Portrait of a Woman Anita Bloom Ornoff
“I knew what happened to me,” said Anita Bloom Ornoff. “I was doing something I was right about.”
At age 21, this woman was searching for her purpose in life. She was manager at an upscale shoe store when a woman in uniform walked in. When the woman left the shop, Anita followed her for blocks. She just knew this was the direction she was supposed to take. She enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) in 1943. She’d been told that she was officer candidate material so she needed to do well in her training.
Her parents weren’t pleased by her decision, but she didn’t let that stop her. She also didn’t realize what she had signed on for. Nobody could have known what lay ahead. The goal for her memoir, Beyond Dancing, was to help young people, to encourage them. It’s a message that when they are faced with an overwhelming challenge, they should keep at it to the end, to the goal, to never be intimidated from making their own decisions.
Nita became a paraplegic before WAAC graduation when a non-medical staffer with poor personal hygiene at Sick Call physically attacked her and lanced Nita’s infected right thumb with a dirty razor blade. “It had to do with religion and a person’s viciousness,” Nita believes.
Following the lancing episode, there were five to six weeks of poor treatment by the doctors. The infection spread to her spine. Emergency surgery saved her life, she said, but left her permanently paralyzed with useless legs. Despite all of that, she learned to survive normally. She wants others to know that they can do it, too.
“I also felt that the WAAC women needed recognition,” she said. Getting the recognition wasn’t easy. Every time she was thrown a line, she grasped onto it, doggedly pursued it writing letters to lawmakers seeking assistance. She appeared before Congress to present her plight. She was disappointed more than once. But she didn’t give up. Her husband, Hal Ornoff advised it took nine years for her to win her veteran benefits.
“I believed in something and fought for it,” she said. “The reason that I was compelled to write my memoir was if I could prevent one person from becoming intimidated by a superior’s erratic demands, it would be worth it. I had to do it.”
She admits she never liked to visit at the hospital. But her physical disability changed her whole life. She worked her way through a college education and entered the mental health field. Her life has been a matter of faith.
“I always believed that being paralyzed had nothing to do with my ability,” Mrs. Ornoff said. She and her husband have traveled around the globe. Before a major stroke in 2001 she traveled frequently on her own.
One of the first things that come to mind when reading the book is what she had in common with the late Christopher Reeve who also suffered a spine injury that rendered him paralyzed.
“We never got to meet him,” Hal Ornoff said. “We did send him Nita’s book.”
When asked why people should read her book, Nita answered, “Just as I stated in my epilogue, ‘I hope that my life and the challenges that I have faced will inspire others, young men and women, to conquer any misfortune.’ Based on comments from people who have read Beyond Dancing, and especially those who have experienced a major trauma, the book has met all that I had hoped.”
What still puzzles her is that she could have been so intimidated by a woman she names Five-by-Five in the book, the woman who threatened her, and set the wheels in motion that would change the course of Nita’s life.
“My parents, my family, never knew what happened to me to cause this,” she said. She took responsibility for herself and just rolled with the punches. The only person in the family that she ever shared the information with was an aunt who visited her at the hospital in Texas. “And I swore her to secrecy.” Her parents died never knowing the whole story.
Her first husband, John Muller, was instrumental in the inception of Camp Jawonio in New City, N.Y. The mission of Jawonio Inc. (https://www.jawonio.org) is to advance the independence, well-being and equality of people with disabilities or special needs, and will celebrate its 60th year in October. Jawonio was organized in 1947 as the Cerebral Palsy Society of Rockland County.
TJ Friedman, whom she had dated a number of years earlier, visited her after her husband’s death. She and TJ were married a year when he died of a heart attack. Hal Ornoff was married to Nita’s sister, Marilyn, for 13 years. They had two daughters. After Marilyn’s sudden death, he asked Nita to marry him. She adopted her sister’s daughters as her own. But the marriage was troubled because of the girls. Nita flew to Reno and stayed there for six weeks to get a divorce.
“We had a boat. We had to share custody of it,” Hal said. One month he had the boat, the next, Nita did. On one of his custody visits he called her and said he’d caught some crabs and would she mind if he brought them over to cook them. He hadn’t really caught them. He wanted this woman back. He is delighted to claim title to being her third and fourth husband. They’ve been together for 46 years.
“We don’t count the divorce time,” she said.
Nita was urged by family to write the book, which she published at age 83. The memoir was released in late 2003, two years after a major stroke.
