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This Tennessee author was born and raised in Paducah before his ability to run long distances earned him a college scholarship in Tennessee.

Since college, he's traded in his tennis shoes for an office job as a psychological examiner and counselor.

When he's not examining or counseling, he's rocking out the tunes onstage with his own band.

Straight ahead on Tennessee Writes, we're meeting Tennessee author Will Beyer.

We'll find out how a college athlete turned psychological examiner finds time to write books, including the story about Dianne Odell, the girl in the iron lung.

Grab your coffee and a comfy chair.

Tennessee Writes starts right now.

-Books about Tennessee.

-Books that come from Tennessee authors.

-Books and stories with a Tennessee twist.

-West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee Writes.

[music] -Welcome to Tennessee Writes, the show that gets up close and personal with Tennessee authors.

My name is Peter Noll.

This is the show that goes beyond the book to learn about the authors, from their childhood to where their stories come from.

They even offer advice if you want to write a book yourself.

Plus, we put the authors on a stopwatch as they try and answer questions in the lightning round.

-Tennessee Writes welcomes author Will Beyer, a Paducah, Kentucky native who ran his way to Lipscomb University on a scholarship.

Now he's running the Beyer Psychology Group, where he's a psychological examiner and counselor.

In his free time, he's writing books and performing onstage with his own band.

Tennessee Writes welcomes Will Beyer.

-Thank you for coming on.

-Yes, thank you for having me, Peter.

-We like to start off every episode of Tennessee Writes, getting to know the author beyond the book.

You're a Kentucky boy from Paducah- -I am.

--just up the road from Jackson.

-Exactly, yes.

Born and raised in Paducah in a little community called Hendron.

I was the youngest of six and so forth, and went to Lone Oak High School there, which is famous for the Lone Oak High School inaugural marching band.

I think our high school let off John F. Kennedy's inauguration there.

-Were you in band?

-I was not.

Because I was a runner, I spent most of my time on the roads running rather than playing music.

To my regret, I wish I had played more music in high school.

-Are you still running today, every day?

-I'm not.

I had a massive heart attack back in 2016 and fell dead while running.

That shut my running career down.

God be thankful in His mercy, I'm still here and walk every day and have a good life.

-Did you always enjoy running when you were younger, and that's what got the scholarship?

-I did.

Like a lot of young boys, looking for a place to fit in in athletics, tried basketball and baseball, and so forth, but running seemed to be my niche.

I was thin and I had a little speed, so I was able to run.

I started running at about 15 years of age.

By 16, 17, I was probably running over 100 miles a week.

I got up every morning at 5:00 AM regardless of the weather and ran 6 miles.

I rode my dad out to the school he worked at and ran back.

Then afternoons, another 10 to 15 miles and 20-mile run on Saturdays.

Actually, at age 15, came to Jackson, first time ever, and ran the very first Andrew Jackson Marathon, which was my first one.

Later on, I probably ran 25 or 30 marathons.

-Wow.

You got the scholarship to Lipscomb University in Nashville.

What did you study there?

-Psychology and education.

I knew I wanted to teach and so forth.

Had some inclinations towards maybe being a guidance counselor that's there, but just always fascinated by psychology.

Always wanted to coach, also.

When I met my wife there, she was from Jackson, so we came in here, and that's where I got to meet the Odell family and so forth.

After working as a track coach at Lipscomb for a few years, we moved here and helped Jackson Christian School get started, actually.

-Tell us about that.

-We were there about 10 or 11 years, I guess.

In a small private Christian school in the area, we wore a lot of hats.

I think I taught every subject in the high school curriculum, just about, and coached every sport and so forth.

Those were good days of personal development and so forth.

I enjoyed my time there and then moved on to Jackson-Madison County Schools as I kept pursuing more of my graduate education.

-You still combine education with mental health.

How did that transition come?

-After working as a school counselor for a while, I had some colleagues who were school psychologists, Dr.

David Viera, who encouraged me a great deal to go to University of Memphis and pursue school psychology.

