|
 Carolyn Fite's is a love story of immense proportions. She
met her husband late in life as a natural occurrence in a
succession of career moves, in a day when most career women
were not microbiologists, as was Carolyn.
Now 81 years old and plain spoken regarding the facts of life,
she declares she is simply waiting to die, her eyes too dim to
enjoy reading, her bones too tired for golf. But her eyes take
on a warmth that blesses the soul as her fingers turn gently
the pages of her wedding album, now some 42 years old.
"My mother insisted on having these pictures taken," she says
of the photos within, her appreciation for simplicity
wonderfully thwarted by images of herself dressed in rich,
pale green satin, her admiring suitor in dark suit and tie.
The wedding took place on November 19, 1962, at the home of
Carolyn's parents, Amos Bailey and Elsie Keiper Wrinkle,
located about a mile from McKenzie on Highway 79 toward
Trezevant.
In one sentence, she enfolds a lifetime of dedication to
science and over 30 years of devotion to her husband, Dr.
George Liddle Fite: "He was the most brilliant man I've ever
known."
~ ~ ~
Born June 9, 1924, Carolyn was the older of two Wrinkle
children. Her brother, Bailey Moore Wrinkle, was several years
younger. Amos, a big, good-natured man of some standing in the
community--owner and founder of Wrinkle-Moore Hardware and
Furniture Company as well as a big-time farmer--was born and
bred in McKenzie, where three generations of forefathers had
gone before him. Elsie hailed from East Tennessee and had met
Amos when both, for about a year, were students at Bethel
College.
After spending a few years of her youth living in town near
the schools, Carolyn's family moved to the big house on the
highway that still stands, surrounded by smaller, tenement
houses.
Growing up, Carolyn was on the basketball team and enjoyed
swimming: "That's about all they had," she says. Yet, even
then, she had a lust for life beyond what was apparent in her
small hometown, its scope much smaller then than now. Moore's
subdivision, for instance, where she now resides, was acres of
cotton fields owned by her uncle, Ben Moore. From grammar
school through high school, Carolyn spent summers in East
Tennessee, where she had friends near her grandparents' abode,
and lived two years in McMinnville.
After graduating from McKenzie High School in 1942, she
attended the University of Tennessee at Knoxville from which
she proceeded to Ohio State, where she obtained her master's
degree in microbiology after an earlier interest in chemistry.
"I had a fellowship to Ohio State," she explains, "My
University of Tennessee professor pushed me at that, insisted
that I go on to Ohio State."
The bright young woman was determined to be a success in her
field rather than follow disciplines more often pursued by
women of the era.
"I sure didn't want to be in home economics or a secretary,"
she declares, laughing upon recalling one who noted she
"couldn't type or spell and together made a hell of a mess."
Each step Carolyn took introduced her into a widening
population: "It was as much difference from high school to UT
as it was UT to Ohio State--that was when Ohio State had
30,000 enrolled," she says, "and the University of Tennessee
was huge going from McKenzie High School. It was one loop to
another, quite a change. The number of students enrolled was
bigger than this whole town many times over."
She worked in Knoxville and Chattanooga with TVA as a chemist
and microbiologist for about three years before taking on the
United States Department of Public Health, working with the
CDC (Centers for Disease Control) in Atlanta. She studied
diseases by inoculating various animals and later performing
autopsies to determine if they had become infected. The work
took her to stations in Arizona, Michigan, Indiana, and West
Virginia.
"I changed a lot, I wanted to see the country," she explains.
She was living in West Virginia when she traveled to
Washington, D.C., some 65 miles away, where she met her future
husband in the lobby of the Hotel Statler. Seeking another
career move, she had journeyed to the capital to meet with Dr.
George Liddle Fite, chief pathologist of the laboratory at
Carville, a leper colony in Louisiana.
Born in Austin, Texas, and raised in Indiana and New Jersey,
the Harverford College and Harvard Medical School-educated
physician had taught at John Hopkins and Northwestern
universities and performed research at Rockefeller Institute
before, in 1937, joining the Public Health Service. His first
assignment was in Hawaii, where the health service operated a
leper colony. He worked there for four years before, in
1941--when Carolyn was still in high school--he transferred to
the Washington National Institute of Health as a researcher in
leprosy.
The affliction is also known as Hansen's disease after Dr.
Armauer Hansen of Norway, who was first to identify the
leprosy bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae.