To hear the Phil Harris interview with Anita Bloom Ornoff at www.internetvoicesradio.com, follow this link:
The book is available at: Beyond Dancing
At age 21, this woman was searching for her purpose in life. She was manager at an upscale shoe store when a woman in uniform walked in. When the woman left the shop, Anita followed her for blocks. She just knew this was the direction she was supposed to take. She enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) in 1943. She’d been told that she was officer candidate material so she needed to do well in her training.
Her parents weren’t pleased by her decision, but she didn’t let that stop her. She also didn’t realize what she had signed on for. Nobody could have known what lay ahead. The goal for her memoir, Beyond Dancing, was to help young people, to encourage them. It’s a message that when they are faced with an overwhelming challenge, they should keep at it to the end, to the goal, to never be intimidated from making their own decisions.
Nita became a paraplegic before WAAC graduation when a non-medical staffer with poor personal hygiene at Sick Call physically attacked her and lanced Nita’s infected right thumb with a dirty razor blade. “It had to do with religion and a person’s viciousness,” Nita believes.
Following the lancing episode, there were five to six weeks of poor treatment by the doctors. The infection spread to her spine. Emergency surgery saved her life, she said, but left her permanently paralyzed with useless legs. Despite all of that, she learned to survive normally. She wants others to know that they can do it, too.
“I also felt that the WAAC women needed recognition,” she said. Getting the recognition wasn’t easy. Every time she was thrown a line, she grasped onto it, doggedly pursued it writing letters to lawmakers seeking assistance. She appeared before Congress to present her plight. She was disappointed more than once. But she didn’t give up. Her husband, Hal Ornoff advised it took nine years for her to win her veteran benefits.
“I believed in something and fought for it,” she said. “The reason that I was compelled to write my memoir was if I could prevent one person from becoming intimidated by a superior’s erratic demands, it would be worth it. I had to do it.”
She admits she never liked to visit at the hospital. But her physical disability changed her whole life. She worked her way through a college education and entered the mental health field. Her life has been a matter of faith.
“I always believed that being paralyzed had nothing to do with my ability,” Mrs. Ornoff said. She and her husband have traveled around the globe. Before a major stroke in 2001 she traveled frequently on her own.
One of the first things that come to mind when reading the book is what she had in common with the late Christopher Reeve who also suffered a spine injury that rendered him paralyzed.
“We never got to meet him,” Hal Ornoff said. “We did send him Nita’s book.”
When asked why people should read her book, Nita answered, “Just as I stated in my epilogue, ‘I hope that my life and the challenges that I have faced will inspire others, young men and women, to conquer any misfortune.’ Based on comments from people who have read Beyond Dancing, and especially those who have experienced a major trauma, the book has met all that I had hoped.”
What still puzzles her is that she could have been so intimidated by a woman she names Five-by-Five in the book, the woman who threatened her, and set the wheels in motion that would change the course of Nita’s life.
“My parents, my family, never knew what happened to me to cause this,” she said. She took responsibility for herself and just rolled with the punches. The only person in the family that she ever shared the information with was an aunt who visited her at the hospital in Texas. “And I swore her to secrecy.” Her parents died never knowing the whole story.
Her first husband, John Muller, was instrumental in the inception of Camp Jawonio in New City, N.Y. The mission of Jawonio Inc. (https://www.jawonio.org) is to advance the independence, well-being and equality of people with disabilities or special needs, and will celebrate its 60th year in October. Jawonio was organized in 1947 as the Cerebral Palsy Society of Rockland County.
TJ Friedman, whom she had dated a number of years earlier, visited her after her husband’s death. She and TJ were married a year when he died of a heart attack. Hal Ornoff was married to Nita’s sister, Marilyn, for 13 years. They had two daughters. After Marilyn’s sudden death, he asked Nita to marry him. She adopted her sister’s daughters as her own. But the marriage was troubled because of the girls. Nita flew to Reno and stayed there for six weeks to get a divorce.
“We had a boat. We had to share custody of it,” Hal said. One month he had the boat, the next, Nita did. On one of his custody visits he called her and said he’d caught some crabs and would she mind if he brought them over to cook them. He hadn’t really caught them. He wanted this woman back. He is delighted to claim title to being her third and fourth husband. They’ve been together for 46 years.
“We don’t count the divorce time,” she said.
Nita was urged by family to write the book, which she published at age 83. The memoir was released in late 2003, two years after a major stroke.
To hear the Phil Harris interview with Anita Bloom Ornoff at www.internetvoicesradio.com, follow this link:
The book is available at: Beyond Dancing
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