Fargo woman hasn’t let the disease slow her down
By Carol Stender
It was 1977 when Diane Hill of Fargo first started to experience fatigue. The young wife and mother of a three-month-old was also teaching in Hanaford, N.D. Her busy schedule could explain the tiredness she was feeling, but this fatigue was different.
“My main symptom was fatigue,” she said. “I didn’t get the beauty, but I got the sleep.”
She was also falling down and she couldn’t move the toes or her ankle on one foot. Hill also fell on her face at the threshold of the school. She describes how, in one class, she was sitting on the desk and mentally ordered her foot to move. It didn’t.
Something was wrong.
Doctors scheduled a number of tests to check for the cause including testing the proteins in her spinal fluid.
“They didn’t have MRIs at the time,” she said.
She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a chronic disease of the central nervous system.
Today, 45-plus years later, Hill lives independently in her Fargo townhouse. She is active and a frequent visitor of the Fargo Senior Citizens Center, where she partners with 94-year-old Henry Brenner in pinochle.
“I am grateful for the pinochle games because they keep me from isolating,” she said.
“Getting old is probably more challenging than my MS. We can be proud of the fact we are doing it. And not giving up.”
She moves easily about her home and uses a cane elsewhere.
“I want to give people hope,” she said. “Minnesota and North Dakota are hot beds for MS. They don’t know about people like me and I am not the only one.”
Teaching has been a mainstay in her life.
“I always knew I would be a teacher - either that or a movie star,” she said with a smile.
Hanaford was her first teaching position. She taught 29 students in a combined 7th and 8th grade setting.
When she received her MS diagnosis, people felt sorry for her.
“But they couldn’t have been as sorry for me as I was for myself,” she said.
Hill and her husband divorced after 14 years of marriage when she learned of an opening at Kathryn, N.D. for an English teacher.
“I was the only person interested and I got the job,” she said. “My son was five years old then and I was able to have him in daycare, which was in the same building. The Catholic Church helped me out a lot.”
The writing was on the wall, however, that the school would be closing. She sought her Masters degree and moved to Fargo, N.D. where she got a practicum site at the Fargo Adult Learning Center. The director was moving and there was an opening for her to fill.
“God never closes a door unless he opens a window,” she said. “That was my window.”
She didn’t tell them she had MS. They didn’t ask, Hill said.
Hill worked with displaced homemakers and non-readers and, through Vocational Rehabilitation, she assisted the handicapped.
“Everyone in the classroom was doing something different,” she said. “But it was good for my mind.”
Eventually, the Cass County Jail sought a GED program for its inmates.
Hill went from cell block to cell block to help inmates complete their GED courses.
“We didn’t have a room, but there was a conference room for the lawyers we could use,” she said. “If a lawyer did come in to visit with a client, however, we had to leave. When they built a new jail, they built a room for the classes.”
Those jailed were as committed to the courses as Hill was to the teaching program. She describes how one inmate, with just two tests left to obtain his GED, was ready to be released, but he didn’t want to leave. He wanted to complete his tests.
The jail, however, couldn’t keep him in the cell block. They contacted Hill for help.
Staff placed him in the visitor’s area where Hill came to administer the tests.
“We put him in the visitors room and he took the two tests he needed to complete,” she said. “He got his GED and came back to graduate. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted his GED.”
In the 30 years she worked with inmates, she never had need to call the guard, she said.
Each person who received their GED wore a cap and gown. Hill would snap their picture and send it to their mom.
“I am a mom and you want that picture,” she said. “You don’t care where it was taken. You want that picture.”
Most of the clients she worked with at the jail were addicts. Some went on to serve 30-year sentences in federal prison, she said. The worst drug that got them into trouble was meth.
“I used to say to the students, ‘You are dancing with the devil again,’” she said. “The one thing about meth I hated so much was that it messed up their brains. I had one guy who worked on his GED for six months. Then one day it was like someone turned a light on. I felt so bad about the meth clients.”
The GED was more than a piece of paper. It meant a higher paying job, she said.
She started teaching GED courses in 1983 and retired in 2008.
Hill said she is at a crossroads. The 79-year-old is contemplating the best living conditions for herself as she ages and with her MS.
She has not been limited by her condition and has remained active in the community and with family through MS flare ups and remission.
“I want to give people hope,” she repeated.
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