While Carolyn alleges she was hired only when Fite couldn't
recruit the person he wanted for the job, she had already left
an indelible mark in the world of science with publications in
the Journal of Bacteriology, a publication of the American
Society for Microbiology. She was the lead author of early
1950 articles entitled, "Bacterial flora of frozen egg
products", "A test tube modification of the
oxidation-reduction dye test for the determination of
virulence of Mycobacteria in vitro", and "Symposium: methods
and media for culture of tubercle bacilli. II. The effect of
storage on the sensitivity of modified Lowenstein medium."
In 1954, she co-authored the article, "Evaluation of the
oxidation-reduction dye test for the determination of
virulence of mycobacteria in vitro" and in 1962 through '64
co-authored three articles with her husband, who himself was
author to more than 30 articles in the journal. The titles to
the articles in which Carolyn took part give some insight into
her mission at Carville: "Action of organic anhydrides on
mycobacteria", "Inoculations of M. leprae in reptiles", and
"Immune reactions of the guinea-pig to M. leprae."
Carolyn recalls she inoculated "snakes, turtles, a little bit
of everything" with the leprosy-causing bacterium.
"Everybody wanted to know if they could grow the (leprosy)
organism," she explains, the subjects of her statement
referring to the professionals with whom she worked and others
throughout the world in areas where leprosy continues to be a
problem. "They wanted to know how to grow it and how it was
transmitted, when they cuddle or what; after all, they had
never grown it."
The research did reveal, however, "a lot of things that you
can't grow it on, or it isn't transmitted by," she adds.
George and Carolyn Fite on the
occasion of their wedding.
Working side by side in the laboratory, Carolyn and George
found in each other a kindred spirit. Their marriage a couple
of years after they met was followed two years later by his
retirement from Carville at the age of 60. During his tenure
with the Public Health Service, he developed Fite's stain, a
diagnostic tool that remains in wide use.
The couple then moved to Chicago, where for ten years George
was senior editor of the Journal of American Medical
Association, a time period in which Carolyn says she was
playing--bridge and golf--when she wasn't volunteering at
Wesley Hospital just across the street from their home.
"I was a kept woman," she tells friends, enjoying their
stunned reactions.
The couple lived many more years in Bethesda, Maryland, where
George owned a home. Then after a lifetime of work researching
leprosy, George developed another elusive disease:
Alzheimer's. George and Carolyn moved to her home in
Tennessee.
"We came back because Daddy was sick and he was sick and I
couldn't very well commute," says Carolyn. Shortly after
arriving in McKenzie, George moved into Oak Manor nursing
home, the only establishment of its kind in the area at the
time, while Carolyn lived in the old homeplace on the
Trezevant Highway. From there, she could walk across the
street to visit George.
He died of pneumonia on September 29, 1993, at the age of 89,
and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington,
Virginia.
"Martha Padgett went with me," recalls Carolyn, a member of
McKenzie's First United Methodist Church, regarding the
funereal journey.
But the years in between his death and their meeting had been
filled with the wonder of every day activities as well as
sublime travels.
"He played a lot of golf, he had to," says Carolyn slyly, the
cause of his requirement being her enjoyment of the game. At
Carville, she says, were two courses: one for personnel and
another for patients.
"I just liked it, I liked to be out," Carolyn remarks of the
game.
She and George traveled to Hawaii, England, and Scotland
several times as well as Spain, Italy, Germany--Europe all
over, she says--Guadalupe and Mexico City in Mexico,
Guatemala, and all over the United States, including Alaska,
plus Canada.
"We just went places we wanted to go, did what we wanted to
do," she relates. "And he was invited to a lot of the places,
which helps. He was a world authority on leprosy."
The late-marrying couple never had children together, though
Carolyn notes her niece, Amy Wrinkle Peterson, and husband,
Dr. Mark Peterson, an orthopedic surgeon, have four children:
three boys and a girl.
"I haven't been able to see them in a couple of years," she
says, noting the family lives in Oregon. But in years gone by,
when Amy was living and working in Memphis, Carolyn grins,
Marks borrowed a dog in order to meet Amy, who was walking her
own dog.
Carolyn smiles again as she tells about her own little
dachshund, Fritz, and relates that another dachshund named
Zinker--named after a pathologist--was "best man" at her and
George's wedding. She leafs though the pages of the album to
find the dog--there, at their feet, in a photograph.
