Free Ansel Adams by Mary Street Alinder Page A

submitted himself to each year. This time it showed partial blockage in the arteries that had been operated on in 1979, although it was not yet serious enough to require them to be either replaced or reamed out. Perhaps because I am a registered nurse, all of Ansel’s physicians were unfailingly kind about including me in every consult, exam, and test. It reassured Ansel to have me with him; for the angiogram I even donned sterile clothing and accompanied him into surgery.
    Each year we seemed to spend more time in the hospital, but work always continued. We established a regular routine, and in fact, I chided him that the only time I could get him to work on the autobiography was when he was confined to bed. A portion of the book was written within the walls of the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, where Ansel was cared for by a bevy of top-notch doctors and spoiled by the nurses. He was extraordinarily lucky to have such a great hospital close by. Designed by Edward Durrell Stone, it is a model of patient-centered care, with each room graced by a balcony overlooking the forest and a huge fish pond at the hospital’s center. Ansel even enjoyed the food there, especially the lemon meringue pie.
    Ansel intended to live as long and as well as he could. In 1981, on the advice of Senator Alan Cranston, he embarked on an anti-aging program that prescribed large amounts of beta-carotene and vitamin E to go with Ansel’s usual pharmacy of pills. After a few days, Ansel looked like a six-foot carrot. He had turned orange from too much beta-carotene; his dosage was reduced.
    For my part, I wanted Ansel to see health specialist Nathan Pritikin. He was more than dubious, but I got them together once on the phone. Pritikin was critical of Ansel’s current vitamin therapy. Ansel’s morning note to me said that Pritikin had suggested he eat beans, veggies, and grains, have no butter or margarine and no alcohol, and drink rosebud or linden tea. Deprive Ansel of his martini and his hamburger? The name Pritikin did not cross my lips again.
    One Sunday afternoon in September 1982, I arrived at the house to help with a benefit reception for a young Democratic candidate and discovered Ansel still in bed. He clearly was not feeling well. I measured his blood pressure, checked his pulse and lungs, and monitored his heart with my stethoscope. I thought I could detect an irregularity; certainly I was hearing something other than what I usually heard. I called his doctor, who agreed to meet us at the hospital.
    I went upstairs and informed the candidate’s advance crew that Ansel would not be attending the party. They were keenly upset at the news and let me know it. They demanded to talk to Ansel, sure they could convince him to stay for the event. But I was even angrier and more outraged than they were, and I told them to clear out of the way and not say one word to Ansel when we came through. That was the last I heard out of them. I helped Ansel dress and pack a small suitcase, and then we went upstairs and got quietly into his car.
    In ER, it was determined that Ansel had a life-threatening arrhythmia. He was wheeled into surgery and almost as quickly wheeled back out with a pacemaker stitched into his chest. Crisis solved. Ansel described the feeling when the pacemaker would fire to be as if a mouse was hitting a punching bag.
    Ansel was soon home and back to a normal schedule. Within ten days of this incident, he participated in a book signing in Carmel and was filmed by the BBC, interviewed by the Wall Street Journal , and given an award by the Association of International Photographic Art Dealers.
    Playboy asked Ansel to be the subject of its monthly in-depth interview for May 1983. His first reaction was “No!” but I believed that the magazine’s huge audience had not heard his messages on photography and the environment, and that proved to be a convincing argument.
    Although he was willing to participate, Ansel as usual