In 2003, I Googled “international pen pals” because I thought that might be interesting. It led to various degrees of communication with people in China, England, Lebanon, Peru, Russia, the Philippines and Romania. Romania—now that’s an obscure country! Thus began a long-time correspondence with Eleonora Rus, who goes by Elly.
She was born in 1955, which means she lived through the hard-core communist idiocy of Nicolae Ceauşescu (friend of Kim Il-Sung of North Korea, Mao Zedong of China, Pol Pot of Cambodia, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Erich Honicker of East Germany, Richard Nixon of the USA and other such luminaries). This was way behind the Iron Curtain. Elly’s parents died when she was young, and she was left to raise her younger brother by herself. She managed to graduate from high school in Lipova, a sleepy city of 10,000 on the Mures River in western Romania. She also earned a certificate from the Red Cross, which has enabled her to have a nursing career for the past 25 years or so. Apart from briefly working at a restaurant in Bucharest (capital of the country), she has done nursing almost exclusively.
Elly married a guy who failed to appreciate her and did not treat her especially well. Looking on the bright side, however, she had two healthy children, a daughter named Roxy and a son named Alex. Both of them say she is the greatest mother in the world, and maybe so.
I have never met Elly, but we have exchanged several hundred e-mails since 2003. We have made use of Yahoo instant messaging, and I have called her a few times. Some cards and letters have gone both ways. She did not have the benefit of a world-class education, but she is quite intelligent. I know this by having heard her speak on the telephone, by the perspicacious nature of her comments, by the fact that she has been able to learn English, Portuguese and Italian, and by the several blogs she has created and run online. The lady is smart, no doubt about it.
More than that, she is compassionate. I mentioned earlier how she raised her younger brother almost single-handedly. She also took it upon herself to help the numerous street children she encountered in Lipova. (What did Jesus say? “When you help the least of these my brethren, you help me.”) After her ex-husband got sick and had a leg amputated, Elly went to his aid regardless of his earlier behavior. Then there are the many people she has served as a nurse. For more than a decade, she worked at a government hospital called Recupertorium Centrum. The director there, Dr. Arsenie Victor, took note of the quality of nursing she gave the patients and her ability to grasp complex medical issues. Unfortunately, she and the other employees were not always paid fully or on time.
That hospital closed a few years ago, and Elly had to seek new employment. She found a family in Lisbon, Portugal who would pay her to take care of their elderly mother and from there went to Italy to do much the same. First she was in Mondragone and now resides in Rio Saliceto, nursing a married couple in their eighties—Athos and his wife Alberina. The family and the doctor who comes periodically seem delighted with what Elly has done. Besides cooking for them, feeding them, facilitating their sleep, cleaning them and being sure they take the right medicine each day, she prays for them and keeps their spirits up. Whatever she thinks they need, she does it.
Their home is nice but unpretentious, and Elly essentially camps out in the living room; she sleeps on the sofa. This is obviously not an ideal situation and does not afford much privacy, but she is accustomed to adapting and living to see another day. When I learned about the specifics of her accommodations there, I took the fancy silk bedspread I bought in China and sent it to her. Elly, who has dealt with a number of her own health issues, needed it more than I did, after all.
In the spring of 2004, I decided to have a yard sale specifically for her. I gathered up what I was willing to part with and asked the same of all my friends and neighbors. I placed an ad in the classified section of the Austin American-Statesman and put up signs in my Travis Heights neighborhood. The yard sale went splendidly, and I had a smile on my face the entire time. It netted about $175, every penny of which went to Elly. I did the same thing again in 2005, 2006 and 2007 before leaving for Korea. She was so very grateful.
I had sometimes attended an Episcopal church two blocks from my home, so I knew the pastor. His first name was John, and fortunately for him I have forgotten his last name. I met with John and asked whether his church or some of its members would be willing to donate money to help Elly. Although I sufficiently described her personal qualities (honest, humble, generous, caring, etc.), the fact that she was a dedicated Christian, and that she had never—not even once—asked for anything, John immediately assumed the worst. He accused her of being a “scammer” and implied that I was a terrible judge of character. How very ironic that a man of the cloth, with multiple theological degrees, would respond in a harsh and un-Christian way regarding a person who lived her life much as the Lord instructed us to do. I did not try to change John’s mind, but I later wrote him a letter in which I informed him that he was “profoundly, spectacularly wrong” about Elly.
I only saw John one other time after that. In the summer of 2007, his church was holding an outdoor ice cream party for parishioners and neighborhood residents. I attended with Jill, Larisa and Sergey, my friends up the street. I was eating a cup of vanilla ice cream when he walked around the corner. But when he saw me, John turned and went another way. He was ashamed, as well he should have been.
I do not care much about that loser. But as for Elly Rus, I dedicated my 2009 book The Los Angeles Dodgers: 500 Fascinating Facts to her. She fully merits my admiration and respect.
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