Woman Aiding Brain-Injured Has Been There

At 19, Mary Ellen Denton rolled 250 feet down a mountain at Glacier National Park after a loose rock had cracked her in the skull.

Twenty-six years later, an embroidery of white scars under the Coeur d’Alene woman’s dark hair still marks the tumble that put out Mary Ellen’s lights for two months. Her brain was bruised. Doctors drilled holes in her head to reduce the swelling. Then they waited for her to awaken or die.

“It was 1969,” she says. “Most people died from injuries like mine.”

Now, Mary Ellen helps rehabilitate brain-injured people at TESH Inc.

“I can understand their frustration at knowing what they used to be able to do and can’t do anymore,” she says, tapping her foot with nervous energy. “I’ve been there.”

Mary Ellen awoke determined to resume her old life. But her dexterity was gone. She couldn’t remember anything she read unless she wrote it down.

Frustrated, Mary Ellen quit college, but she returned a few years later. She graduated in 1976 with a teaching degree she couldn’t use.

“I found during my student teaching that I couldn’t sort things out in a lot of confusion,” she says. “I couldn’t think around lots of little kids.”

For a few years, she stayed home with her children, then tried working in a day-care center. The confusion flustered her, and she ended up doing housekeeping. But Mary Ellen hadn’t finished college to vacuum floors and empty trash.

Her confidence in her abilities was waning when she went to TESH a year ago. TESH trains disabled people to work at jobs that match their abilities.

But TESH didn’t want to train Mary Ellen. Instead, the staff put her to work as one of its rehab technicians. She teaches small groups of disabled people the skills they need to live independently: cooking, grocery shopping, gardening.

“I’ve finally found my place,” Mary Ellen says, smiling. “I think I can really help these people out.”

What’s up, doc?

Bugs Bunny couldn’t find fresher flowers and vegetables than the Kootenai County Farmers’ Market offers. The market will open Saturday in its new home at the southeast corner of Prairie Avenue and U.S. Highway 95.

Local growers and craftsmen sell houseplants, herbs, perennials and bedding plants, tie-dyed clothes, birdhouses, homemade preserves and more, more, more. Go any Saturday through mid-October from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Recycled dollars

Every week this school year, Lake City High seniors Alison Rude, Josh Schmidt and Brooke Krogle have sorted newspapers, plastic and aluminum cans saved by Cougar Gulch and Meadowbrook residents. Then the kids have taken the load to Panhandle Recycling.

The neighborhood Sam Rodius Memorial Park Association was so impressed by the students’ work that it recently gave each a $100 scholarship.

Recycling pays.

A taste of politics

Lakeland High School junior Josh Buehner has started his career in politics early. He won the Pacific Northwest governor’s seat at the recent Junior State convention in Bellevue, Wash.

Josh, 16, wants to study law and politics after high school. Now you know which future legislator to start courting.

Tour time

I take all my summer visitors to Wallace and to Joe Peak’s Enaville Resort, aka The Snake Pit.

What Panhandle sights do you find yourself showing visitors most often? Tubbs Hill? Lakeview? Priest Lake? Share the sights with Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; send a fax to 765-7149 or call 765-7128.