Mount Joy sisters cut gospel record—back page Warner Cable gets Phillies, Sixers & new movies—pag SUSQUEHANNA TIMES Vol. 78, No. 36, September 6, 1978 HY DER bs t 1044 tL IA PA. Susquehanna Times & The Mount Joy Bulletin MARIETTA & MOUNT JOY, PA. 17552 FIFTEEN CENTS Shark captured in Marietta A Marietta youth cap- tured an apparently live shark in Miller’s Creek, in the center of Marietta, last Sunday evening. Bob Bowers captured the shark (about two feet long) with his bare hands. “It was almost dead,’’ he says, modestly. “I just grabbed it by the tail. It’s head was stuck between two rocks.’’ Nobody knows how the shark got into the creek, which is not deep enough to support a good-sized trout for most of its length. Billy Brown, who helped Bowers make the capture, suspects that someone caught the shark at the seashore, brought it home to Marietta in a bucket, and finally dumped the half-dead animal in the creek. ‘It was probably the same kids that told us it was in the creek,”’ says Billy. “Somebody must have put it in the creek,” he continues, ‘‘because there is a nine foot-high cement falls between the river and the place where we found [continued on page 4] This is the shark [about 2 feet long] which Bob Bowers captured in the middle of Marietta. The animal was dead, but not yet stiff, when a Bowers hailed a Susquehanna Times reporter on the street. Race to survive A Mount Joy kidney patient’s desperate 80 mph dash to Baltimore For five months Ray “Dick” Bell, 119 Columbia Avenue, Mount Joy, had been waiting for that phone call. It came at exactly 6 p.m., September 8, 1977. A seventeen year old boy had been killed in an auto accident and one of his kidneys was available to Dick as a transplant—if Dick could get down to Johns Hopkins University Hospital by 8:30. There was only one problem: in his condition he shouldn’t drive; his son Gary was at work; and his wife Betty had taken a much needed break from her chores, including tedious hours tending Dick’s life preserv- ing kidney machine, and was out having dinner with a girlfriend. The story about Ray “Dick” Bell's kidney prob- lems had begun over five years before, in April 1972, when Dick, not feeling well, had gone into Lan- caster General Hospital for a check-up. After a week of tests, the doctors suspected kidney trouble, but to make certain they sent him to Temple University. Sure enough, he was suffering from kidney failure. He was at Temple seven weeks before they let him come home. By July 4th weekend Dick was worse and went down to Temple again. This time they put him on the kidney machine, which performs a dialysis of the blood, removing, as the kidney does, impurities from the blood. At this point two other people from Mount Joy became part of Dick’s medical treatment: his wife Betty and his sister Betty (Mrs. Paul M.) Ament. Administering dialysis with a kidney machine is a highly technical and pre- carious process, and if Dick Left to ri was not to spend the rest of his life running down to Philadelphia to have his blood purified several times a week, he would have to have someone trained to perform the dialysis on a machine at his home. Twice a week, a total of 32 times between August and November, either his wife Betty or his sister Betty, accompanied Dick to Temple to learn how to operate the kidney machine for him. Dick’s medical expenses shot sky-high. To help out, the Mount Joy Athletic Association scheduled se- veral Ray ‘‘Dick’’ Bell Days, when they raised money for him at their ball games. Their money paid a number of expenses, in- cluding the cost of a generator that could take over supplying the power for Dick’s kidney machine, if the power lines should ever fail during a treat- ment. Back in Mount Joy with the kidney machine in- stalled in what had been ght: Betty Bell, Ray “‘Dick’’ Bell, and the family living room, Dick received treatments three times a week, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Each treatment lasted six hours, not count- ing the additional two hours it took to set the machine up and then clean it afterwards. The two Betty's took turns admin istering the machine, which was now doing for Dick what his kidneys used to do. The process was ardu- ous and sometimes agoniz- ing, both for Dick and his devoted attendants. Betty Ament is grateful to her employer, Union National Mount Joy Bank, for letting her take so much time off from work, in order to help her brother. The doctors had told Dick he would never be able to work again, but he worked every day he could during his dialysis treat- ments. His sister Betty says he is ‘‘a fighter.”’ The three times a week, six hours each time, went on for five years. Then, a Betty [Mrs. Paul M] Ament. new trouble developed. The dialysis treatments, which purified Dick’s blood, re- quired inserting two hypo- dermic needles the size of knitting needles into Dick's arms three times a week. His veins were breaking down and could take the repeated puncturing no longer. In May, 1977, he was put on standby for a kidney transplant. Some people have to stay on standby for years before a kidney becomes available. Then, unexpectedly the call came from Johns Hopkins only five months after Dick had been put on standby. A seventeen year old boy had been killed in an auto accident, and Dick could have one of his kidneys, if he could get down to Baltimore in two and a half hours. There was only one problem: Dick shouldn’t [continued on page 4]
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