I did that and then also took coursework in clinical psychology, and later became a licensed senior psychological examiner and also a licensed professional counselor, and just opened up a private practice and invited some colleagues to come in and join me.

-The Beyer Group.

-The Beyer Group.

We have about nine, either licensed professional counselors or clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists that we all share an office space and work together.

-What exactly does a psychological examiner do?

It sounds like something from CSI.

-[laughs] Similar to the work of a clinical educational psychologist.

I do a lot of evaluations on children, in particular, with learning disabilities, autism spectrum, children with oppositional behavioral disorders that's there.

We work with adults with depression, anxiety, the whole gamut of mental health, but a lot of what I'm doing is the diagnostic end of mental health.

Area psychiatrists or family practitioners will refer to me to do psychological evaluations.

I did a lot of work for the court for many years on abuse cases and things like that.

-You still must enjoy the art of running because your tie, if you can't see it, he has a tie that has people running a marathon on it.

-I got that for Father's Day.

Yes, I do.

I have to say I probably dream about running every night and still love it very much.

My running is limited these days.

-You met your wife at Lipscomb.

Does she teach, too?

-No.

When we moved here, she worked in a number of different medical offices doing medical billing and coding, things such as that.

Eventually, with our two children coming along, she was a stay-at-home, and then helped me in the office as well and things.

Wife has always been my best friend.

I can't imagine life without her.

-When you met your wife in college, did she tell you, "Hey, I have this sister that contracted polio and is in the iron lung?"

Were you like, "What?"

-Exactly.

Totally foreign to me.

Other than maybe an episode of Twilight Zone or something, I've never seen an iron lung, so I didn't have a clue what it was like.

-What was that first meeting like?

-Meeting Dianne, coming in-- -Were you nervous?

-I was nervous.

I was in shock and awe.

Your first thought is, "This poor creature.

Oh my goodness.

Who would want to live in this thing that's there?"

30 minutes into the conversation with Dianne, you realize what a powerful personality she had.

She was engaging in conversation.

She was intelligent.

She was happy and joyful for life and so forth that's there.

She just drew you in.

You want to spend more and more time with her and things.

I think that's what happened to most people that met Dianne.

You could not meet Dianne and then leave the house and feel sorry for yourself.

I think more than anything else, she probably helped people to see their true capacity and their potential.

On the day that Dianne died, she was the number one search on Google worldwide.

I have to always think, how does someone so restricted in their movements and what they could do reach the entire world?

My phone lit up for three or four days of people wanting to know more about her life and what she did.

Throughout her life, many celebrities wanted to come and meet with her and see her.

I think everyone who came and met Dianne left a better person.

-How did she change your life?

-I think predominantly, not just Dianne, but the entire family, because what the family taught me was it's not about you; it's about what we can do to show love to one another, kindness, patience, that's there.

Her mom and dad were two of the strongest people I'd ever met.

Her father served in World War II.

He was in the 163rd Combat Engineering Battalion, built the first bridges over the Rhine and the Seine with his company.

A very, very strong man that's there, a man of integrity.

Everyone that knew Freeman Odell spoke well of him.

He was just a good man.

-You're in your own band.

You're a psychological examiner, counselor.

What is something most people watching don't know about you, Will?

-Wow, that's a good question.

I think probably the thing that I value the most, especially since my heart attack in 2016, is the little time with family.

I have two grandchildren, ages two and about six weeks that's there and can't spend enough time with them.

I have two wonderful sons, Chase and Chance Beyer, and so very blessed in life.

Every day is a joyful experience.

[music] -Will, let's dive into your book, which is your second book.

You've written another one, correct?

-Yes.

I wrote a book entitled Born To Be Wild: ADHD, Alcoholism, and Addiction.

It was a clinical source book looking at the relationship between children who have ADHD and their potential risk for addictive illness as they grew older.

-It sounds like a book that's very specialized.

-It is.

It is.

I had a colleague who was Yale and Harvard-trained in psychiatry who headed up the National Institute of Health's research program on ADHD.

I sent him a copy of the book, and he asked to be a part of it then.

One of the first books in press that looked at that relationship between that population of individuals and addictive illness.

