Erica’s story
Book signing a reminder of the importance of local stories
The Front Page
Morning Update
Sunday, October 3, 2021
By Ken Tingley
The young woman coming toward me was chapter 10.
I had not seen her since the day 13 years ago when I interviewed her about her struggles with multiple sclerosis.
The story started this way:
You think you’ve got problems, pull up a chair.
Erica Thomas has a story that will park your complaints in an orbit with Jupiter.
The 26-year-old mom comes to the door of her subsidized two-bedroom Queensbury apartment looking fit, vibrant and ready for a fight.
There is a cane by the door, a walker by the bed and a wheelchair for the really bad days, but you see the fire in her.
Erica had been diagnosed with MS three years earlier and every six to seven months the disease unleashed another wave of attacks on her, weakening her stamina and increasing her pain. She was taking 23 pills a day when I first talked to her.
She had a 7-year-old daughter named Desiree. And throughout the 90-minute interview in 2008, Erica lamented how it was Desiree who was pushing her to do the therapy and get better. She lamented that the little girl was losing her childhood. That little girl just had a baby this year. Erica is now a grandmother.
On Saturday, the young woman walking down the aisle had just a hint of a limp, maybe a little bit of a shuffle, but I immediately knew it was Erica. You don’t change that much from 26 to 39. She was still a baby in my eyes.
I suspect it was a lot harder coming to see me than she let on. Before leaving, she had posted on Facebook that she was coming to see me at my book signing and that she might head out to Warrensburg for the big garage sale afterward.
“Wish me luck,” she wrote.
She explained to one of her friends that the book was something for her kids and grandkids to have.
I had last talked to Erica in January about how her life had turned out. I wanted to include her story in the book.
She explained to me then the disease had backed off, and she was off the meds for a decade or so. She had married and had two boys who are now 10 and 7. She admitted they are a handful. By 2017, lesions began to appear on her brain and spine and the doctor insisted she try a new medication.
Erica told me Saturday the medication was horrible. She shows me the braces on her thin legs.
“People think I’m wearing weights,” she smiled.
I was glad to see her. So many of the people I wrote about in my columns over the years have become part of my life, too. We have become linked, and my one hope for my book was that the stories of these people - people like Erica - would be preserved for all time.
In this case for her kids and grandkids so they knew what she went through.
I signed Erica’s book and thanked her for telling me her story and trusting me.
I told her now that she was a grandmother, it was important for the next generation to know what she went through.
I got talking to another visitor when I noticed Erica out of the corner of my eye. She wanted to know if she could get a photo together.
We stood there smiling.
Two people meeting for only the second time in their lives. Yet, we are linked by her story and the life she had led. So many times as newspaper writers, you write something and then it is gone. You never know what happened next.
So Sunday morning, I was floored to see this from Erica on her Facebook page:
“I have to say, you changed my life with that story. I made so many connections with people whom I still talk to today. I was lifted up in my lowest time by people who didn't even know me. I was humbled by my community and learned I was so far from alone in this struggle. Today every day is a challenge but I'm blessed to wake up and step into my slippers and get my coffee on my own. Life changes and it's because of people like you that the good comes out.”
Yeah, I’m speechless.
It’s a story worth reading.
Lots of visitors
There was some trepidation about doing a book signing for the first time. I prepared myself just in case no one showed up.
But that was not the case. Dan Hall, the Glens Falls mayor, and Glens Falls supervisor Peter McDevitt and his son Brent all stopped by.
The father of another person in the book said he had gotten it as a birthday present from his son and wanted it signed.
Another woman reminded me that our sons used to swim for the Flyers swim club a decade ago.
Another person, said the book was on her mother’s Christmas list.
It was all very humbling and invigorating.
As I was packing up my books, one last person approached my table.
He asked me if the name Mike Fish meant anything to me. I thought a second and responded, “Did you play soccer for Fort Ann?”
“Close,” he said. “It was Argyle.”
He told me how I covered an Argyle soccer game in 1994 when he was a senior in high school. Sporting a New York Mets baseball cap and a graying beard, Mike was now in his 40s and making me feel really old.
He recited to me several passage from what I wrote that day when I was sports editor at The Post-Star.
He told me he had sat down a couple times to write me a letter to thank me for those kind words, but never got around to it.
Mike went on to college and pharmacy school and now works as a regional representative for a supermarket chain.
He kept telling in the bookstore everyone who would listen “This visit is 27 years in the making.”
I signed Mike’s book and mentioned that long ago soccer game. We then had our photo taken together.
It was a reminder of the power of the printed word, and maybe more importantly how the newspaper had once played an important part in so many lives, even if it was just one insignificant soccer game 27 years ago. But at the time, it was the most important thing in the world.
