Generator fails woman in iron lung

ATLANTA — For the first time in more than half a century, the Odell residence is quiet.

There are no squeaks and pops from the electric motor that powered an "iron lung" pumping air in and out of Dianne Odell's body.

A thunderstorm knocked out the power to her home Wednesday, shutting off the massive metal machine that had helped her breathe for nearly 60 years.

It was about 3 a.m. when the electricity went out at Odell's home in Jackson, a small Tennessee town about 90 miles northeast of Memphis. An emergency generator did not start, and Odell died as her father and brother-in-law took turns pumping the iron lung manually.

Dianne Odell, 61, was believed to be the nation's oldest survivor of polio to have spent almost all of her life inside an iron lung.

She had been confined within the 7-foot-long, 750-pound machine ever since she was paralyzed at the age of 3 by bulbospinal polio. That was in 1950, just a few years before a polio vaccine was discovered.

Her parents, Freeman and Geneva Odell, were determined to care for her at home, even though her entire body was encased in a cylindrical metal chamber. Only her head extended outside of it.

She lay on her back as the metal lung produced positive and negative pressure that allowed her lungs to expand and contract.

Doctors at the time told Odell's parents she did not have long to live, but she went on to graduate from high school, take college classes -- even write a book from within the sealed, airtight compartment.

Life at 133 Odell St. came to revolve around Dianne, with her parents taking turns going to church so someone was always home to feed her and talk to her. The family never took vacations. At Christmas, they would squeeze Dianne, inside the metal machine, into the dining room for the holiday dinner.

"It was like having a sick child who never got better," said Will Beyer, her brother-in-law. "But she was a very unique person, and her family took care of all her needs."

A television was mounted on a frame just above her head. A straw was rigged to the television remote control, so she could suck in and blow out to switch to her favorite soap operas.

Her hair was often adorned with scarves, even tiaras.

From the beginning, Dianne's parents worried about power outages. Her father, Freeman, a World War II veteran, installed a generator in the backyard as a backup power system.