Still a Goer and a Doer

When Betty Mechanic was a young girl, her life was rich with community involvement. In retirement she and her husband, Irwin, have found a community center in the West Valley that fills their days with volunteer work, classes and field trips. The Mechanics live in Woodland Hills.

I grew up in a little tiny town in Upstate New York. Springwater, it’s called. A town of about 500 people. It was wonderful.

I wish all kids could have the experience of growing up in a small town like that. Springwater was closeness and knowing everybody and doing lots of community activities. That was our enjoyment, making our own fun. We didn’t have a movie house, but there were grange hall dinners and the Odd Fellows’ bingo parties and firemen’s dances and carnivals and going five miles on our bicycles to swim in the Finger Lakes.

Now kids say there’s nothing to do in an urban area, and we had so many things to do. In the summer, we would watch for the farmers to bring in their peas when they harvested, in either a wagon and a horse or else a slow-moving truck. We would run along behind and pull off the peas, and then we would shuck peas and get enough for our mothers to cook for dinner, and we would eat them all afternoon.

We were stealing peas from the farmers, but they all expected it. They went very slow when they went through town.

And we played baseball down in the cow pasture, and my mother used to say, “Betty, you should have been a boy,” and she’d hose me off before she’d let me in the house.

Wintertime, we skied, tobogganed, rode downhill on sleds and just always something.

Your life takes on so many different turns; you change gears every now and then. I changed gears when I went into a wheelchair. My arthritis was getting bad for a lot of years, but I refused to accept the fact that I would be limited because I’ve always been a goer and a doer.

I walked with two canes for awhile, and then I had a little electric cart that I used when I shopped or went to the theater or things like that.

One day it was out for repair, and I went grocery shopping and it was just too much for me, and I wound up in the hospital and my knee had gone completely. That’s when they told me I wouldn’t be able to walk anymore.

At first I went through stuff that I’m sure most people do when they’re disabled--the self-pity and anger. “Why me, Lord?” Then I realized one day that everybody has a choice. The choice is to accept the situation and do the best you can or to sit and grumble in your remorse and your pain. And I decided I didn’t want to be that kind of person.

Maybe I beat it a long time ago because I’ve always been a very large woman. When my mother died when I was 16, my coach in high school took me under his wing and he said to me, “You know Betty, you’re a big girl and you probably always will be, and instead of being uncomfortable with people,” he said, “if you spend your life making other people comfortable, you’ll forget all about yourself.” I’ve remembered that all my life. That helped me beat a lot of things.

Irwin retired the end of last year and we joined the West Valley Jewish Community Center and our life has been like a hurricane ever since. It’s just wonderful.

We’re so involved with so many things. There are all sorts of classes to take. We work in the theater group. We sell tickets and refreshments and we belong to the membership committee.

I’ve been in a wheelchair five years. I can walk some. It is an accomplishment for me to get up an down on the bus, it takes a lot out of me. But I figure it hurts anyway, I might as well have the fun.

There’s so much living to be done, I can’t imagine allowing your disability to run you instead of you running it.