PRESS

August 1, 2006

Denmark Award recognizes courage and determination in the face of daunting challenges

2006 Denmark Award winner Frances Buehler
is pleased to model her new race T-shirt.
(Click on photo for larger version to download.)

Frances Buehler feared that a productive life was no longer possible when she went deaf at age 33.

"When you lose your hearing, you don’t think you can do anything," she said.

Buehler quickly learned that she was wrong. Suddenly finding herself a single mother with three children under age 8, she turned her love for baking pies into a job at the Fishmonger Café in Woods Hole. Within a couple of years, she bought the business. Five years later, she purchased the building across the street and moved the Fishmonger to its current location. Along the way, she also found time to take up running and participate in the Falmouth Road Race.

Now 67, Buehler is this year’s recipient of the Michael Denmark Award. The award was established in 1992 to honor the memory of another determined young runner, Michael Denmark, a Falmouth native who ran the road race and participated in high school and college cross-country despite his battle with cystic fibrosis. Michael died of the disease in 1992 at the age of 24.

"Michael never used his condition as an excuse," said his father, Jay. "He was a spirited competitor and he never quit. This award is very important to us. It keeps Michael’s memory alive in the town he loved."

Buehler remembers watching the road race from in front of the restaurant in the early 1970s. The Fishmonger was then located in the building that now houses Fusion, just past the starting line. She turned to running when an employee asked if she’d like to join her for workouts. She began running on bike paths, still wary that her deafness was a hazard to jogging on the roads. Before long, that fear was eased by the joy she experienced.

"I started running to make myself feel good," she said. "And it solved problems. Whenever I had trouble with something at the Fishmonger, I’d start running and all of a sudden I’d find the solution.

"Running is therapeutic for me. It calms me down."

She became a regular presence in the Falmouth Road Race in the late 1970s. Although unable to hear the cheering crowd, she was propelled by their enthusiasm and support. In the ensuing years, she has run many Falmouths, clocking a time of 1:47 last August.

This year, she’ll start alongside the wheelchair competitors, a fact that pleases her. She said the most frightening aspect of running Falmouth is not being able to hear the runners around her and coming up from behind. "I’m always afraid I’ll get bowled over," she said. "But this year, I’ll be right up front, so I’m really happy about that."

Buehler lost her hearing in 1972 when an ear infection caused by the flu resulted in irreparable nerve deafness. "I woke up one day and I couldn’t hear anything," she remembered. "Hearing aids didn’t help and the doctors couldn’t fix it."

Prior to that, she had worked as a school teacher and a nurse’s aid. But suddenly, she was thrust into a world of silence, along with an uncertain future. Baking pies and running became her salvation.

She loved baking for friends – strawberry rhubarb was her specialty – and heard that the Fishmonger had an opening for a baker.

"It was something I could do and be deaf," she said.

Buehler’s pies were an instant success, and she found that her deafness was not an impediment. "People learned how to talk to me, and we were able to communicate," she said.

When the owner decided to sell the restaurant, Buehler opted to buy it. No one seemed to mind that she could not hear.  "We were all very naive about running a restaurant," she admitted. "Except it was fun, everybody liked the food and I loved doing it."

She sold the business last year, although she still owns the building. "I just couldn’t do it anymore at my age," she said. "It was time to get out."

Buehler has overcome more than deafness to reach this year’s starting line. In the early 1980s, she was struck by a drunk driver while walking to the bank at a busy corner at the end of Water Street in Woods Hole. She has no memory of the accident, but she was left with a head injury and a broken leg, and was unable to run for months.

"I felt awful. I wanted to get back to it," she said.

These days, Buehler runs daily, averaging five miles a workout, and stretches her distance to eight miles once a week. "Just so I can run Falmouth," she said.

She received a cochlear implant 15 years ago that restored her hearing, although she still has trouble distinguishing music and talking on the telephone. "Anything after The Beatles, I’m lost," she joked. "Getting that implant was one of the hardest things I ever did, because then I had to confront what I had lost and try to regain it."

A cochlear implant is an electronic device. A small part of it is surgically implanted in the cochlea to provide direct electrical stimulation of the cochlear nerve. It gives a sensation of hearing.

Her eyes light up when she’s asked about winning the Denmark Award. "It means so much to have this because it recognizes all the work I’ve done," she said. "I always wanted to do something with my life, and now I have. I have the Fishmonger and they’re giving me this wonderful honor."

She’s more than a successful businesswoman; she also raised a thriving family. Today, Matthew is a lawyer, Vicki is a paralegal and Joe is a mapping surveyor. She credits her children for her success.

"My kids saved me," she said. "Whenever I said ‘I can’t do this,’ I thought, ‘You have to, because you have three kids depending on you.’ So I learned."

She learned then and she learns now – that her courage and determination have not been unnoticed nor unappreciated. The Michael Denmark Awards attests to that.