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Diana Golden grew up a happy, energetic, shy, somewhat klutzy kid in Lincoln,
Massachusetts, a serene suburb 10 miles from Boston. In a way, she gained
identity through her illness. "Im obsessive about everything," she says, "and
when I lost my leg, I became obsessive about skiing and racing and getting
better and stronger and winning. I started getting noticed as the one-legged ski
champion, and I liked the attention. I really did. I mean, I cried about the leg
a couple of times, but then my success got real heady real fast — people writing
stories about me. I was on the TV show Zoom!, telling other kids: Yes I can!
I liked all that, and so I drove myself to get better and better." She went to
Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and trained with the ski team. In the
spring, shed build leg strength by doing laps at the track on her crutches, and
by hopping the stadium steps at Alumni Field.
The football stadium at Dartmouth was adjacent to the baseball field, where Steve Brosnihan a kid from Rhode Island one year ahead of Diana, used to work out as a pitcher. "I remember watching her," Steve says now as he strolls through the backyard in Bristol, while Diana takes a nap. "I was so impressed, and I admired her so much. And she always seemed so vivacious. Sometimes, Id see her crossing the college green on her crutches, and Id speed up just to get ahead of her, so I could see her smile. She doesnt remember any of that, but we did exchange hellos."
Diana found her own small circle of friends at Dartmouth — a circle that did not include Steve — when she was convinced to join a group of born-again Christians. "It was pretty intense, it was a borderline cult," she says as she scratches the head of her dog, Midnight Sun, a handsome two-year-old Alaskan Malamute. "I now feel I was lied to. Duped. A lot of what they were saying was brainwashing." These days, with her life in crisis, her religious beliefs are carefully considered, but ambiguous, even amorphous. "Were going to have four celebrants at the wedding — an American minister, an English minister, A Catholic counselor and my Uncle Murrary whos Jewish," she says. "As for God. . .I believe there is something out there. There is spirit. But I cant believe He or it plays an active role here on Earth in specific things. Yes, sure — It seems a miracle that I found Steve when I did. But if I start to wonder if God sent me Steve, then I have to ask — Did God give me cancer? I cant get tangled like that." She speaks with hesitancy; shes not fighting tears, shes fighting for the right concept. "I cant let myself get into that place. Its futile. A place without answers."
Patricia Huff, the Catholic chaplain who will speak at the wedding, says that when she seeks to give Diana spiritual comfort, shes careful to stop short of putting a name to any concept of the divine — a name like God. "Shes been violated," says Huff. "I really do think she suffers post-traumatic stress from that Dartmouth experience. She was young, searching and vulnerable. And she experienced a disappointment that was like a rape of the spirit, a rape of the soul. You lose that spiritual innocence, and its never regained. I think that whole experience has ripped away a possible resource for Diana — a resource that would have been useful now, when she needs it most."
After graduating from college and growing disenchanted with the born-again group, Diana cast about for some new place to invest her enormous energy. She chose an old place: skiing, which had been neglected during her period of religious fervor. She had, as a sophomore, already won a world championship, and now she began building the greatest career — statistically and otherwise — in the history of disabled sports.
It is impossible to overestimate what Diana Golden meant to the handicapped- athletics movement: She was its Babe Zaharias; its Babe Ruth. To update the metaphor, its Tiger Woods. She was not only the best in the world, she was the most charismatic; her natural vivacity, which used to cause her parents to bribe her with cash to shut her up during long family ski trips, lent a bright look and sound to a too-often sentimental, "inspirational" or downright somber ski circuit. She was smart, she was pretty, she was funny. (Knocked down by a recreational skier at Vail, she got up and screamed, "Hey, look what youve done to my leg!") Underlying it all was the athleticism, the skiing itself, which was superb. She established a brave new concept of what it meant to be a world-class disabled athlete. Seeking ever-greater speed, she shucked the standard outrigger ski poles — crutches with small skis attached — and returned to normal racing poles. She lobbied for exemptions so disabled athletes could compete in topflight able- bodied races, and in 1985 the US Ski Association passed the Golden Rule reserving such places in their draw. Ultimately, she won 19 U.S. and 10 world disabled gold medals, including the one at Calgary. By the time she retired from competition in 1991, she had twice been honored as one of our greatest athletes — not disabled athletes, athletes. In 1986 the USSA looked past the Mahre brothers, Tamara McKinney and others to named Golden as Ski Racer of the Year. And in 91 the Womens Sports Foundation awarded her its Flo Hyman Award, which had previously gone to Martina Navratilova, Jackie Joyner Kersee, Chris Evert. Said The New York Times: "Golden is in good company, and vice versa."
Last year, there was to be a third such honor. "The Womens Sports Hall of Fame called and told me they were going to induct me, and told me of this gala dinner," says Diana. "I asked them please not to do it. I just couldnt go through with it."
For what had happened between 1991 and 1996 had delivered her to a state of constant sadness so profound and debilitating that she could not possibly face a ballroom of earnestly sympathetic faces at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, force a smile and say thank you.
What made Diana Golden such a luminous personality on the ski tour and then on the motivational speaking circuit was her willingness to be up front about how she felt and why she felt that way. When she told kids they could fight past illness, she absolutely meant it. She had done it — Yes I Can! — and she wasnt joking when she said that being one-legged was no big deal. Want to see? Ill hike up Mount Rainier. Ill take up rock-climbing and became a pro. See? No big deal.
Extraordinarily, she maintained this attitude when told that the result of a New Years Eve biopsy in 1992 indicated breast cancer and dictated a mastectomy. "Id be a little lopsided, but so what? I already was. And when I thought about the purpose of breasts, nursing babies, well — Id still be able to do that with the one I had left." A week later, her doctor recommended a biopsy on the left breast, using the same words about the latest suspicious little spots: "Its probably nothing." When told she would need bi-lateral mastectomies — "my double hit" — Diana kept a stiff upper lip. "I could still have a baby. I was telling my friends, Ill keep you abreast of how Im doing, or Hey, a couple of breasts, and they werent that big to begin with! "
For the first time in two-decades as a cancer victim, such bravado wasnt ringing true to Diana. Fear was being repressed, anger and regret were creeping in. She wondered if, having had an early-life visit by cancer, she had unwisely avoided confrontation. "Yes, I had felt a lump," she admits. "I had decided there was no lump. I was too young for a lump. I looked away."
Her annual gynecological exam followed on the heels of the breast surgery, and when the doctor said "Its probably nothing" Diana felt as if shed been hit by a train. During the examination, doctors found they had to act precipitously on a pre-malignant growth, and Diana awoke to the words, "We had to remove your uterus." She had trouble breathing at first; she was suffocating. The nurse kept repeating "Youre safe now," but Diana did not feel at all safe. She felt damaged, violated. And thus began her descent.