More telling, however, were page after page of wedding photos
taken when, alternately, either George or Carolyn would be
caught unawares while gazing with love and admiration upon
each other before, finally, one snap caught them looking into
each other's eyes with the promise of what the next 31 years
would bring.
Carolyn, as always, brings eloquence to simplicity as she sums
up their marriage: "We enjoyed life."
Carville,
formally known as the Gillis W. Long Hansen's
Disease Center in Carville, Louisiana, became the
National Leprosarium of the United States by act of
Congress on February 3, 1917, following testimony the
previous year delivered by John Early, a patient at
Carville, who believed a hospital and research facility
could offer patients hope rather than "just custodial
care in a remote place away from society."
The latter objective had once seemed a blessing,
however, when in 1894 the first seven patients arrived
from New Orleans to what was a deserted Indian Camp
Plantation. At that time, the state of Louisiana had
procured the site as the "Louisiana Leper Home at
Carville, Louisiana" at the behest of Dr. Isadore Dyer,
a dermatologist and leprologist from Tulane University
medical school, as "a place of refuge, not reproach; a
place of treatment and research, not detention."
Among those seven were four men, two women and a girl
from among thirty Louisiana residents identified as
having the disease that had been the scourge of mankind
since biblical times.
In 1933, Dr. George Liddle Fite and Sister Hilary Ross
began a research laboratory at Carville. During the next
three decades, Fite dedicated his life to the study of
leprosy and is known as the creator of "Fite's stain", a
diagnostic aid in identifying the organism that causes
leprosy. Its use remains indispensable as health
organizations seek to eliminate leprosy worldwide.
Dr. George Liddle Fite is
known as the creator of Fite's stain, a diagnostic tool
in the detection of leprosy. Above, lab slides show the
difference in ordinary staining methods and the use of
Fite's stain (right).
____________
When Carolyn Wrinkle joined the staff of Carville in
1960, families were still torn asunder as victims of the
disease were isolated from their families and society.
Since then, beginning in 1981, with the World Health
Organization's use of a multidrug therapy composed of
three drugs taken in combination (dapsone, rifampicin or
rifampin, and clofazimine), million of sufferers have
been cured. The treatment takes from six months to a
year or more but, over 20 years of use, virtually no
resistance to the treatment or relapse of the disease
has been shown.
Once thought to be a curse or, at best, hereditary, the
disease is now known to be transmitted primarily through
coughing and sneezing. Unlike the common cold that is
similarly transmitted, however, around 95 percent of
humans have a natural immunity to leprosy.
Nevertheless, some 5,000 people in the United States,
though cured, suffer from the effects of leprosy, which
can cause crippling deformities as well as blindness.
Leprosy affects the skin, nerves and mucous membranes,
resulting in progressive and permanent damage to skin,
nerves, limbs and eyes. Numbness and paralysis of
muscles in the hand lead to curling of the fingers and
thumb when nerves in the arms are affected. When leg
nerves are affected, sensation is lost in the feet. As
hands and feet are rendered impervious to pain or heat,
unnoticed wounds and infections lead to the eventual
loss of fingers and toes. When facial nerves are
affected, loss of the blinking reflex leads to dryness,
ulceration, and blindness. Infection of the mucous
lining of the nose leads to internal damage and scarring
and the eventual collapse of the nose.
Early detection and treatment halts the progression of
the disease before deformities occur. One goal of health
organizations, therefore, is to overcome fear of
reporting the disease.
Some 150 U.S. citizens are diagnosed with leprosy each
year. Early signs include discolored or light patches on
the skin with loss of feeling. According to the World
Health Organization, leprosy patches may be pale,
reddish, or copper-colored; flat or raised; do not itch;
usually do not hurt; lack sensation to heat, touch or
pain; and may appear anywhere on the body. Other signs
of leprosy include reddish or skin-colored nodules or
smooth, shiny, diffuse thickening of the skin without
loss of sensation. Skin patches such as birth marks, or
others where there is normal feeling, or that itch, are
white, black or dark red, or occur with scaling of skin
or which appear or disappear suddenly and spread fast
are not leprosy.
Worldwide, according to WHO, 650,000 cases were
registered and undergoing treatment in early 2002, with
70 percent of that number in India. Leprosy is
considered to remain a public health problem in 14
countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. In addition
to India, countries targeted for the elimination of
leprosy include Brazil, Madagascar, Mozambique, Myanmar,
and Nepal.
For more information, see the World Health Organization
Web site at www.who.int. |
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