gee, you write funny," the little girl said. "I'm really not very good at it",the reporter replied. "I'm sorry," the little girl said. The little girl is Sandra Ann Porter,7, the daughter of Mr and Mrs Lewis Porter, of Florida Ave, Waukegan. Sandra has acute lymphatic leukemia. Doctors at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn gave her five months to live. That was a week before Christmas. Today Sandra will receive another blood transfusion. She must have transfusions every ten days to two weeks to restore proper balance of red and white corpuscles in her blood. Thirteen Drs, some of them the best in the land, have looked at Sandra and said that she will die. They have no cure for her sickness. She doesn't appear to herself to be any different then her younger sister, Pamela Jean, who is a romping four year old. It is also hard for her to get use to the concern of her older brother,David, who is twelve. Sandra receives about 120 cards and letters a day from all over the Country. When she finds something particularily delightful in the mail, which the postmaster brings in her own special sack, she reads it aloud for her grandmother to giggle over too. Recently a young Texan wrote and asked Sandra to be his"one and only girl friend." Sandra wrote the boy that she would like to think it over awhile. She asked that he give her a little time. Time which no one has to give. Time which were it able to be bought would pour from every envelope that the little girl opens. Some people send money--- to buy if not time--- a little pleasure then. Some send trinkets. Some send hope in the form of prayers. Some just chat. Sandra Ann is a Presbyterian, yet in every church in this and other areas people are praying in their own way that the little girl gets well. A woman sent Sandra a tiny gold religious metal she got on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She said that Sandra should wear it over her heart. "See," the little girl said to the reporter,fishing the metal out of her blouse. " A nice lady sent it to me. She got it where Jesus lived." Last summer Sandra was looking forward to autumn. She would be going to school. Out where she lives there are not so many houses and the wind blows nice in the summertime. Sandra liked to run and jump and sing against the wind. She fell alot, as do all little girls. But one day she fell and cut her knee deeply on a stone. She was taken to a hospital and the wound dressed. When Sandra came home from the hospital and tried to walk she couldn't. She hasn't really walked since. Sandra does water colors of little girls and boys walking, running and playing. The backgrounds of her paintings are the out-of-doors. They are full of trees and hills for climbing and brooks for wading. The little girl picked out a painting for the reporter. "But you haven't signed it," the reporter said. She took the painting and placed it in her lap, bending low over it to carefully letter her name. The picture Sandra handed the reporter has a little girl dancing deside a black and green tree on a purple lawn. The sky is limitless. In the center of the picture is the artist's signature- Sandra Ann Porter. Note: Sandra died 5 months after this article was published.
|
