At that time, most of the houses in the area had names rather than numbers, and the new owners went back and forth a good deal trying to come up with just the right thing. In the end, it was Ben (Allen Benjamin) who hit the nail on the head.
“I’ve got it! We’ll name it for all of us: Allen, William, Opal and La Nell. Let’s call it AWOL!”18
Although it puzzled their Spanish-speaking neighbors mightily, they always got a kick out of the wrought-iron name proudly affixed to the front wall. They had told the Foreign Mission Board’s Area Secretary, Dr. Frank Means, about their plans and were able to take him there on a visit. When he saw the sign he chuckled, “You really did it!”
Gaining Traction
The children soon grew used to seeing their mother hanging from a door. It was one of the few things that could relieve the pain.
La Nell had been in full swing. Besides running the house, keeping all the family members on course with their schedules, hosting innumerable dinners and acting as secretary for her husband, she had an impressive list of activities of her own. At their local church in Solano, she taught Intermediate girls in Sunday School, organized and led the activities of the Girls’ Auxiliary, and headed the Women’s Missionary Union. In the South Zone Association, she promoted the WMU. In the Convention, she served on the Christian Education Board and represented the WMU on the Executive Committee. In the Mission, she held various positions, from committee member to recording secretary to vice president and acting president.
In the midst of all this hustle and bustle, she began experiencing pain in her lower back and neck, at times very intense and often shooting down her arms and legs. When it persisted over several weeks, it was time to get medical advice. They consulted Dr. Jack Edward Davis at the British Hospital, recommended by their friends Charles and Bernadine Campbell, who had been missionaries in Bahía Blanca, the physician’s home town.
Dr. Davis, a second- or third-generation Anglo-Argentine, was a renowned plastic surgeon who had trained under leading doctors in that field in England. He was a founding member of ISAPS (the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery), of which he was president in 1979 and from which he received two of its maximum awards, for his work on Dupuytren’s contracture and on the reconstruction of the auricular pavilion. He was the first surgeon in Latin America to perform microvascular anastomosis in toe-to-hand transfer, but he had started out as a general practitioner, earning his medical degree in Córdoba, and was an excellent diagnostician. He had become interested in plastic surgery in his native southern Buenos Aires Province from seeing field workers crushed and maimed by farm animals and machinery.
Dr. Davis diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis. This condition would require inactivity during the painful periods of inflammation and contracture, and preventive measures in between. As far as possible, the movements required by sweeping, mopping and ironing were to be avoided. Golf would provide the right kind of exercise when the painful symptoms abated.
He recommended buying a home neck traction unit. A metal support was placed over the top of a door. It held and guided a rope and pulley system with a bag full of water on one end and a heavy-duty cloth halter on the other. La Nell would sit in a straight-backed chair against the door with her head cradled in the halter. The weight of the bag would stretch out the vertebrae, separating them and giving relief to the sciatic and cervical nerves pinched by inflamed tissue.
The initial bout with arthritis kept La Nell in bed for several months. Although Ben was pretty handy around the house, learned how to make biscuits for breakfast (later adding brownies and a few other recipes to his repertoire) and got the kids off to school, his hectic schedule kept him out of the house most of the day. They were forced to admit they needed help and finally hired a young woman from the Province of Santiago del Estero who went by the nickname “Pechi.” She lived with them for nearly three years, helping with housework, cooking and babysitting. Nancy spent the most time with her, and it was Pechi who taught her to drink mate. Yerba mate is a green tea drunk from a gourd through a metal straw, with or without sugar. More than a beverage, it is a social ritual for most Argentines. Pechi also introduced the girls to the world of the novela, basically soap operas in magazine form, arranged like comic books, with photographs instead of drawings.
The humid weather of Buenos Aires made La Nell’s condition worse so that now AWOL, located in the perfect weather of the Córdoba mountains, became a veritable godsend. Every few months La Nell and Opal would take an overnight bus to La Falda and spend several restorative days there reading, playing cards and relaxing, while they basked in the warmth of the fireplace.
At home, La Nell’s bed became the family conference center, where the children would take turns gently sitting or lying down at its foot to go over the day with their mother or join her in a game of gin or canasta. On one such occasion, Nancy and La Nell heard a loud siren. The little girl wanted to know what it meant and her mother explained about ambulances, police cars and fire trucks. They talked about different kinds of accidents and Nancy wondered which would be the most painful way to die. She mused that knives or bullets or fire would hurt.
“I’d rather die from old age,” she decided. “But it will be a long time before that happens.”
She looked earnestly at La Nell as she unconsciously switched languages: “¡Pero a vos no te falta tanto!”19
Nancy was quite offended when her mother reacted to her existential ponderings with whoops of laughter.
Business as Usual
The little clouds of condensed breath and the proliferation of transistor radios pressed up against the commuters’ ears as they waited for the train that cold June morning in 1966 were nothing new. What struck David as unusual as he neared the platform was the intensity on the listeners’ faces. When he got within hearing range, he realized that nearly everyone was tuned to the same station—Radio Colonia from Uruguay.
“Something big must be going down!” he thought.
A newspaper vendor who was hawking La Razón by blaring “Grampa ousted!” informed him that a widely expected military coup must have taken place. He decided he’d better go home.
After listening to the official announcement that confirmed the removal of President Illia and urged the population to carry on business as usual, Ben drove David across town to school and arranged to have him spend the night with the Ferrells to avoid potential trouble. As it turned out, there were no major disturbances and life went on with barely a ripple, at least on the surface.
Once again, the Bedfords marveled at the way Argentines on the whole took the changing fortunes of their country in their stride and forged ahead. Recessions, devaluations and price hikes alternated in a bewildering and unpredictable manner with social and economic improvements and gains.
Since their arrival in the country in 1953, Argentina’s government had gone through an impressive number of changes. They had been in Rosario when Juan Domingo Perón, who had himself risen to power through the military only to establish his own party and be elected democratically, was deposed by the military in the so-called “Liberation Revolution.” General Pedro Aramburu became the de facto president in 1955 and banned the Peronist party.
Elections were held in May of 1958, a few months before the Bedfords moved to Comodoro Rivadavia. These were won by Arturo Frondizi, of the Intransigent Radical Civic Union, aided by a pact with Perón, who was pulling his underground party’s strings from exile in Spain. During the next four years, Frondizi managed a wobbly balance on the political tightrope at times twitched and at others yanked by Peronists on one end and the military on the other, but ultimately pleased neither. When Frondizi lifted the ban on the Peronist party in the 1962 elections, it won ten of the fourteen governorships at stake. In March, about four months before the Bedfords left Comodoro, the military decided to take charge and ousted Frondizi, who said he would not resign, commit suicide, or leave the country.
Senate President José María Guido was appointed