In Memoriam, Barbara McKale

Sometimes people go to funerals and memorial services out of a feeling of obligation, but that was certainly not the mood of the family and many friends at the service of Barbara L. McKale last week.

Many people said to me before and after the service that Barb was one of the warmest, kindest people they had ever known, and they were extremely sad, mourning her sudden death just before her 77th birthday.

Her long-time minister, Rev. Jon Haug, from the St. Peter Lutheran Church recalled many positive and touching moments with Barb and asked how many people had chuckled at her humorous statements. Most every hand was raised instantly.

After graduating Magna Cum Laude with a major in Spanish from Albion College in 1959 and then getting a Master’s Degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1960, Barb married David McKale at the Trinity Lutheran Church in Lansing. Their marriage lasted for almost 54 years, and, according to Dave, it was full of joy and deep satisfaction.

Barb taught Spanish for 35 years here in Battle Creek and even took groups of students to both Spain and Mexico to work on their language skills.

Dan Hornaday, one of her thousands of students, said what many of them seemed to feel: “Barb McKale was my favorite teacher of all time. A fine lady who made an impact on all of her students.”

I got to know Barb only over the past decade, for she took a number of my classes in the Kellogg Community College’s “Institute for Learning in Retirement.” She fit right in, for my classes have all been about literature and music, and she truly loved both fields. 

When I saw Barb this last spring, she was excited to hear that I was going to teach a class on George Gershwin, saying that he was one of her favorite composers and she wouldn’t miss my class for anything. Well, most unfortunately she died just a couple of weeks before the class began.

Over the years I often played melodies on my violin for my class, and she liked my playing and suggested to her husband that I be asked to play for her memorial service.

Her husband proposed four pieces, all of which seemed to be just what she would have wanted, for they were “Summertime” and “Someone to Watch Over Me” by Gershwin, “Spanish Eyes,” which was appropriate for a Spanish teacher, and a favorite hymn, “Amazing Grace.”

A touching and most appropriate anonymous poem was included in the program for her service:

God saw she was getting tired

And a cure was not to be

So he put His loving arms around her

And whispered “Come with Me.”

She suffered much in silence

Her spirit did not bend

She faced her mental pain

With courage until the very end.

With tear filled eyes we watched

Her suffer and fade away

Although we loved her deeply

We could not let her stay.

A golden heart stopped beating,

Hard working hands put to rest.

God broke our heart to prove to us,

He only takes the very best.

I close with a beautiful quote by Dave: "Barb, my soul mate, had a zest for life and also many attributes one of which was courage. Though she knew her situation, she never once complained and always had that infectious smile for all that came to visit her as well as for those who took care of her. I am truly blessed to have spent almost 14 years with this beautiful and gracious lady."

Robert Gupta, Compassionate Violinist

I have a new violin playing hero about whom I’m delighted to write a column. His name is Robert Vijay Gupta, and he was born in this country though his parents both came here from India.

They wanted their son to become a lawyer or a doctor or successful businessman, and Robert did get a premedical college degree from Marist College at age 17. 

He had amazing musical talent, however, evidenced by his having been accepted at Juilliard’s pre-college program when he was just six years old.  It’s therefore no surprise that he finally made music his career.

By age 11, Robert made his solo debut in Tel Aviv with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Zubin Mehta, and, by age 19, he had not only completed a Master’s Degree in Music from Yale University but was accepted as the youngest player in the outstanding Los Angeles Philharmonic Symphony.

Since joining that orchestra, Robert has also performed as a soloist with many symphonies, including the New York Philharmonic, the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, as well as performing frequently with various chamber music groups.

All of this is extremely impressive, of course, but what is even more wonderful--and probably unique--is that besides his professional career, Robert works with such people as Nathaniel Ayers, who is, as Robert himself put it, “a homeless, paranoid schizophrenic man.”

Both Robert and Nathaniel had studied at Juilliard, but whereas Robert was extremely successful, Nathaniel wasn’t able to continue his studies there because of his mental illness.

After Nathaniel left, he literally lived on the streets of Los Angeles for 30 years, playing both violin and cello as best he could, though sometimes he was so poor that his instruments had only one or two strings.

Robert met him and began giving him violin lessons in 2008, and, as he put it, “Time after time, the music would bring him back from the very brink of a schizophrenic episode. Nathaniel showed me that music was medicine, that music was sanity.” 

In this context, Robert also said, “It is really gut-wrenchingly terrifying to see someone so talented in the midst of such suffering.”

