...Fate
had punished Frank Beazley cruelly, but it rewarded him
two summers after Mary’s 1971 death when an unusually
colorful man was admitted to Zambarano Hospital.
...Raised
in North Providence, Louie Pafundi was a teenager when his
older brother Tony began to ride thoroughbred horses at
Pascoag Park, only a few miles from Wallum Lake. Louie envied
Tony, and he often skipped school to watch him race. The
younger Pafundi became a Pascoag stable boy, then moved
to New Jersey to learn riding from a prominent trainer.
At 5-feet tall and 100 pounds, Louie was the ideal jockey.
He won his first race on just his third mount, in the summer
of 1947. He was 20 years old.
...Louie
raced in Massachusetts, Maine, Chicago, and Detroit. He
rode the Florida and Canadian circuits. Sports photographers
and writers in his home state fawned over the handsome young
sensation. ‘‘Lou has brown hair, brown eyes
and an olive complexion,’’ a journalist wrote.
‘‘He likes fishing next best to riding horses
and goes to hockey games for evening amusement.’’
...Louie
was a star.
...And
then the wheel turned.
...In
the mid-1950s, Louie started to experience dizzy spells.
He had difficulty walking and his hands tremored. He was
racing one day when his arms suddenly went weak and he lost
control of the reins; the horse went into the fence and
Louie pitched onto the dirt. He was not badly hurt, but
he could no longer deny that something was wrong. Perhaps
it was only his age or the toll from so many years in the
saddle.
...Louie’s
symptoms worsened, but he was able to hide them, at first.
His legs became weaker, but he could still get around.
...He
could not, however, safely remain a jockey. In 1958, he
rode his last mount and took a job as an official. His celebrity
receded.
...‘‘Times
have changed,’’ read the caption to a photo
of Louie when he was working at a small track in western
Massachusetts. ‘‘Louis Pafundi, ex-North Providence
newsboy, then a jockey and now a race track official, weighs
out Frank Shaeffer as clerk of scales after a race at the
Great Barrington Fair. Pafundi and Shaeffer, both of Pascoag,
once were hot rivals in the riding end of the sport.’’
...Now
twilight descended.
...Louie
moved to West Virginia, where he officiated at two small
racetracks that were a universe away from Louisville Downs
and the Kentucky Derby. Having divorced the woman he’d
married when he was 18, he began to court a waitress, also
divorced, who worked at the Howard Johnson’s restaurant
where he often ate. They married in 1964.
...By
the late 1960s, Louie could no longer dismiss his symptoms.
He figured he had Lou Gehrig’s disease, but doctors
diagnosed multiple sclerosis, also incurable. His health
kept slipping away, and before the decade ended, he needed
a wheelchair. Like Mary Fields, his wife hadn’t bargained
for a cripple, and the couple divorced. Louie moved back
to Rhode Island to live with his aging mother and one of
his nine brothers.
...His
care became too much for his family. On Aug. 31, 1973, he
was admitted to Zambarano.
...THERE
WAS NO apocalyptic moment when Frank realized that
he would never walk again, never live independently. No
one marked a calendar or wrote into his medical record.
The seasons changed and reality settled.
...Frank
recalled Sister Rita Marie’s words when he left St.
Joseph’s Orphanage so long ago:
There’s a fork in the road. There’s a good route
and a bad one. Whatever you choose, let’s hope it’s
the good one.
...If
Frank were to find fulfillment, he would have to avoid the
road of self-pity and despair. He would have to keep working
hard. He would place his faith in the Lord.
...The
human body does not function optimally when it’s immobile,
regardless of the quality of care. Frank experienced pneumonia,
infections, rashes, cysts, sores, fevers, sweats, itching,
congestion, cramps, swelling, nausea, and other complications
of quadriplegia. Staff administered creams, ointments, antibiotics,
sedatives, analgesics, laxatives, vitamins, muscle relaxants,
and tranquilizers.
...He
rarely complained.
...‘‘His
spirits remain good,’’ a doctor wrote several
years after Frank was admitted. ‘‘He enjoys
watching television and talking with neighbors and visitors.’’
...Surgeons
operated several times to free up Frank’s arms and
hands, but they did not completely succeed. They could not
unlock his right elbow to the extent that they did his left
— so Frank, who’d been right-handed, taught
himself to use his left. Practicing with Jell-O, he learned
to eat with a custom-built large-handled spoon. He drank
through a straw. He couldn’t type or write, not even
his name, but he could hold a paint brush and operate the
remote control to a TV.
...When
Louie Pafundi arrived, Frank was about as self-sufficient
as he would ever be. He began to devote himself to helping
those he considered less fortunate.
...I
could have been like some of these people that can’t
talk, can’t hear, can’t see, he thought.
They’re the ones who need help. If God gives me the
strength, I’ll do it.
...He
began by providing moral support to patients, one at a time.
