Bismarck, North Dakota - News

WASHINGTON — He thinks of her every time he gazes at the painting — a blazing orange sun she drew a few years after the tragedy. It is the only splash of color in his tiny K Street office and it gives him great joy, and a stab of sorrow.

He thinks of her every time he plucks a new $5 bill from his wallet and sees the large purple numeral emblazoned in the corner. It reminds him of how he used to sort her money: $1 bills in one envelope, fives and tens in others.

And of course he thought of her last month, when a federal appeals court ruled on a case that could result in the redesign of the entire U.S. currency. It was one of the great legal victories of 53-year-old attorney Jeffrey Lovitky’s career, and he wishes she could have been there to share it.

But had she been there, it might never have happened.

For the lawsuit filed on behalf of the American Council of the Blind was never just about discrimination or changing the currency so the blind can distinguish a $1 bill from a $20.

It was about a brilliant, gifted woman who changed so many perceptions and overcame so many obstacles that those who knew her never doubted her ability to continue inspiring enormous change, even from the grave.

It was about the memory of a smile.

In his second-floor office, Lovitky sifts through a well-thumbed photo album. “Here’s a Sandy smile,� he says, plucking a picture from the page. “And here’s one. And this is truly a Sandy smile.�

The pictures show a petite brunette nestling into his shoulder under a cherry blossom tree, playfully pushing him in an oversized beach wheelchair on the sand, clutching his arm at a black tie event at which she was receiving yet another award.

His eyes mist at the memory — Sandra Welner, the brilliant physician whose dazzling smile and tenacious spirit stole Lovitky’s heart.

He found her after placing a personal ad in a Jewish newspaper. Their first date was in an Irish pub in April 1994. She was already seated when he arrived, and he felt an instant attraction to the radiant young woman with the gentle brown eyes and dark curls.

They talked for hours. She told him about her practice as a gynecologist, running a clinic for women with disabilities; about her parents -- Holocaust survivors from Poland who had created a new life and family in Pittsburgh; about her travels all over Europe, Australia and Israel.

But there were things she never mentioned in those first few hours. He had no idea that she couldn’t see his thinning hair and clear blue eyes, that she could only barely make out the shape of his face. Or that she had called the pub earlier to ask about the menu, so she could pretend to read it when she ordered.

She was 30, already a leading expert on fertility and women’s reproductive health, when she fell ill -- so ill that she checked herself into a hospital in Amsterdam, where she was on vacation. Her family is not certain what happened next, except that she went into cardiac arrest and suffered a serious brain injury.

Welner’s mother, Barbara, 81, still sobs at the shock of seeing her comatose daughter in a foreign hospital. Even if she survived, doctors said, she would be lucky to regain the ability of a 2-year-old.

“NO!� the mother cried. Not my brilliant, beautiful daughter, who could paint portraits that belonged in galleries, who played the violin so exquisitely that she was offered music scholarships in high school, who graduated from medical school at the age of 22.

Now doctors were saying she should lock her away.

“Not my Sandy,� the mother said.

And so, for 16 days in Amsterdam, she read medical journals and newspapers and played classical music for her lifeless daughter. She talked to her and caressed her — anything to trigger a response. She got none. “The doctors thought I was delusional,� she said.

Back in the United States, doctors offered the same grim prognosis.

Again, the mother said no.

And so Barbara and Nick Welner took their child home to New Haven, Conn. They read to her. They fed her. They bathed her. They taught her to count, to swallow, to sit up. They cried with her. Hour after hour, for days and months and years.

It wasn’t a miracle, her mother says of her daughter’s steady, excruciating recovery. It came of a determination so powerful that it burst from her broken body with a force that nothing could hold back.

By the time Lovitky met her, Welner’s vision was severely damaged, her hands shook, and she walked with an unsteady gait. But her speech and mind were clear. And her memory was better than ever.

Lovitky marveled at her defiance. She refused to use a wheelchair. Instead, she would pile the chair with her medical books and push it. Or she would use a cane.