Though he was the one giving the lessons, Robert even claimed that Nathaniel was “certainly one of my most effective teachers.”

The story of Robert helping Ayers was featured in several articles by Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez, and on a Sixty Minutes piece about Nathaniel. Lopez also wrote a book about Nathaniel called “The Soloist.”  

Some of you will remember that Lopez came here to Battle Creek in 2010 to talk about his book, which was the town’s official book of the year. 

You may even remember that I got to play my violin at  the library, at Lakeview Middle School Auditorium and at Kellogg Community College just before his speeches.

As though all of his help with Nathaniel weren’t enough, since 2012,  Robert has sponsored a free concert series called “The Street Sympathy” for the homeless, veterans and mentally ill on Skid Row in Los Angeles. He has also played concerts at the Twin Towers Jail in that city.

If you would like to meet Robert, hear him talking about his projects and playing wonderful violin solos, go to his two inspiring TED talks on line at

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_gupta and

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_gupta_between_music_and_medicine

Onyleen Zapata, Miss Potawatomi 2014

Onyleen Zapata, also known as "Ony," is a truly amazing and active young Native American girl of just 14 who, together with her family, lives just north of Athens, near the Potawatomi Reservation.

At age 13, Onyleen was honored with the title of "Miss Potawatomi," as chosen from the 9 bands of Potawatomis throughout Canada and the United States. Miss Potawatomi is chosen annually at the Gathering of the Potawatomi Nations, hosted by a different band each year. This year, the Gun Lake Tribe will be hosting the event.

Onyleen told me she has had a dream about winning this contest ever since 2009, when she was just 8 years old, and it inspired her for the next five years to prepare for this contest last August. 

In her competition with an older Native from New Mexico, both were asked to introduce themselves in their native language, explain their specialty dance, tell what their regalia signified and also say if they had any participation in its making.

If any part of their regalia or beadwork, feathers, etc. falls off during their dance, that contestant would be automatically disqualified. (This also applies when dancing in a Pow Wow contest.)

Onyleen was wearing her fancy dance outfit when I went to her home, and I was extremely impressed, especially by a fancy crown with pictures and words on it which she was awarded for the contest. She is very pleased that she will get to keep the crown even after she will be succeeded by the next Miss Potawatomi in August.

Speaking of her replacement, Onyleen's younger sister, O'felia, has been inspired by her sister's exciting success and plans to enter the next contest this coming August.

The girls’ parents and grandparents have been very active in Native events for many years. 

Her grandpa, Terry A. Chivis, has been singing with a drum for over 35 years, and her dad, Arthur, is the lead singer for the family’s Southern Straight Singers. Even her younger brother Owyn, who is just 11, sometimes leads at the drum, and the rest of the family either dances or sings.

Onyleen's mother, Mon-ee, has a job with the tribe as a cultural associate and has top seniority within the tribe. 

Though her dad grew up in Marshall and says there was some prejudice back when he was in school, everyone in the family seems to have a positive attitude and certainly tries not to allow themselves to be affected by anything negative.

The three Zapata children go to Athens Public School and though there are about 300 students there, only a dozen are Native Americans. They are all three very active students, for both sisters play the clarinet in the school band, and all three are also involved in a number of sports, including football, softball, basketball, volleyball, and track.

Because Onyleen seems much older that 14, I felt comfortable asking her about her future. She said she hopes to go to Michigan State, but she doesn't know what her major will be. After that she has thought about going into the Army, or she might do professional photography.

Whatever Onyleen finally takes up after college, I feel sure that she will be successful and happy with life, and I also feel sure that you'll be hearing more about her in the future.

My Musical Memories

Did you know that as a baby you could remember music experienced when you were still in your mother’s womb?

I feel sure that in my mother’s womb I heard more music than most babies, for my mother was a terrific piano player who loved to play by ear and played all of the time. I can still remember her going to the piano even for five minutes when our dad wasn’t home yet from work and dinner was cooking. She wasn’t practicing but rather just playing by ear for simple joy.

I must have loved hearing her play, probably even from her womb, for I started trying to play the piano with my small hands when I was just three years old.

Though my mother was impressed with my love for the piano by ear, she decided that I should learn to play properly. That plan was an especially good one, for that was where I was encouraged, because of my good ear, to play violin as well as piano.

There’s a very interesting book by Daniel J. Levitin called “This Is Your Brain on Music,” where he explains that we all heard and sometimes even remembered all sorts of interesting sounds while still in the womb, including, of course, our mother’s heartbeat and various voices.