-Okay.

This book is the one that I first heard you speak at our Rotary Club in downtown Jackson about the story.

For those of you that don't know, Rotary International is really trying to stamp out and put an end to polio.

-Absolutely.

-When you first met, had you married your wife yet before you met Dianne, or you met her before you got married?

-I met her before I came in.

A lot of young men come in to meet the family.

Mary and I had been dating for three or four months, probably, and made the weekend trip to meet her family.

-Had she told you beforehand about Dianne, or was it like getting out of the car, going, "Oh, by the way, my sister's in an iron lung"?

-No, she showed me pictures of her, and I never could get my head around it all.

I recall the first night there.

I'm sleeping on the couch there, and the lights were on in the house because you want to make sure the power stayed on.

You didn't turn the lights off to go to bed.

They were all kept on.

I remember that first night I told Mary, I said, "Your mom was up all night long caring for Dianne."

I said, "Every hour or two, she's up doing it."

Mary said, "That's an average night."

Dianne required 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week care and things.

The love and devotion that Ms.

Odell showed was just incredible.

Ms.

Odell had three bouts of cancer in her life, and still, she took care of Dianne every single day.

-You hear these stories of what you're talking about in your book.

There's one story you told about volunteers that had fallen asleep, like sitting in a car, just because that round-the-clock care, and it was very touching.

-Thank you.

In the last few months of Dianne's life, Mary just stayed there helping to take care of Dianne.

I got a call about 2:00, and one morning, Mary was trying to come home and pulled up at the stoplight over by Jackson State there, and rolled out in the middle of the intersection, fell asleep at the steering wheel, and things.

I went and got her.

She was just totally physically, emotionally exhausted in caring for Dianne.

Next morning at 5:00 AM, she's up, going back out there again.

Mary and Donna, the two sisters of Dianne, both of them did so much to help Dianne.

-You really get a sense of the family, the church, the family friends.

They're all love and devotion to Dianne.

-Dianne always had this phrase, "It's about faith, family, and friends."

That's what you felt.

Dianne wasn't isolated from the world.

Ms.

Odell initially brought everyone in that they could.

Every weekend, there were family get-togethers and friends from church and others that came over and shared meals together and played games, and so forth.

Even from her childhood and teenage years, there was always a house full of people there.

-Tell us how you get from meeting Dianne to I'm writing a book.

-At the end of Dianne's life, it became evident to me that someone needed to share this story because, again, it was more than just about Dianne; it was about those who cared for her: her mom, dad, sisters, their friends and others, so many in the Jackson area, Frank McMeen who helped so much, Liddy Murphy who was there, the celebrities who came to visit.

Everyone wanted to know more about her and things.

I guess at her death, when my phone just lit up and all the news agencies wanting to know more about her, I felt like, "I need to tell this story," because it is a story of resilience, of strength.

Dianne never should have lived as long as she did.

There was two other people that outlived her in an iron lung and things.

Even then, they weren't there full-time in the lung.

They were there part of the time.

When she first contracted polio at the age of three and went to Memphis John Gaston Hospital, I didn't really expect her to come home.

Polio was called infantile paralysis.

It was the youngest of us that was most affected by it and resulting in paralysis of the diaphragm and inability to breathe and things.

It was just one of those stories that people need to hear.

We hear so many people today, I think, view themselves as victims and feel hopeless and helpless in life.

This is a story.

It's not a story of sadness; it's a story of strength and joy and resilience and their faith that kept them, day-to-day, going forward.

[music] -Will, we've come to the part of Tennessee Writes we call the lightning round.

It's where we put two minutes on the clock and see how many questions about writing books and authors and literature you can answer in two minutes.

If you don't know an answer, can't think of one, say pass.

Are you ready to play?

-Yes, let's do this.

-Okay.

The clock will start after my first question.

Whose autobiography's book is your all-time favorite?

-Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington.

-What's the most expensive book you own?

-An old edition of Robin Hood.

-How much did you pay?

-I caught it in the flea market for probably about $2.

It's probably well over 100 years of age.

-Name a fellow author you would like to go on a book tour with.

