Letter Makes Runaway Happier

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30636, 30 December 1964, Page 2

Letter Makes Runaway Happier

(N.Z.P.A .-Reuter—Copyright) VAN NUYS

(California), Dec. 28. Sixteen - year - old Ronald Baker, who ran away from home on Tuesday last week when he learned his leg would be amputated because of a cancerous tumor, spent a happier Christmas because of a teen-age girl he never met, United Press International reported.

Patty Hendley, a 17-year-old girl whose sprightly gait belies her artificial leg, read of Ronald’s plight in the newspapers and wrote him a letter. When Ronald returned home on Christmas Eve after giving up his flight in Flagstaff, Arizona, he found Patty’s leter was waiting for him in a pile of mail and telegrams.

Patty, who lives in Flintridge, California, told of her own bout with cancer. Her leg was amputated above the knee in March, 1962, because of a cancerous tumour similar to Ronald’s. “I had to face the same thing you are facing now.” she wrote, “and believe me, it isn’t as bad as you think . . . I thought it was the end of the world for me, too, but by June the same year I was learning to use my artificial leg.

“Now I can do about anything anyone else can do. Do you know what I did yesterday? I went ski-ing at Big Bear with my dad. “This Saturday night I am going to a coming-out ball and I expect to dance every dance. Last summer, I swam just about every day. “There are limitations, of course,” Patty’s letter continued. “But they aren’t really bad. For instance, I can only walk upstairs a step at a time, and I can’t run. But I can skip if I want to, and I can walk as fast as anyone else.”

Patty ended her letter saying, “Ronald, do as the doctors and your mother say. They know best. Look to the future, and a full life, not the pain of the present I know you will be brave and never regret your decision.” Doctor’s Decision Ronald learned ‘on Tuesday that his doctor said he must have his leg amputated or face the possibility of death within six months.

Ronald ran away from home. He said he heard that his doctor in Southern California was the best west of

Chicago. He said he decided to hitch-hike to Chicago “to see what that doctor could do for me.” Call To Mother

After he got on the road he telephoned his mother and said he was going “to Seattle”. He called her again on Wednesday “because I didn’t want her to worry.” Finally, in Flagstaff, Ronald decided he had better return home. He went to the police who telephoned his mother and arrangements were made for him to come home.

He was greeted at the airport by his mother and two brothers, three sisters and two half-sisters who had come home for a Christmas family reunion.

On his return home he told his mother, “There are plenty of people in this world who have worse troubles than I have.”