...Things
can’t be all that bad, he would say. All you have
to do is try, try, try. Look at me — I’m trying
all the time. I know it hurts — it hurts everybody.
You just have to give that push.
 |
Louie Pafundi and Frank enjoyed playing cards, talking about women and, back in the '70s, watching Charlie’s Angels.
Photo courtesy of Frances Fazzio |
...LOUIE
WAS FRANK’S kind of guy.
...He
told jokes and he appreciated a good laugh. He enjoyed eating,
especially meatballs with garlic, one of Frank’s favorite
dishes, too. He smoked cigarettes — Frank had his
cigars — and he liked to play cards. The two passed
many an afternoon over a cribbage board.
...Louie
fancied himself a ladies’ man, and being institutionalized
did not change his image of himself. He had a roguish charm
and he enjoyed chatting up Zambarano’s nurses, aides,
and candy stripers. When Charlie’s Angels debuted
in the fall of 1976, he became infatuated with Farrah Fawcett
and her sexy co-stars. Frank fell, too.
...Zambarano
didn’t condone a resident becoming involved with staff,
but no rules forbade relationships between patients. Some
even married. One day, Louie met an attractive young woman
in the library. She suffered from a rare, degenerative neuromuscular
disease. Louie introduced himself and she was smitten. Soon
they were a couple. They smoked cigarettes together, attended
hospital parties, hung out with Frank.
...Frank
was soft on the woman, too, but she was Louie’s girl.
...But
not forever. Louie broke up with her and found someone new:
Norma, an older woman whose stroke had paralyzed an arm.
Her legs still functioned, and she could move her wheelchair
with them. Louie was less adept — so with her good
arm, the woman pulled him around. Louie was steady with
Norma until he found someone new, a woman of Belgian descent
who was crazy for him.
...EXCEPT
FOR SURGERY, Frank did not leave Wallum Lake during
his first decade at the hospital. Longtime patients of that
era rarely did. Bedtime was 3 p.m. and the staff preferred
their patients to wear green johnnies.
...The
Rhode Island Department of Mental Health, Retardation and
Hospitals, which operates Zambarano, was entering a more
enlightened era. So one morning in August 1977, staff helped
Frank, Louie, and others dress in street clothes, then assisted
them onto an old school bus.
The
bus lacked a handicapped lift and the suspension was shot,
but Frank found humor in that. My neck’s already broken!
he said when the bus hit a bump and he was lifted out of
his chair. Keep on going!
...The
bus brought Frank and his friends to a restaurant for lunch.
Frank ordered fish and chips, a favorite of his youth, his
first non-hospital meal since January 1967. Then the patients
went to the Lincoln Mall. With money from his meager patient
account, Frank bought a T-shirt, pants, a straw hat —
and a poster of Farrah Fawcett. A therapist lifted him from
his wheelchair into a photo booth to have his Polaroid picture
taken.
...I
never thought I’d live to see the day! Frank
thought.
 |
Thirty years ago, a more enlightened era dawned at Zambarano
Hospital. Patients, long restricted
to hospital grounds, started to see the outside world
again. Frank got to eat
clam cakes and chowder and ride the Flume
at Rocky Point Amusement Park. And he went to see the
Boston Red Sox.
Journal file photos |
...The
following summer, the old blue bus brought Frank and his
friends to Rocky Point Amusement Park. Frank watched the
children on the carousel and he rode a water attraction
called the Flume, which the park had added since his last
visit, in 1966. He had a cigar, chowder and clam cakes at
the shore dinner hall, and a beer, which he drank through
a straw. What memories! How good to be alive!
...A
few days later, Old Blue set off for Fenway Park. It was
sweltering and the bus lacked air conditioning, but the
staff had filled a cooler with ice, which they wrapped in
towels and applied to the patients’ foreheads. Frank
had no complaints. He watched through open windows as Rhode
Island receded and they neared Boston, which he’d
only glimpsed, immigrating from Nova Scotia. The city skyline
appeared and Frank grew excited. It was a simple yet exquisite
pleasure: being out in the world with its traffic and noise
and busy people.
...Staff
wheeled Frank, Louie, and their friends into Fenway Park.
This was the era of future Hall-of-Famers Carl Yastrzemski
and Carlton Fisk, and the Red Sox were contending for the
pennant. The Sox beat the Cleveland Indians in 13 innings.
Frank had a hotdog, a hamburger and a couple of beers.
...Aug.
10, 1978, was a beautiful day.
...There
were more beautiful days as the 1980s neared. Frank was
content. He was taking what was there for him, enjoying
what he could.
...But
occasionally he wondered about his family.
...For
more than a quarter of a century, he’d had no contact
with Nellie, Edna and Snookie. He wanted answers. His anger
was gone, but he still wanted his mother to call him son.
TOMORROW |ROOM SEVENTEEN
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