A Child's Story

In the Community Center at Biloxi, Miss, last week, civic officials and colleagues from nearby Gulfport solemnly bestowed honorary citizenship and the keys to their cities on a smiling, bright-eyed little boy named Keith Drake. For good measure, they also made him an honorary police officer. When the speechifying was over. Keith responded with little more than a widened smile and a semi-audible "Thank you." Then he trotted to the next room for a slice of cake and a bottle of soda.

To the assembled dignitaries and members of Gulf Coast Lodge No. 1957 of B'nai B'rith, Keith's response could not have been more eloquent. The mere fact that seven-year-old Keith Drake could walk--let alone run--with scarcely a limp was both a gratifying reward for lodge members' efforts and a tribute to modern medicine. Two years ago, Keith was a cripple, seemingly doomed to live out his days as a cripple.

Rollers from Skates. Keith, the third son of LeRoy S. and Wilma Drake, was born in Evansville, Ind., where his father was a radio announcer. At 2 1/2 he had difficulty getting up when he sat or lay on the floor, and he ran a high fever. In 13 days at Indianapolis' James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children, Keith's illness was diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis (often called Still's Disease when it strikes in childhood). Doctors prescribed the latest and most potent drugs, including ACTH and the cortisone group. The fever persisted, and gradually Keith's painful, inflamed and tender joints grew stiffer. The Drakes lost faith in physicians, took Keith to chiropractors. His legs became so crooked that he could not walk. Drake moved to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, hoping that a change of climate would help. But Keith could get around only on a footstool to which his father had attached the rollers taken from a pair of skates. And nothing helped until the wife of a B'nai B'rith officer put the Drakes in touch with Dr. Emil Gutman. onetime medical director of the lodge's Leon N. Levi Memorial Hospital at Hot Springs, Ark.

Dr. Gutman phoned his successor at Hot Springs, Dr. Edgar K. Clardy. Four days later. Keith ("twisted up like a pretzel'') was admitted to the nonsectarian, unsegregated hospital, where the lodge maintains 100 beds for arthritis cases. After years of inadequate treatment, Keith's case was tough. The inflammatory phase of the arthritis had subsided, but the crippling and deformity resulting from it were extreme. Dr. Clardy called in Chief Therapist Norman F. Ehrich. who squatted next to the five-year-old Keith's bed for a serious talk.

Sixty-Six Steps. "Keith." said Ehrich, "we're going to try to make you walk again, but I can't promise you that we can. All I can promise you is that as long as you stay here, every day for six days a week, you're going to have pain and tears." Keith, who is unusually bright for his age. seemed to understand, so the bargain was made. Every morning began with diathermy treatment--no pain. Then his legs were put into splints with a turnbuckle between; this was tightened a few turns each day. It was so painful that the job was done in Ehrich's private office, well away from other patients, lest they see or hear Keith's crying. "One day," Ehrich recalls, "Dr. Clardy heard him moaning, so he came in to check the adjustment. Then he turned and hurried out before Keith could see the tears in his eyes."

It was like that for two years--after the splints, exercises to strengthen the muscles atrophied from long disuse, learning to stand with hands on parallel bars, at long last the first halting steps. Home since last month, Keith uses crutches occasionally, but runs free most of the time. He will enter the second grade next month, having kept up with his lessons by tutoring at the Levi Hospital. At last week's gathering, Ehrich told the story of Keith's treatment (which cost the Drakes nothing), then asked: "How many steps are there from the basement of the Levi Hospital to the top floor?" In Keith's eager treble came the answer: "Sixty-six!" Said Ehrich: "Right. He knows because he walked every one of them."

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