But perhaps one of the most significant sounds, he says, was music, for it had an influence in our taste for music after we were born--and sometimes for our whole lives.

Levitin explains in his book that Professor Alexandra Lamont of Keele University in England studied this subject intensely and developed an experiment of having a group of mothers play a single piece of music for their unborn babies over their last three months before birth.

After the babies were born, the mothers were not allowed to play or sing that piece at all until their babies were one year old.

At that point, Professor Lamont played the very music the babies heard in the womb along with one other piece. She set up two loudspeakers, one on each side of the baby, and alternated the two tunes, one familiar and one not familiar.

The babies was placed between those speakers, and they would invariably turn their faces toward the speaker playing the familiar music from before they were born.

Professor Lamont had another control group of babies who had not heard a particular piece of music in the womb. Those babies showed no preference for one piece of music over another.

For me, the best aspect of my hearing music constantly by my mother from even before I was born is that I have always been passionate about music--especially playing by ear. I have been playing, mostly on violin but also on piano, for virtually my whole life, and I surely hope to keep playing for many more years to come.

I’m of course tremendously thankful to my mother for her musical influence, but I’m also grateful that at nearly 75, my fingers, hands, arms and shoulders don’t suffer from any arthritis or other problems from which other music friends have suffered.

I finally retired from the Battle Creek Symphony after 31 years, but these days I play more than ever with the Olde Tyme Music group six or more times each month, at my church each Sunday, and for many other events as well.

My sweetheart Andrew and I will be marrying on my 100th birthday, and I definitely plan to play my violin for the event.

A Remarkable Man Tells of a Remarkable Girl

Dr. Oliver Sacks’s popular book, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales,” is full of accounts of fascinating patients with highly unusual mental, psychological and physical problems, I could have chosen a fascinating subject for my column from most any one of 24 patients described in the book.

I was particularly fascinated, however, by a 19-year-old girl named Rebecca, for she was mentally very handicapped, and yet she was also both intelligent and insightful.

As he explained, Rebecca couldn’t find her way around the block; she couldn’t open a door with a key; she often put on her clothes inside out or backwards; she had a partial cleft palate which affected her speech; she couldn’t count change, and she could never learn to read or write.

When Rebecca was given IQ tests, she averaged just 60, which is, of course, considered a very retarded score. Even the very experienced, understanding Dr. Sacks, when he first met her in his office, described her as, “clumsy, uncouth, all-of-a-fumble---I saw her merely or wholly, as a casualty, a broken creature, whose neurological impairments I could pick out and dissect with precision.”

The second time he saw her, however, it was outdoors, before his office opened. She was sitting on a bench and smiled warmly, enjoying what he described as “not just a simple but a sacred view of nature.”

He had also just learned that she was active in the family’s Jewish Synagogue. As Dr. Sacks explained, “She loved going to the synagogue, where she too was loved (and seen as a child of God, a sort of innocent, a holy fool), and she fully understood the liturgy, the chants, the prayers, rites and symbols of which the Orthodox service consists.”

Rebecca’s parents had both died by the time she was three, and she had been raised by her grandmother. When Sacks next met her, a half-year after their first meeting, her grandmother had died suddenly, and her grief was deep. He had gone to see her as soon as he heard the news, and she was, as he put it, “frozen with grief.” When she was able to speak, however, she said touchingly,  “Grannie’s all right. She’s gone to her long home.” And she said, “It is winter. I feel dead. But I know the spring will come again.”

After her grandmother’s death, Rebecca was put into various workshops and classes, but she quickly insisted that she did not want to go to any of them. “I’m like a sort of living carpet,” she insisted. “I come apart, I unravel, unless there’s a design.”

Dr. Sacks understood what she meant right away and enrolled her, instead, in a special theatre group which she loved from the first moment.

As he put it, “She became a complete person, poised, fluent, with style, in each role. And now if one sees Rebecca on stage, . . .  one would never even guess that she was mentally defective.”

Music and drama, accord to Dr. Sacks, have the power to organize “when abstract or schematic forms of organization fail.”

I especially liked his comment about his approach to all of the people in the book: ”I’m equally drawn to the scientific and the romantic and continually see both in the human condition.”

Dr. Sacks’ books are about such interesting people and are so well written that it’s hard for a columnist like me not to keep mining. I would urge you to read his books, but I hope you’ll read my columns about him as well.

Friend's March to Selma with Martin Luther King

I taught English at Spelman College, a black women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia back in 1964-5, while I was a graduate student at Emory University.

