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November 14, 2008

<img src="http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/images/zope/extra.gif" border=0>Birthday wish comes true for cancer patient <font color="#ff0000"> w/ link to Loretta Lynn fan photo slide shows </font>

By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

It took 17 years and the kindness of others, but Odessa Shrader is finally getting her birthday wish.

Shrader, 57, of Noel, asked for one thing when she turned 40. She wanted to see her music idol Loretta Lynn in concert. It never happened.

When she turned 50, Shrader asked again. She was still waiting to hear Lynn sing her famous tune, “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” But that birthday came and went, too. There was no concert.

Shrader wasn’t sure she would live long enough to see the singer after she was diagnosed with a reoccurrence of breast cancer last December. The cancer has now spread. She is end-stage, has lost her hair and is in a wheelchair.

But Shrader will see her birthday wish come true.

Bubba Fontaine, a local radio personality, met Shrader about three months ago. His mother and wife both work at Joplin Health and Rehabilitation Center where Shrader is a patient. He also works part-time at the center transporting patients to their treatment appointments.

Five times a week, Fontaine takes Shrader to her radiation treatments in a last-ditch effort to drive the cancer back. He heard about her love for Loretta Lynn. He heard about the unfulfilled birthday wish. And then one day, he heard Shrader talk excitedly about how Loretta Lynn was coming to Buffalo Run Casino in Miami, Okla.

“We ended up spending a lot of time together, and when she told me about saving up her money to go see Loretta Lynn, I knew that I knew people who could make that dream come true and I knew it was definitely worth making a phone call,” Fontaine said.

On Friday, Fontaine presented tickets to Lynn’s show to Shrader during a surprise press conference. Tearful nurses exchanged tissues as Shrader, with tickets in hand, wept with joy.

“I feel like I’m on top of the world,” she said. “All I can say is, there is a God.”

Buffalo Run Casino donated the tickets and backstage passes for the Nov. 21 show so Shrader can meet Lynn. She also received an acoustic guitar so that Lynn can autograph it for her.

Shrader said she felt an immediate connection to Lynn when the famous song “Coal Miner’s Daughter” came out in 1970. Shrader grew up in Pennsylvania in a family that worked in the mines.

“We have a lot in common,” Shrader said of herself and Lynn. “We weren’t rich, but we had lots of love.”

Pat Mercer, Fontaine’s mother and the director of nursing at Joplin Health and Rehabilitation, said Shrader has turned that love into a smile that enriches the lives of others at the center.

“Once you meet Odessa, you love her,” Mercer said. “She makes (everyone’s) day a little bit brighter.”

Fontaine couldn’t agree more as he leaned down to hug Shrader in her wheelchair. He said as much as he as enriched her life, she has enriched his so much more.

Clinging to the tickets that she calls “her beautiful treasure,” Shrader said she isn’t sure what she’ll say when she meets Lynn next week. She just hopes something comes out of her mouth.

“I suppose I’ll tell her that I love her and just hope that I don’t faint,” she said.

If nothing else, Shrader said she’ll be singing along with every word of Lynn’s songs, just like she does now.

Although Shrader describes herself as “a tough old bird,” she said even she was starting to doubt she would ever see Lynn perform.

“When it didn’t happen and it didn’t happen, I thought it was just another one of my dreams that didn’t come true. But now, I could go after I see her and I’d be happy,” she said.

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