She was dependent on others — the stream of medical students she paid to help her read, and write and file, on strangers to help her catch a cab, or spend money. And yet, Lovitky says, “she was more independent than anyone I knew.�

She went skydiving in Australia, alone. She climbed — inch by inch — the ancient historic site, Masada, overlooking the Dead Sea in Israel.

“If Sandy wanted to do something, nothing was going to stop her,� Lovitky says.

But the hardest challenge she faced was professional — being accepted back into the medical world that had once embraced her.

Dr. Alan Decherney, a leading gynecologist and obstetrician, remembers the young woman with the cane shuffling into his office at Yale University to ask for his help. In a residency, years earlier, he had considered her smart and promising. Now she just looked pitiful. You can’t go into practice, he told her, knowing how harsh he sounded but trying to be honest. You are legally blind and you are spastic.

But Welner pressed on. And something about her courage moved Decherney to let her sit in with other residents and join him on patient rounds.

She astounded him. This woman isn’t just smart, Decherney thought. She’s brilliant.

With Decherney’s help, she landed a job overseeing a clinic for women with disabilities at Washington Hospital Center. At the time, there were few resources for disabled women who wanted to get pregnant.

“Doctors simply didn’t want to deal with a woman in a wheelchair who wanted to have a baby,� said Trish Day, one of Welner’s first patients who became a close friend. “Sandy didn’t just understand the complications of a disabled body,� Day said. “She understood my dream.�

Then, in 1997, Welner’s clinic was closed because of cutbacks. She was devastated. And yet, Lovitky says, as she had so often done, Welner accepted reality and moved on.

She hurled herself into her work — applying for research grants, writing a book on medical care for women with disabilities, becoming a faculty member of Georgetown and Maryland University medical centers, speaking at the United Nations, lecturing around the country and the world.

Few knew that Welner’s masterful hour-long PowerPoint presentations were memorized. She couldn’t see her own slides.

“She just never stopped,� says Lovitky. He worried sometimes about how hard Welner pushed herself, rarely getting more than a few hours of sleep a night.

And then, in an instant, everything stopped. It was Oct. 8, 2001, and the country was still reeling from the shock of the Sept. 11 attacks. Lovitky and Welner had talked about it by phone that night. It was the last real conversation they ever had.

The call jolted him awake a few hours later. “There’s been an accident,� said Welner’s neighbor. “It’s serious.�

Lovitky grabbed a Bible and raced to the hospital. Swathed in bandages, a breathing tube in her throat, Sandy was barely recognizable. She had third-degree burns over 70 percent of her body. But she smiled and mouthed “I love you,� and blew a kiss.

She had been lighting a memorial candle for her late father, when the flame caught her nightgown. The neighbor had broken down her door and pulled her from the fire.

The next 13 days were a blur of suffering and sadness as Lovitky and Welner’s mother and brother waited, willing Sandy to survive, clinging to the belief that she might. After all, this was Sandy — invincible, irrepressible Sandy. She had come back from near death once before. Surely she could again.

On Oct. 21, Lovitky whispered his last words to the woman with whom he had planned to spend his life. He doesn’t even know if she heard.

She died 10 minutes later. She was 42.

In the months after Welner’s death, Lovitky felt bewildered by grief and regret. He couldn’t work, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep.

And then Lovitky remembered the envelopes, how he would sort Sandy’s money before she went on trips — putting the $1 bills in one envelope, the tens and twenties in others. He remembered her frustration at having to trust strangers for the right change.

And he realized that there was something he could do — something that could both celebrate Welner’s legacy and affect the lives of millions. Elsewhere around the world, accommodations are made for the blind — different sized notes or tactile features such as raised markings.

Why not the United States?

In May 2002, Lovitky sued the Treasury Department on behalf of the American Council of the Blind, arguing that its failure to design a currency that is accessible to blind people is a form of discrimination.

In November 2006, the court ruled in favor of the Council.