I was very liberal, even back then, and I sure hoped to help make black students feel happier and more respected. I felt that my first teaching job there was extremely demanding, for I had four different classes to teach each semester.

A close friend of mine from undergraduate days, Bill Charland, was teaching at another black school, Clark College, just across the street from Spelman. Bill was also very liberal and I’m sure very busy, too, but he was much more active in helping blacks than I was.

On March 7th of 1965, he heard about an aborted civil rights march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, the capital. The march had been broken up by the Southern whites who had violently attacked the marchers.

Bill says he vividly remembers hearing that young black John Lewis, now a U. S. Congressman from Georgia, was lying on the ground with his skull fractured by a billy club and with blood streaming down his face. As soon as Bill heard about poor Lewis and others who had been attacked, he decided immediately that he simply had to go to Alabama for the cause. He and a friend took an early flight to Montgomery, where they were met by a middle-aged black woman for a short drive to Selma. Bill says he still remembers her saying to them several times, “Now, if we make it through this next stretch, I think we’ll be all right.”

Once they arrived in Selma, they gathered in a church where Dr. Martin Luther King himself gave them strict orders. They were to form four columns, whites on the outside and blacks--many of them local teenagers--on the inside, and they were commanded to walk together peacefully for just over 50 miles to Montgomery. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, high above the Alabama River, Bill became aware of the deep anger in the crowd. “Those kids were up for a fight,” he says, “But the non-violent organization held.”

Once they got across the bridge, everything became immediately more scary, for a large group of white men, probably members of the Ku Klux Klan, wielded heavy sticks, from ax handles to baseball bats. The group Bill was a part of halted, and the two groups simply glared at each other for quite some time. “It occurred to me that I might die,” Bill says.

Just then a murmur went through the crowd as an elderly white lady walked up alongside the marchers, with King and an associate on either side. She was the wife of the liberal Illinois Senator, Paul Douglas, and her presence miraculously stopped an inevitable attack in its tracks.

Finally, over a week later, a third march made it all the way from Selma to Montgomery. The protest had succeeded, despite all of the anger and hatred.

I feel proud of my brave friend Bill, and wish I had been more active back in those days. I was probably just sitting in my office at Spelman grading papers while he was risking his life.

It’s a real pleasure to write a column about an old, loyal friend like Bill. He and I have stayed in close touch for nearly 60 years, and I just hope this story will make you want get back in touch with worthy old friends of yours.

THANKFUL TO BE ALIVE

How many people do you know who have had many near death crises in their lives and are still very much alive?

My friend Lee Beam experienced seven of these kinds of experiences, and yet he is not afraid, not worried, and not bitter. He is simply thankful to God and his family for helping him survive.

You may well remember him, for he has lived in this area for his whole life, and he worked for the Enquirer for almost 35 years.

Lee’s first terrible experience happened when he was just five and playing with his aunt of the same age under a walnut tree. Suddenly his grandmother cried out that the children must get on the family’s porch immediately, and just moments later lightning split that very tree in half.

When he was 12 and playing on a hay stack, he suddenly fell into a void at the bottom of the stack, where he could barely breathe. Fortunately his father had a thin friend who could fit down into the hole. Then, with super-human effort, Lee’s father pulled them both out, just in time.

Then when he was old enough to drive, Lee regularly drove a younger friend in that boy’s 1936 car. One day, with four kids in the car and another one driving, the vehicle turned over several times with many serious injuries.

Years later, in 1990, Lee had an aneurysm between his brain and his skull. He suddenly got a terrible headache and was rushed to the hospital in Charlotte. No one there could analyse the problem, however, so he went home, where the headache become even worse. 

At that point he went to the hospital in Battle Creek, and though they rightly diagnosed an aneurysm, they couldn't find it. Finally, after six months of terrible pain, Lee was taken to Ann Arbor, and the doctor there not only discovered the location of the aneurysm but repaired it through an opening in his skull.

Around this same time, Lee’s blood pressure was dangerously high. One day, when it went up to 215-110, he finally said to God, “Lord, I give up. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” Suddenly he felt a tingling up from his feet to his head, and his blood pressure went down suddenly to 120-70.

Then, when he was 69, Lee began to suffer from kidney failure and needed dialysis three times per week. He figured he’d probably have to continue that unpleasant procedure for the rest of his life. He suddenly felt, however, that God wanted him to get kidney replacement. He therefore applied to the hospital in Ann Arbor. He asked God for a good kidney and please to do it quickly, and he received a call the next day and was told to go there immediately for surgery. After a couple of setbacks, he now has a perfectly functioning over-sized kidney.

