By Glenn Goodspeed (September, 1998)
I parked the P1800 on the street and went into the senior citizens center. Mae had already begun her exercise class. The tables in the cafeteria had been pushed to the sides of the room, and she was leading a dozen of her peers in a variety of short routines, from calisthenics to the "Hoky Poky," a children's dance.
They knew who I was by the camera bag and other photographic equipment dangling from my shoulders. A few smiled at me as they continued their exercises, and some teased Mae, calling her a famous cover model and accusing her of planning to break my camera. I checked the lighting, pulled out a camera and began shooting. She asked me if she should stop, but I told her to continue as if I were not there.
It was during the Hoky Poky that I took my first award-winning photograph. There was a part of the routine where everyone spun slowly around in place. Mae filled the foreground with arms outstretched. In her expression one could clearly see the life, joy and enthusiasm that she radiated.
Mae had not always been so happy. She had become introverted and reclusive for a time after her husband died. Friends and her children became concerned, and her daughter urged her to go to the senior citizens center in her neighborhood. It finally came down to the daughter driving her to the building and leaving her there. But after that, there was no stopping Mae. If no one could give her a ride to the center, she would catch a bus.
It wasn't long before she was volunteering to help the center staff with programs, meals and anything they could use her for. She said she was "repaying" them for helping her. And the experience really had changed her from a virtual recluse to the beaming exercise leader I was photographing.
Her character was so remarkable that when the local United Way charity began asking for stories for its annual campaign film, the center staff recommended her. The United Way filmed her, and the photos I was shooting would support publicity about the fund drive.
After the campaign, the exercise photo was entered in a contest for advertising professionals, and it won first prize, the "Best of the Bunch" award. My colleagues congratulated me, but I knew that Mae had really won the award for me.
Several years later, Mae became seriously ill with cancer. She went through painful chemotherapy which made her hair fall out, but as soon as she recovered enough strength, she returned to the senior citizen center. She no longer could attend every day, and she couldn't lead exercise classes, but she helped with other tasks, and on days when she felt well enough, she participated in the exercises.
The United Way again wanted Mae to appear in a film, this one a sort of retrospective that followed up on film "stars" from previous campaign films. And again, I was to shoot still photos.
Mae had not planned to go to the center on the day the photo session was scheduled, so I agreed to pick her up and bring her there. As soon as I pulled up in front of her house, she opened the door and came to the car. I got out to hold the door for her.
She had some difficulty getting into the Volvo because it is so low to the ground. If you can't bend over very well, you just have to aim and plop, which she did with a chuckle.
"What kind of car is this?" she asked, as we pulled away. I told her.
"Really? I never saw a Volvo that looked like this before. It's so small!"
We talked about the photos I needed to take, and she mentioned that her daughter still had a copy of the last photo I took. I asked her if fame had brought her wealth and happiness. She laughed and said she was already happy and didn't mind being poor.
We pulled up at the curb in front of the senior citizen center, where a couple of elderly men were sitting on the covered porch watching the street. I hopped out and went around to open the door, but she already had it open and was trying to get out. I say "trying," because she was not having any success. I had pulled up so close to the curb that she could not put her feet down to the street, and with her feet on the curb, she could not get the rest of her body far enough outside the car to stand up.
She laughed at the futility of the situation, and held out her hands to me. "Help me," she said. "Pull."
I did pull, but she was so stout that even if I could have lifted her, she couldn't curl up enough so her head and shoulders would clear the top of the doorframe. By this time, the old guys on the porch were laughing. They asked if they should call 911 so the firemen could get her out of the car. Then we were all laughing, and finally I got back in the car and pulled it out away from the curb.
After the photo shoot, I drove Mae home. As soon as we were a block away from the center, she removed her wig, revealing short hair that had not yet recovered from chemotherapy. Rubbing a hand over her head and looking a little embarrassed, she said, "Whew, that thing is so hot and itchy!"
Two weeks later I was stunned to hear that Mae had died from the cancer. She couldn't beat it, so she must have decided just to ignore it until it came at last to take her away. Over the years many friends and acquaintances have been passengers in the P1800, but none was more selfless and unpretentious than Mae.