-Faulkner.

-Who did you give a copy of your first published book to?

-My wife.

-What celebrity would you most like to co-author a book with?

-Wow.

Pass.

[chuckles] -If you were stranded on an island with only one book, what would it be?

-The Bible.

-Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction books?

-Nonfiction.

-What's the last audiobook you listened to?

-Oh, more podcasts, Joe Rogan-type things.

-How many hours a week on average do you spend time reading books?

-In my clinical books, probably two to three hours a week.

-What's your favorite movie based on a book?

-Forrest Gump.

-Do you own more paperbacks or hardcover books?

-Hardcover.

-What book took you the longest time to finish reading?

-Wait, let me think.

Pass.

-How many books are on your nightstand right now?

-About seven or eight.

-What book are you most embarrassed to admit you read?

-Pass.

[chuckles] -What's your favorite magazine to read?

-National Geographic.

-What book is on your list to read next?

-[?]

[music] -Will, we love to hear authors speak the words that they have written in their book.

Would you share a little bit of your book with us?

-Absolutely.

Let me start at a point where Dianne was first diagnosed with polio.

It was nearing midnight on July 12th, 1950, when Dianne came to her parents' bedroom, whimpering and said the words that sent a fear deep in their soul.

"Mommy, my legs hurt."

Geneva, like all young mothers, knew of polio.

She would tell us, "I knew at that very moment that Dianne had contracted polio."

Everyone knew children and adults that had contracted the disease, but no one knew exactly how it was caught.

For Dianne, it's suspected she came in contact with the virus at the Highland Park wading pool in Jackson.

Of course, no one knows for sure.

Still, parents couldn't keep their children away from other children completely.

The fear of contracting polio was a fear that most mothers had to push away from their conscious thought, much the way they'd pushed away the thought of their sweetheart not coming home from the war.

How do you deal with fear?

Many times in our lives, we're tested.

For those of us with a Christian faith, we still experience fear, but we should take solace in the power of prayer.

As a therapist, I've often learned that fear is magnified by feeling isolated and alone, but we are not alone.

As Christians, we have countless others pulling for us.

This is the purpose of our Christian family.

We find that we have a bond of unity found in our hope and our faith, and we are never alone in our struggles.

Our faith gives us resilience and resolve that, no matter the injury or the insults, love wins.

For Dianne and her parents, it was a long night.

Geneva rose and bathed Dianne with cool rags to try to reduce her fever.

She massaged her tiny legs, waiting for the morning to come.

She and Freeman were waiting at the children's clinic in Jackson for the doors to open.

Upon seeing Dr.

Walton Harrison, who became Dianne's lifetime physician, they were sent to Memphis.

Their lives were about to change forever.

Once, while speaking to Geneva, I asked her what she was thinking and feeling during those days.

She stated, "Will, I was scared, just like anyone else would be.

I didn't know what would lie ahead, so we just lived day to day, prayed, and did what we could.

I never worried about paying the bills or how we would take care of Dianne.

I just had faith that God would provide, and we had friends and family that were also praying for us and offering help.

Over the years, that's never changed.

All these years later, and people still help.

There have been so many people who have blessed us.

I'll never understand why so many people worry.

I guess they don't trust the good Lord will really take care of them.

I think you should do all that you can do, and then just turn the rest over to God.

If people would only truly believe that God really does answer prayers, and as Christians, we're supposed to help each other, I never really worried one minute about where her basic needs would come from."

Upon arriving at John Gaston Hospital, Dianne was removed from her parents' care with instructions, they were no longer allowed to touch her.

As her fever rose and her breathing became more labored, she was placed in an iron lung, or a respirator.

Her parents were told to go home.

For Freeman and Geneva, with their only child stricken with polio, there was a sense of helplessness.

For the first few months, they stayed in Memphis awaiting any news of change, but as the weeks went on, Freeman had returned to work and provide support for the family.

Geneva stayed in Memphis, and as they traveled back and forth between Jackson and Memphis, there was no reliable treatment for polio.

For Dianne, there was a special bond that was formed with the nurse on the night shift.

