Word: sylva
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Since she was born 20 years ago, Sylva Eugenie Davis of Kansas City has not been able to use her arms or legs. The nerve tracts in the neck region of her spinal cord were injured at birth, causing spastic paralysis (muscular rigidity). But Sylva was endowed with high courage. She learned to read, turned the pages of her books with her tongue. She used a typewriter by poking the keys with a pencil held between her teeth. With a brush between her teeth she tinted photographs, made drawings. She was careful of her appearance, applied her own cosmetics...
...Recently Sylva heard there was a chance of improvement by surgical operation-crushing the malformed nerve tracts in her neck in the hope that they would grow together normally. Such an operation, though not unique, is rare. Stocky, bespectacled Dr. Frank Randall Teachenor, one of the most brilliant neurological surgeons in the Midwest, had never before performed it. He warned Sylva that although it might help her, it might make her worse or even cause her death. Sylva decided to take the chance. Her mother tried to dissuade her, but the girl persisted in her determination...
...Universal's convention this week, most ballyhooed productions will be two Buddy de Sylva musicals like Top of the Town, three Deanna Durbin musicals like Three Smart Girls. Salesmen will hear about a general trend to light, unsophisticated entertainment with lots of action, to which the only noteworthy exception on the Universal menu is the late Luigi Pirandello's Yesterday's Kisses...
...tongues; they shall take up serpents" (Mark: 16:17, 18). To many a U. S. religionist of the Pentecostal or "Holy Roller" variety, the "gift of tongues" has long been vivid reality. In recent years the taking up of serpents has gained equal favor. Two years ago in Sylva, N. C. a rawboned mountaineer named Albert Teester let himself be bitten by a rattlesnake, became gravely ill, recovered (TIME, Aug. 20, 1934). Soon in Birmingham one female and three male Holy Rollers safely handled a rattler from which, it later was revealed, the fangs had been drawn at the behest...
...mile highway through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Its woodsy peaks and valleys "thrilled and delighted" him. Caught in a thunder shower at lunch time, he wriggled into a slicker, washed down fried chicken and caviar sandwiches with a bottle of beer. At a Cherokee Indian Reservation near Sylva, N. C., Chief Standing Deer (Jerry Blythe) capped the President with a headdress of eagle feathers, mumbled some Cherokee which made him the tribe's Chief White Eagle. White Eagle got his feathers off before photographers could snap...