Next Lee had a heart attack and was declared dead for five minutes. He had to get an artificial aortic valve which also works perfectly.

And finally, Lee developed neuropathy which makes his feet, legs, hands and lower arms numb and painful without normal feeling. He has trouble walking and is constantly cold because of poor circulation.

After all of these near deaths, however, Lee is truly a model for us all. He remains a God-loving, generous, cheerful fellow who is still enjoying life and is forever thankful simply to be alive.

And he’s half a year older than I am, for he just turned 75 two days ago.

Experiences of Death

“What Happens When We Die” is a fascinating book by a brilliant British specialist on the subject of Near Death Experience or NDE.

The author, Dr. Sam Parnia, is clear about the fact that he does not know what happens after death, but yet he has a lot of evidence that NDE truly happens to a number of people who not only return to life after serious illnesses or injuries of different sorts but who also vividly remember amazing experiences.

Parnia can, of course, interview only those people who survived their accidents, their surgery, their seizures, and so forth. In addition, unfortunately, some who may have experienced temporary death, especially from cardiac arrest, do not retain very detailed memories.

But Parnia nevertheless has a number of fascinating examples of NDE to share. It’s especially interesting, he points out, that this is not simply an experience for those who believe in an afterlife. True enough, some said they actually encountered God or Jesus, but others simply called what they went through a loving encounter with deceased family members and friends. For still others it was more vague, such as a tunnel journey, followed by very bright light.

Parnia also emphasizes that this is not simply a western phenomenon, for he has learned of similar reports in what he described as “Buddhist texts, Islamic works and in accounts from China, Siberia and Finland.”

The book includes quotes from many of those he interviewed after they had this amazing experience. As one man who was in a terrible traffic accident put it, “I felt myself floating, and as I spun completely away from the force I saw the most gorgeous light I have ever seen. It was a huge orb of light and color, and it was the planet Earth. I was in space miles above, gazing down in amazement at the wisps of cloud and blue oceans….”

Another victim, a Christian lady, said she went through a tunnel toward a bright light. “When I reached the end, Jesus stood there with his arms open wide and stopped me, then said, ‘Not this time. I have more work for you to do. You must go back.’”

An especially positive aspect of NDE is that these people seemed not to suffer from their terrible physical pain while going through it.

And, more important, after many interviews with these people afterwards, Parnia was impressed with the positive changes they tended to experience. As he put it, “Typically, people felt that they had become less materialistic, kinder to others, more of service, less afraid of death, and generally more pious and religious.... Some people who had been atheists developed a very strong faith in God. The effect typically lasted for decades.”

Some of these people go through a review of their own lives, whereas others become painfully aware of what he calls “any pain and distress that they caused others during their lifetime.”

Parnia includes a delightful cartoon which shows him addressing a couple of angels at the entrance to Heaven. He looks quite insistent, saying, “No, I don’t want to come in. I’m just researching out-of-body experiences for Southampton General Hospital.”

Parnia definitely plans to continue to study NDE and doesn’t pretend to understand it all yet. His book simply reveals his knowledge of it at this point.

In conclusion, though it’s scary because it generally happens when one is close to death, NDE seems to be a positive experience which can give people a better remainder of their lives than they could have anticipated.

Thought-provoking Art Shows in Battle Creek

On last Sunday, May 3rd, Battle Creek became a world-class art city, with two receptions for two wonderful exhibits, one at the Art Center and the other at the Congregational Church. The former show is the work of the amazing Jewish woman, the Holocaust survivor, Miriam M. Brysk.

Miriam was just a child from Poland at the beginning of World War II, but during the war her family were prisoners in Russia. There were no formal prisons there, as there were in Germany, where they wanted to separate the Jews from the rest of the populace. But as Miriam put it, the Jewish people in Russia were in some ways treated even worse, sometimes with ingenious cruelty.

For example, in one camp, starving prisoners, some weighing less that 100 pounds, had to carry rocks heavier than themselves up a hill. Then, as Miriam said, they were told they could live if they pushed another off the cliff.

No doubt Miriam would have died with one and one half millions of other Jewish people there except that her father was a competent doctor who was very much needed to treat wounded soldiers. When the war was over, the family were finally able, with great difficulty involving several illegal border crossings, to move on to western Europe and eventually to this country.

