Honduras On The Mend Spokane Native Carole Denison Plans To Spend The Rest Of Her Life Cleaning Up Her Adopted Home Ravaged By Hurricane Mitch

Some of us will remember Hurricane Mitch as yet another deadly disaster that struck another faraway place, sometime between Hurricane Georges and Tropical Storm Nicole.

But one Spokane native plans to spend the rest of her life mopping up after Mitch.

Carole Denison awakes each morning in a hot attic apartment next to the funeral home in the coastal Honduran town of La Ceiba. The missionary doctor opens her medical clinic at dawn and finds Mitch reflected in the eyes of every patient.

There’s the elderly man whose blood pressure rose dangerously when hurricane winds ripped at his roof.

The woman who saved her grandchildren but lost her home to an overflowing river.

The never-ending line of mothers with stool samples in wads of scrap paper from children sickened by contaminated water.

Denison has sculpted a satisfying life’s work in a Third World country where half the work force is unemployed, where the hurricane killed thousands and set back the nation’s progress another 30 years.

Today, The Spokesman-Review takes you behind the clinic walls and into the lives of Mitch’s survivors. You’ll see how one woman from Spokane can make a difference in a country overwhelmed by need.

Please turn to “One Life at a Time” in today’s IN Life section.