"Life is Like That": Ruth Hall.

MS is only one of many obstacles life has thrown at Ruth Hall. When her church raised money to help her out, her response was usual--for her.

Ruth Hall is a very special woman. Having MS is not what makes her special unless you feel that anyone who has MS is special. It's her attitude to life that makes her extraordinary.

Mrs. Hall was born in rural Georgia, the youngest of 13 children and a twin. Her father was a sharecropper. From the time she was old enough, she helped out on the farm. When she was 8 years old, her father went blind, perhaps from glaucoma that nobody had diagnosed. Her mother suffered a stroke some years later and died, leaving a scattered family. One of her brothers was in the army in World War II and died. After the war, some of her brothers and sisters settled on the west coast of Florida, and in 1956 Mrs. Hall and her own children moved to Sarasota.

In 1976, she was working at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, doing housekeeping, one of the jobs open to a woman who had little formal education, when her MS started. It crept up, the way MS often does.

"I'd feel like I was going to pass out, especially when I was upset. My leg dragged, and I was numb in my arm and my hand." The doctor said it was a nerve and sent her to a neurologist who put her arm in a brace. She felt better for a while and then began to have pins and needles in her left leg again.

She wondered if it was just a case of nerves, or if it was really serious, maybe cancer. Then in 1984 she had an MRI and learned with some relief that what she had was multiple sclerosis.

"Life is like that," she said. Not once in the many times we've spoken has she expressed anything except optimism about her life and her future.

She kept at her job for the same reasons most people do. She had a family and she needed the money. For another 7 years she continued working, gradually losing the ability to walk independently.

"I walked holding onto walls until the nurses in the emergency room told me to get out, that it was time to quit." She retired in 1990. By then, her children were grown and mostly independent. To supplement her income, she began to sell the southern sweets she had learned to bake in Georgia. "Peach cobblers and sweet potato pies, with everything done from scratch." Her friends sold them for her and the buyers told their friends. She Was able to maintain herself and the children who still needed her care. She can't make pies anymore.

About 5 years ago, she stopped driving and only then realized how dependent on others this made her. But, she said, "You make do with what you have." What she has, among many other things, are 7 grown children. She put all of them through high school and some through college. "They all have good jobs," she said with pride. A grandson has graduated from West Virginia State, 2 of her daughters are teachers of children with disabilities at local schools, and one son is now an undercover narcotics lieutenant. She has 15 grandchildren.

Family is very much in evidence in her one-story house where grandchildren are everywhere and mothers shoo them away when they are too much under foot. Her friends at her church are part of her family too.

Betty West, president of the Senior Usher Board Auxiliary at the New Bethel Missionary Church for the last 3 years, wanted to see Mrs. Hall honored for her courage in dealing with her MS, and to raise some money to make life a little easier for her. Inspired by watching a telethon, she thought, why can't we do something like that for Ruth?

The benefit took Mrs. West 3 months to organize. She recruited members of the Sunday school class, ushers, congregants, whoever would help. "I was so excited when everybody came in that night," she said.

I was invited to be a guest speaker and I've never had a more attentive audience. But the most touching part of the evening was a speech given by Mrs. Hall's then-11-year-old granddaughter, Erica McKinnon, on what it meant to have a grandmother with multiple sclerosis.

New Bethel raised almost $2,000 after expenses. The church officers and Pastor Phillips had agreed that this money should go to Mrs. Hall. But Ruth Hall had another idea. She asked New Bethel to give the money for research to help find a cure for MS.

"She could sure use the money," Betty West told me, "but the way she thinks, it's more important to help others."

"Three people at church had cancer, and they're dead. Life is like that," Mrs. Hall said.

As she sits surrounded by her grandchildren, she told me it's hard for her to depend on others. But Medicare and Medicaid send help 3 times a week, and her daughter Eloise stays at night. She has a scooter, a romp to the house, a walker, and a small refrigerator in her room. She can still make her own bed, and when she has to go somewhere, "I ride on whatever I feel safe on." Most of all, she affirmed, "It's wonderful to have a family and have them near."

"If you want to go someplace," Mrs. Hall advised, "don't worry about how you'll get there. There'll be a way." Her way is optimism and the faith in the future that feeds it.

Sally Buegeleisen is a member of the National Board of Directors and a tireless fund raiser for MS research. She lives in Sarasota with her husband Abbott and their son Alan, who has MS.