PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 21, No. 9, Nov. 1, 2001

Stafford focuses on health and travel

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
(217) 244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

Photo by Bill Wiegand On the road again Beth Stafford retired Jan. 1, ending a 34-year career with the UI Library. Now that she is able to travel again, Stafford is making plans. A trip to San Diego is scheduled in the near future and Montreal and Quebec may be on her summer 2002 itinerary.

Ever since Beth Stafford was a child and read stories about people in exotic foreign lands, her adventurous spirit has been buoyed by the thought of leaving Illinois behind and exploring other parts of the world.

"My best friend said some years ago ‘you need to travel the way other people need to breathe,’ " Stafford said with a smile. "I think that’s true. After your health and education, I think travel is one of the most important things people can do."

Stafford’s past travels have included visits to Australia, Turkey and West Africa and a six-month sabbatical in France. However, the past couple of years health problems have kept Stafford close to home.

A brain injury as the result of an in-home accident two years ago left her nearly incapacitated for several months. Battling chronic pain and violent headaches, Stafford chose to end her 34-year career with the UI Library, retiring Jan. 1, as the women and gender studies/women in development (WID) librarian and associate professor of library administration.

Although Stafford’s condition has improved, performing everyday tasks can still be challenging, and reading, the staple of her profession, has become nearly impossible for more than a few minutes at a time without triggering a debilitating headache.

However, over the past few months Stafford has discovered walking as a pain-management tool, and she’s now walking about a half mile three or four days a week. Stafford also plans to work with a personal trainer at a Champaign fitness/physical therapy center to devise a workout routine to help her regain the muscle strength she lost during her illness.

Stafford also has rediscovered the benefits of yoga, an activity she enjoyed many years ago, and she works with a local yoga practitioner of the Iyengar method, who prescribes certain postures for clients’ specific physical problems.

"I always thought of yoga previously as the lazy person’s way to physical fitness because you’re not running or having to jump up and down or swim," Stafford said. "But it really does condition the body and makes your muscles much stronger and gives you a lot more flexibility and stamina – at least that’s the way it worked for me before."

Being one who loves strenuous activity, Stafford has been frustrated by the constraints the illness has imposed upon her. However, now that she’s able to travel again, Stafford and her husband, Ted, visited friends in Boulder, Colo., over the summer, and they are leaving soon for San Diego, a locale she remembers fondly from childhood visits with her grandmother there.
Montreal and Quebec may be on their summer 2002 itinerary, and Stafford said she also yearns to see South America and to visit a friend’s homes in France and Rome.

Aside from travel and exercise, Stafford’s unsure what else she’ll do with her time. She had always assumed she would read for the blind when she retired, but her illness has disrupted those plans, at least until her health improves so that she can read for longer periods of time. When she can resume reading, Stafford said she may study Arabic and try improving her French. She also is pondering doing some type of volunteer work.

"I just haven’t made up my mind about what I want to do," Stafford said. "A friend who retired a few years ago said it would take me about a year to find my niche, and that sounds about right."