Born-Again Marriage. Dr. Bonnie Psy.D. Libhart
about Tony even though blood continued to stream from his forehead and spatter onto his white jeans. For a brief moment I forgot about power, position, and prestige, and thought of Tony. I screamed and pleaded for help, but with eighteen others injured, it seemed hours before someone got an ambulance backed through the crowd for Tony. Even then we were only taken to the track hospital--little more than a first aid station.
The nurse stopped Tony's bleeding, his lacerations were sewn up, and then they put him aside while I was being checked. After a brief examination, they determined I had only bruises and a slight concussion.
I was told Tony had been taken to the hospital, but when I went back outside there he was on an army cot in the grass. They had taken someone else. Three hours had passed. The right side of his face was swollen. His cheek was about an inch lower than normal. An ophthalmologist checked Tony and said he could detect no permanent damage to his eyes. I was so relieved to hear it because I had a sinking feeling inside as I thought of Tony being blind. But now he began to vomit blood, and the doctor who had seen him earlier came over. "I thought this man had been taken to the hospital downtown hours ago," he said.
This frightened me even more. Would Tony die? The doctor took Tony's temperature, checked his blood pressure, reflexes. Immediately he ordered intravenous feeding. The helicopter was called, but when it arrived there was room only for a stretcher, the attendant, and a pilot.
Terrified, I began to cry. I knew no one. I was alone but I had to get to Tony. Why had I been so interested in being the first woman in the pit area? If I hadn't been, Tony wouldn't be hurt now. We wouldn't be in this mess. Half running, I searched for our car. Where had we parked?
Tony always seemed to know where we were parked. There were 350,000 people at the race, and it seemed as though each had driven a car!
The race was just finished and the policemen couldn't help me find my car, but they did give me directions to the hospital. After thirty minutes I found the car and headed down Sixteenth Street toward it. Even though the cars were traveling several abreast and slowly, the traffic was at least moving in the right direction.
As I ran from the parking lot to the hospital's emergency ward, I kept wondering about Tony--wondering, too, why this was happening to us. Was God trying to tell us something? Would my husband be paralyzed? Would he still be alive? Oh, why had I neglected him?
I was relieved to learn Tony was being x-rayed and treated. I sat alone for two hours and watched the sun set through the hospital window that late Saturday afternoon.
Life was continuing normally for other people, but not for us. I wanted to see our children. I thought of returning home, or at least calling our family. I had to find someone to do my television show. But I couldn't do anything until I heard some word about Tony.
The next morning his condition was better. He did need surgery, but the doctors were optimistic. He'd make a full recovery, they said. And with a lot of help from my friends, I managed to find a substitute host for the television show.
What was most heartwarming was the kindness the people in Indianapolis showed us. One man helped us because he had a brother living in our hometown in Arkansas.
A photographer who had been in the stands with us came by with his wife even though they were planning to leave early the next morning for London. Calls and telegrams came from family and friends. My brother, Al, and his wife, Alice, drove several hundred miles to be with us. The Little Rock newspaper, Jonesboro's TV station, the New York Times and radio stations all over the country had picked the story up.
When someone showed me the Indianapolis newspaper, I was insulted; our picture had been snapped as I screamed for help. And Tony's picture didn't exactly reflect prestige either. Blood was spurting on his white jeans, and the press hadn't even bothered to get our permission. I learned later that a number of foreign papers also had carried the picture of me trying to get help for my husband.
In contrast to the few seconds it took for the accident to happen, Tony's mental and physical recuperation took months.
Even though I saw very little of the race, I'd had my year at the Indy 500.
Still another reminder of my fruitless search for fulfillment in position and prestige was a letter I had gotten from my mother. She lived in the viewing area of the television station where I worked. Just the week before the Indy 500 Mother had written:
Dear Bonnie,
It's awful that you're right here in the room with me every morning and I can't say a word to you. Sometimes when you look at the camera I try to imagine that you are talking to me.
How is the job coming along? I wonder about all of you constantly. I'm proud that you have the ability to do the TV program. You do so well; it's something to be proud of.
You have the opportunity to do many things. And I hope you will have the wisdom to sift out the uplifting things from the shallow and empty, and hold yourself up high. Many people are watching, and you have a chance to build a good image before them.
I pray for you, that you will not let anything pertaining to your job come between you and God, or hinder you from doing His will. In other words, honor and glorify Him, in all that you do. (Colossians 3:17)
I also pray that you will not let your job hinder you one minute in your role as a Christian wife and mother and that you will have the wisdom to bring up your
children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I love all of you and want you to be saved when you die. How terrible and awful it will be to fall in the hands of the
living God unprepared. I hope you can come to see us soon.
Love,
Mother
The letter had not had as much impact on me last week as it did this week when I reread it. And I thought of her words so many times. Was that why I was so unfulfilled?
I had met all of my worldly goals. I had my picture in the paper almost every day for some activity or place where I was speaking, providing a running commentary for a fashion show, or interviewing a TV guest. Life was empty -- like a beautiful soap bubble that glistens in the sunlight. It has all the colors of the rainbow, but when you touch it there's really nothing there. Day after day I'd have the thought that tomorrow, or very soon, I would make an impact on people's lives. What I was doing at the television station and what I had worked for all my life would then become meaningful. Yet when the next day came, and liquor and "joints" flowed, all the duress and pseudo-happiness I'd become entrenched in netted me only the stark reality of depression.
After Tony's recuperation, I had resumed my role at the television station and gradually seemed to forget the horror of the Indy 500 accident--and why we had been there. I fell right back into the old ways of seeking what I now recognize as those Poverty P's--power, position, and prestige. I sought power by wanting to be the Woman of the Year; position by being the only woman on the TV station in our area; and the prestige which accompanied both.
The next year I secured radio-television credentials to cover the Republican National Convention and also was elected as a convention delegate from the First Congressional District of Arkansas -- overdoing anything and everything was so typical of me. I was on the bus that the Zippies attacked in Miami Beach. Fortunately we got through that experience without anyone on the bus being seriously injured.
In all my frantic busyness, I neglected my husband and family. I was demanding success for me, through me. As I looked at my goals (gold Mercedes, white mink coat, diamonds), they seemed empty of any long-range benefit. So I worked even harder to get into more meaningful things, like participating in the Little Rock dinner held in honor of James H. Patrick, recipient of the National Brotherhood Humanitarian Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. I thought perhaps if I did more to "help" the community, I would "help" my own satisfaction.
As our