Lauderdale: Life’s a parade for 90-year-old with cancer

Who was that tiny lady being driven down Pope Avenue in our parade?

She was just a speck in a sea of green in Hilton Head Island’s 33rd annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday. A sign on the car door read “Driving Miss Norma,” a quizzical thought floating between the beauty queens and 12 marching bands.

But Miss Norma, it turns out, is leading the parade of life.

Her journey started about six months ago. Her husband died and two days later she was diagnosed with uterine cancer.

The doctor laid out options for an immediate operation, chemotherapy and radiation. She told him no. “We’ll just leave it be.”

“I’m 90 years old,” she said. “I’m hitting the road.”

She climbed aboard a 36-foot motor home with her son, Tim, daughter-in-law Ramie, and 8-year-old standard poodle, Ringo.

More than a quarter of a million people are following her venture on the Facebook page, “Driving Miss Norma.”

More than 5,000 people have shared the post that tells of her decision to stay off the operating table and join her only kin in their full-time life on the road. She didn’t want to go back to an empty home that she and Leo had shared for 67 years. She didn’t want the other option — a nursing home.

Thousands applaud her every move, including riding in our parade and seeing the Budweiser Clydesdales up close in Bluffton on Tuesday. Her story was on “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley” on Wednesday.

Norma Bauerschmidt left Presque Isle, Mich., with her doctor’s blessings. That was more than 7,000 miles ago. She’s not in pain. She uses a cane and sometimes a wheelchair to get around.

They’ve seen Mount Rushmore, Old Faithful, the Grand Canyon, Bourbon Street, Epcot, the Kennedy Space Center and the Atlantic Ocean. She went up in a hot air balloon, fulfilling an old dream shared with Leo. In Savannah, she went on a carriage tour, got her first pedicure and ate ice cream at Leopold’s.

Her son, Tim, asked the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce about a good place for her to see the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

She was put in touch with the parade committee.

“Sit and watch it?” asked parade co-chairperson Kim Capin. “She can be in it.”

Norma, Tim and Ringo rode in volunteer Carol Mullally-Druhot’s kelly green Mustang. Ramie took pictures. The woman driving Miss Norma in the parade had no idea what it was about, but heard a lot of people shouting out, “Miss Norma!”

Miss Norma’s family was invited to the dignitaries’ brunch before the parade. Capin leaned down and fastened on her one of the pins the parade committee members wear.

“She said, ‘I hope this means I don’t have to do any work,’ ” Capin said.

Parade grand marshal Betsy Doughtie was inspired by Miss Norma. “She’s just an incredible person,” she said.

Lindsay Roberg, executive director of Friends of Caroline Hospice in Port Royal, said Miss Norma is on the cutting edge for her generation, which tends to take doctors’ orders.

“You have to be your own advocate, deciding with your family how you want to live,” Roberg said. “Hospice is about making the most of the days you have left. It’s about adding life to your days.”

In that way, Miss Norma is a poster child for the mantra of quality over quantity at the end of life.

And, in a way, she’s living our own dreams, which somehow seem to stay tethered to the ground.

She’s our 101-pound James Dean.

She’s the kid who actually did run away with the circus.

She’s a dock-diving, school-skipping Huck Finn.

And that’s why they drove her down Pope Avenue in our parade.

David Lauderdale: 843-706-8115, @ThatsLauderdale

This story was originally published March 17, 2016 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Lauderdale: Life’s a parade for 90-year-old with cancer."