Miriam went to high school, college and graduate school for a Ph.D. here in America and had a fine long career as a professor and scholar in Texas.

After she retired, she turned to creating serious artwork about the Holocaust. Her work is highly original, for she has developed unique techniques, one of which was blending photographs of people and scenes from the war rather than using traditional montage. After this show is over here at the end of the month she will be taking her work to Jerusalem to exhibit it there.

This was Miriam’s third exhibit in Battle Creek, thanks to her warm, caring sponsor, Dr. Margaret Lincoln of Lakeview High School. Though Miriam is almost 80, she says she hopes she will be able to bring yet a fourth exhibit here in the future.

The second show was based on another worthy theme, that of saving our environment. The artists are all from this area and include Joanna Learner, Don and Susan Rowe, David Curl, Ryan Flathau, Ladislav Hanka, Martin and Sarah Hubbard, Gerald Mackey, Kimiko Petersen, Pete Williams and Rev. Sue Trowbridge

One of my favorite paintings in that show was one by Joanna called “String Theory,” which showed our poor earth hanging from a fraying string. Joanne was pleading, through this work, that our future is not sure and we need to take better care of our planet.

A series of award winning environmental films will be shown on Wednesday evenings at 6:30 at the church. These are open to the public free of charge. On May 14 a new film called “Gasland, Part II” will be presented  by the Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation and the Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan and a group of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

On May 21, they will show the documentary film “Chasing Ice,” which deals with the melting glaciers around the world. Then on May 28 there will be the Robert Redford film, “A Fierce Green Fire,” a documentary about the environmental movement in this country.

Both exhibits will both be here in town for the month of May, and I certainly recommend you go see both collections.

Elizabeth Smart’s Story

I’m always happy if I’m in the middle of a really good book, wanting to know how it ends and yet not wanting to finish it. Elizabeth Smart’s autobiography, called simply “My Story,” was certainly one of these books, and I highly recommend it to all.

Elizabeth, as you may remember, was kidnapped on June 5, 2002, at the age of 14, and was forced to spend nine months in captivity, living outdoors in the mountains, often denied food and forced to drink glasses full of liquor. Worst of all, she was frequently raped, sometimes multiple times each day.

Mitchell, her captor, pretended to be a religious prophet, telling her that he had saved her from “all of the wickedness of the world.” To keep from being caught, he forced her to cover her face with cloth and actually kept a policeman from removing it by saying emphatically, that she was his daughter, and their religion strictly forbade people from showing their faces.

She was forced to spend three months in mountains near her home in Salt Lake, Utah and then six months in the mountains of southern California. Of course Elizabeth wanted to return to Utah because she hoped desperately--as she had for nine months straight--that she’d be rescued. It certainly seemed as though it would be more likely to happen if she were closer to home.

As it turned out, as soon as they returned, the Salt Lake police captured her kidnapper and his wife and returned Elizabeth to her loving but desperately sad Mormon family.

When we hear of a story like this one, most of us would probably feel sure that this young teenager would never completely recover. She had suffered horribly, lost weight and, worst of all, been cruelly raped. But, as she says repeatedly, her religious faith and thoughts of her loving family truly saved her.

Elizabeth certainly never experienced the “Stockholm Syndrome,” in which hostages feel empathy and sympathy toward their captors. She truly disliked and feared Mitchell and his wife, but she never lost her faith. In fact, as she says early in the book, “I never felt closer to God than I did throughout my nightmare with Mitchell.”

She also still felt very close to her beloved grandfather, even though she had just gone to his funeral one day before she was captured. Rather than feeling abandoned, she felt his presence the whole time. “Grandpa was one of my guardian angels. He was sent to comfort and inspire me in the very darkest hours, to help me find reasons for hope or encouragement when I felt the most despair.”

Elizabeth’s mother was also a powerfully positive influence, saying, when Elizabeth came home, “Don’t you let him steal one more second of your life. Not one more second! You be happy. You move on.”

Elizabeth did just that. She got right back into her family’s loving activities, returned to playing her harp and riding her favorite horses. She eventually got a bachelor’s degree in music performance.

When the trial for Mitchell finally took place, eight years later, she was in Paris as a Mormon missionary. She came home for the trial but then returned to finish her work.

In 2011 she created the Elizabeth Smart Foundation to help educate people about the dangers of violent and sexual crime and has given talks on the subject all over the country.

Then in 2012 she happily married Matthew Gilmour, a man from Scotland who had served as a missionary with her.

What a model she is for us all!