Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505160055
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HILLSVILLE LENGTH: Long
Majestic mountains and restless seas
Then paused and said, "It needs one more thing.
Someone to laugh and dance and sing..."
So God made little girls.
- from a wall-hanging at Rubye Ogle's house
Marilynn Ogle never danced. She never sang.
At six months she was a fat, healthy baby who could crawl from room to room, smile at a camera and say "Mommy" and "Daddy."
Then Mother Nature took back most of what she had given.
There was the chicken pox. Then polio. A year later came the flu, complicated by a brain fever.
By her second birthday, the damage was done - and whatever chance Marilynn Ogle had once had for a normal life was gone.
"It just about killed me," said her mother. "I thought that was about the end of everything."
Today is Mother's Day. So here is a story about a mother and her daughter.
The mother, Rubye Ogle, is 79 years old.
And today, as for the last half-century, her life revolves around her unspeaking, largely uncomprehending daughter, Marilynn.
Marilynn Ogle has a heart condition. She is prone to seizures. She has only one good lung. She has a spinal deformity - scoliosis - so severe that her body turns at nearly a right angle midway up her back.
She has a degree of mental retardation for which the medical term is "profound."
In fact, Marilynn Ogle not only cannot dance and sing - she cannot talk, walk, crawl, laugh, or frown. Infrequently, she can smile.
She is 51 years old - an extraordinary age, said her doctor, James DeBoe Jr., for one so severely handicapped.
"Good mothering is the only reason she is still alive," he said.
People have suggested that Marilynn Ogle be placed in a home for the retarded. The thought of it makes her mother shudder.
"I'd be wondering what she was doing," she said. "She'd be lying there. They have air conditioning on. She'd freeze.
"The women who put their children in a home - they don't know what they're missing," Rubye Ogle added. "She (Marilynn) is a human being."
Georgenia Marilynn Ogle was born on June 22, 1943.
She is the second of Ruby and George Ogle's four children. Her older brother, Garrett, is a physician who lives out west. Her two younger sisters live in the Hillsville area.
Rubye and George Ogle have 10 grandchildren and eight great grandchildren. They have reached an age where most people would be content to to enjoy what they have earned.
Instead, they care for a 51-year-old daughter whom George Ogle still refers to, with some justice, as "our baby."
Marilynn Ogle weighs 65 pounds. It is not absolutely certain that she recognizes anybody, her mother included.
She cannot even move her bowels. Every three days, her colon must be purged by hand.
"Basically, she's a seizure disorder patient," said Dr. DeBoe. "And severely mentally retarded."
She takes drugs to help control the seizures. There are no drugs to fix her fever-ruined mind.
George Ogle helps to care for his daughter, as he always has.
"I've carried her many a mile," the semi-retired construction worker said of Marilynn, whom he still carries from bed to bath or wherever else she needs to go. Marilynn is not comfortable in wheelchairs.
"It looks like a tied-up life," George Ogle admitted of the continual attention that must give to Marilyn. "But we just take it in stride."
It is Rubye Ogle, though, whose relationship with her daughter incites wonder.
In some inscrutable way, believes the Ogles' son, the relatIonship is a two-way street.
"There's a connection there," said Garrett Ogle, a surgeon who lives in the state of Washington, "but I don't think it's one that anyone else can understand. Mom has really been almost fanatical in taking care of her."
Consider that Rubye Ogle hasn't been to a movie in 40 years.
And that she gave up her driver's license last year, because she never used it.
"Maybe once a month, I go to the Wal-Mart." she said. "That's my life. I'm quite a home person. It don't worry me a bit."
She has taken one vacation in 51 years - to Washington a decade ago, to visit her son. She took a side trip while she was there, to Vancouver, British Columbia.
"We ate supper one night on the 17th floor of the biggest hotel there," she recalled, still impressed.
But she worried constantly about Marilynn. And while she was gone, her daughter, who was left in the care of relatives, fell ill.
Rubye Ogle still remembers their reunion:
"You know what she did? She said . . . " - here, the mother heaves her torso upright, jerks her shoulders forward, and approximates the noise her daughter made, from somewhere deep down in her throat - " . . . Unh!"
To her, the inarticulate cry spoke volumes.
"That's when I said I'd never leave her again," Rubye Ogle said.
At 79, Rubye Ogle said she sometimes feels like 20. "But it doesn't last long," she added with a grin.
Should Marilynn outlive her parents, one of her two sisters already has pledged to take responsibility for her.
"I'd quit work and stay home with her," said Myra Reece, who lives in Hillsville and does custodial work. "There's never been any question of what else I would do. I wouldn't seem right to do anything else."
In the past, Rubye Ogle often held night jobs cleaning or working in nursing homes, before coming home for the hour or two of sleep that is all she has ever needed.
Now that she passes nearly all her hours at home, Ogle has become a prolific quilter. She also is a fan of the Trinity Broadcasting Network - from which she records televangelism shows on videocassette. She has not one, but two video cassette recorders.
"You can't stay home like this and not have any hobby," she explained.
Sometimes on the television she sees hints of another life she might have lived. She enjoys travel programs, and dreams about the places she sees. In other circumstances, she might have liked to travel.
"It might have been different if my life had been different," she mused. "But I'm satisfied," she added quickly.
Just why is hard to say.
Maybe it transcends logic. Maybe another mother would know.
Maybe not.
On a recent spring day, after feeding her daughter lunch bite by bite, Rubye Ogle sat on the edge of her own bed. She and her husband sleep in the same room with their daughter. Sometimes, their daughter even sleeps between them.
The mother explained it this way:
"When I wait on her, sometimes she'll look at me with a twinkle in her eye. That's all I need."
by CNB