This young nurse risked her job in a rebuke, but late in the evenings, she would bring Dianne a Hershey bar and milk.

She would brush her hair and stroke the little girl's face and read her children's stories.

Nurses were strictly prohibited from such personal care for fear of showing favoritism.

Dianne often described Mrs.

Reich as her angel in the night.

They remained friends throughout Dianne's life and visited frequently.

The smallest acts of kindness should never be overlooked as trivial.

Look back on your life and recall those moments when someone said to you in a very simple way, "I love you."

I have received cards and love notes from my own wife almost every week throughout our married life.

Our lives are truly best measured not by what we receive but what we give.

Taking a meal to a family stricken with illness or adversity, mowing someone's yard, or simply going the extra mile and helping a troubled child, there are countless ways to show that we care.

At night, the nurses would place white covers over the faces of the children so they wouldn't see the other children die.

Throughout her life, Dianne would ask for a scarf or a cloth to cover her face while she slept.

I had always known Dianne slept with a scarf over her face at night, but I never knew why until my wife told me this, and I saw this in an article about Dianne.

It's clear that the odds of Dianne ever coming home were small indeed, but such was her life.

There had been many times over the years that doctors would say there wasn't much hope.

After a while, this sort of became a family joke, and we seemed to give the family hope as they realized a number of times physicians had given grim news about Dianne's prognosis.

It should remind us all that human perseverance and prayer combine to overcome even the greatest of odds against us.

There's a commonality among many survivors.

They don't panic.

They stay in the moment.

They stop and think and problem-solve, and for a plan of action, and stick with it.

Such was the approach taken by Geneva and Freeman with Dianne.

"We will figure it out as we go along."

[music] -Will, there's a lot of people sitting and watching this program that are thinking, "I should maybe write a book.

Will did it.

He didn't lie.

He met somebody, his wife's sister, incredible story," and rather than just, "Oh, wow, that's incredible," you wrote a book.

What one piece of advice do you give them?

-Just start writing.

With today's, the software we have, it makes it relatively easy to come back and organize, and there are editors, Acclaim Press.

Randy Baumgardner was my editor and did a fabulous job helping me to organize the book and arrange it and clean it up a little bit, as did my sister-in-law, who is an English teacher as well that's there.

I don't think you have to have exceptional literary skills or so forth.

If you have an idea that has meaning and value, just start writing.

-Where can people find the book?

Where do you send them?

-I have a website, thegirlintheironlung.com.

You can contact us there, purchase the books, or, of course, Acclaim Press.

It's also on Amazon and dozens of other online formats.

-Is it an audiobook?

-It is not at this time, but I'm considering that.

-Stay tuned.

-Yes.

-Is there any other books that you're working on right now, projects?

-Not right now, no.

I'm doing a lot of public speaking.

All the years of almost 50 years in mental health, I have a lot of experiences and things that I feel like I learned that I still like to share.

We'll see, maybe in the next few years.

-If people want to contact you about public speaking, where should they go?

-They can call me, call my cell, 731-217-1358, or my email is willbeyerlpe@gmail.com.

-Will, we've run out of time, but we want to thank you for coming on Tennessee Writes.

We have our own Tennessee Writes writing kit we'd like to send you away with.

It's a briefcase, notebook, pen, and latte mug to help with your future endeavor writings.

-I'll put this to good use.

Thank you so much.

-Good, good.

Before you leave, we ask all of our authors, would you sign a book for us?

-Absolutely, my honor.

Thank you so much for having me on today and sharing this story.

We hope it's a story that will inspire others and give people hope and help them to face adversity in a better way.

Thank you so much, Peter.

To Peter, love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13.

My signature.

-Thank you so much.

[music] -For comments about today's show or to suggest a Tennessee author for a future program, email us at tennesseewrites@westtnpbs.org.

Tennessee Writes, on air and streaming now.

[music] -The program you've been watching was made possible through the generous financial support of West Tennessee PBS viewers like you.

Please visit westtnpbs.org and make a donation today so that we can continue to make local programs like this possible.

Thank you.