Spellman's brain was deprived of oxygen after her heart stopped. You just can't close the book and go on and live your life and have your memories.' 'I have said this to many people,' said Ruth Davis, a longtime friend of Spellman's and her former office manager. 'Lately, when I go into that room it's as though it were not my sister, but someone I care for.'Ĭoping with her condition year after year is painful. 'Then to see the form lying there in the bed, I just could not take that,' Lupo said. Lupo recalled recoiling from a photograph of her sister - 'smiling, always so beautiful' - that a grandchild placed in her sister's room. The contrast between what she was and is now disturbs those who love Spellman. 'She was always busy, vibrant, ever moving and that's what I thought the parkway was,' Lupo said. She was elected to Congress in 1974.Īlthough some people questioned the appropriateness of dedicating a road to her, Spellman's younger sister, Dorothy Noon Lupo, disagreed. Gladys Spellman, a former elementary school teacher and PTA activist, won election to the board of county commissioners and the County Council when it replaced the board. 'I feel she would be very happy with the recognition,' McLellan said. The Baltimore-Washington Expressway and Parkway have been renamed the Gladys Noon Spellman Parkway, while other public projects and programs also bear her name.

It's almost strange.'Īs another anniversary of the tragedy approaches, Spellman's family and friends take some comfort from the many public efforts to honor her. The body lies in the bed there, the arms drawn up. 'You go there,' he said, 'and you almost feel like you're at a wake. Her husband, Reuben Spellman, 77, visits her at a Montgomery County nursing facility from 'time to time.' No one expects a recovery no one knows how long she will live. She is fed a liquid diet six times a day through a tube in her stomach. Her heart beats and she breathes independently. 31, 1980, the enormously popular Prince George's County Democrat had a heart attack while campaigning at a Laurel shopping center and lost consciousness. Spellman is in a coma, as she has been for nearly seven years. 'She does not recognize or speak,' said Edna McLellan, her former employe and friend. BALTIMORE - Friends and family members of former Maryland representative Gladys Noon Spellman don't visit her very much, if at all, because they say the experience drains them emotionally.

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