Carrying onward ALS patient may run in torch relay
By Dave Newhouse, STAFF WRITER
Article Created: 04/03/2008 02:58:03 AM PDT


LORRI COPPOLA has dreams. Some of her dreams are realistic, some are limited. When you have Lou Gehrig's disease, reality can be on a short leash.
But the one dream Coppola truly embraced is about to come true. She will participate in next Wednesday's Olympic Torch Relay Run in San Francisco.

The torch relay list hasn't been announced officially, but Coppola, 67, received an invitation to attend next Tuesday's 6:30 p.m. Torchbearer Reception at the Asian Art Museum across the bridge.

With the relay starting 181/2hours later, the Marin resident feels certain she's made the cut. Just in time. The next Summer Olympics torch relay is 2012.

"I may not be around for the (2012) London Olympics," she said.

Her life changed dramatically in December 2005 when she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an awful-sounding name and an even more gruesome prognosis: She had two to five years to live.

ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a degenerative disease of the nerve cells that control muscular movement. Coppola's body is degeneratingslowly.

Thus next week's Olympic torch relay, in her mind, is a last hurrah.

"Because of the ALS," she said, "it is the highlight for me."

She already had lost her ability to speak, eat and drink when I first wrote about her torch relay dream Feb. 10. Her body continues to deteriorate.

"My left arm and the fingers on my left hand are weaker," she said.

She typed out her responses on

a portable computer Wednes-
day morning before serving as a judge at a women's track and field heptathlon at Edwards Stadium on the University of California, Berkeley, campus.

Because Coppola can't eat normally, all of her meals are liquid and fed through a tube that's attached to her stomach.

But she has an indomitable spirit and an unquenchable will to live.

The torch relay invite came by mail Monday at her Greenbrae apartment. She learned each relay segment is two blocks. She will get there by ferry.

"I was happy they shortened the course," she said. "It makes it easier on my lungs as they are getting weak."

But as a former champion racewalker, she's still in training.

"I've been working out on the College of Marin track," she said, "walking for one mile three times a week."

Coppola tapped her heart several times to show how elated she was about participating in next Wednesday's forerunner to the Beijing Olympics.

"I'm so excited," she said. "I feel the athletes who work so hard to be an Olympian need support."

Next Wednesday's support, though, comes with political overtones. China's long record of human rights violations in Tibet has created worldwide controversy, including in San Francisco — the Olympic torch's only American stop.

Protesters will line the torch relay route, voicing their displeasure at San Francisco's supporting anything that involves the Chinese government.

"I think of the athletes who will never have another chance to do this," Coppola said. "Those in 1980 never got to compete as they were not allowed to go (to Moscow), and (some) did not make the team four years later."

I remember 1980 vividly because I supported President Carter's boycott of the Moscow Games. I feared for our athletes' safety on communist turf in the "heat" of the Cold War between our two countries.

Perhaps I erred in my judgment, but my perspective on Beijing is totally different. I believe China's actions in Tibet are abhorrent, but that doesn't involve the United States in the same way it did with the old USSR.

Our athletes deserve the right to compete in Beijing, just as next week's protesters have the right to speak out against China. America is a democracy, whether it's supporting free speech or throwing the discus.

"They have a right to peacefully protest and make their feelings known," Coppola said of the demonstrators. "I do not feel harming people or property is the way to show how you feel."

Coppola is all about democracy. She was a middle school teacher for 33 years in Marin County. And she's even more aware now of human rights, having to look in the mirror every morning at the same disabled person.

She's just as disabled, though in a different way, as next week's relay members who will carry the Olympic torch in their wheelchairs.

They shouldn't be denied this special moment, and neither should Coppola. Any protester who rails against her should be flogged immediately in Justin Herman Plaza.

For when it comes to this courageous lady's mortality, there can be no protest.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivall...ews/ci_8793903