By Lori Ehde
A large contingent of Hardwick residents and their friends and relatives participated in the annual MS Walk in Sioux Falls Sunday.
This isn't surprising, considering the little town of Hardwick has seen four of its residents diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a chronic disease of the central nervous system.
Even more striking, these four residents, at one time, all lived on the same street, Buckingham Street.
Babe Obele started showing symptoms of MS in 1972 at the age of 47. She and her husband, Squint, owned the Valley Bar in Valley Springs, S.D., at the time, and Squint remembers it was Babe's balance that was first affected.
"SheÕd walk in the back of the bar, and she'd have to hang on to both sides," he said. "She didn't know what the heck was going on."
Local doctors were unable to determine the cause of her symptoms, but as slurred speech and double vision set in, the couple sought help from Minneapolis physicians.
"The doctors explained it this way: Your brain is like a fuse box, and your brain tells you to lift your arm or leg," Squint said. "With MS your brain doesn't make the connection."
Babe was diagnosed with MS in 1975 and was admitted to the Minnesota Veterans Nursing Home seven years ago.
Jean Hansen was the first to be diagnosed in 1978 at the age of 25. Her mother, Bette Colbeck, said Jean, a computer programmer at the time, noticed numbness and loss of function in her hands.
"The same thing happened to my brother," Colbeck remembers, saying she believes the theory that MS is hereditary.
Her father, Harold Kadinger, had MS, and her brother, Bob, was discharged from the military when MS prevented him from writing.
"They locked him up because they thought he was going goofy," Colbeck said. "I also remember him walking down the street in Hardwick one day and everybody thought he was drunk."
Having lived with MS for so much of her life, her daughterÕs diagnosis seemed a cruel curse.
"I just couldn't believe it at first," she said. "I didnÕt want to believe it."
Jean, now 48, lives in California and hasnÕt been able to work for more than 10 years. She uses a cane around the house, but if she has to cross more than one room at a time, she needs a wheelchair.
Colbeck said the four Hardwick people with MS all lived near each other on the west side of the railroad tracks, but she blames the water.
"I say it's the rock in the water," she said. "Hardwick is built on rock, you know, and I say thatÕs why there's so much cancer in Hardwick, too."