Legendary sports writer Red Smith said writing was easy - "All you do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein."

Janet Wolff knows exactly what Mr. Smith meant. The veteran Maumee Board of Education member spends several hours a day at her computer opening a vein of personal experience, writing like a woman possessed as she gives narrative expression to a depth of pain and sadness she has been carrying for most of her 55 years.

She's writing her own tell-all memoir.

Mrs. Wolff was stricken with polio when she was 4-years-old and lost the use of her legs. Making a terrible situation worse, she was sent away for several months to a home for crippled children. It was a cruel place for a scared, sick child, a place she remembers vividly.

Her life has included other, more common low points and setbacks: a stillborn daughter, the estrangement of a son she has not seen or spoken to in five years.

But the polio and its aftermath have shaped her consciousness to an extent people with the use of their legs cannot imagine, she said, and she is putting everything on paper.

"Life was not easy," Mrs. Wolff explained. "I graduated from Maumee High School in 1970. First of all, I wanted to be a beautician. They told me 'You can't be a beautician, you're in a wheelchair.' I wanted to be a teacher. They told me I couldn't be a teacher. I used to go to the skating rink and put on skates just to feel like my sister. Sometimes they would let me go out on the rink in my wheelchair, and just to do that and feel the wind in my hair was wonderful to me.

"We lived near St. Luke's [Hospital] in Monclova Gardens. It was considered the ghetto of Maumee then. We were poor. We had an outhouse until I was 10. It wasn't just the polio that I was dealing with," she continued.

Her writing compulsion dates to Jan. 5. On that date, she and her husband, Harold, were visiting the MGM Grand in Detroit and stopped for a cheeseburger and fries.

In the casino restaurant, she had an encounter with a mysterious street person. It proved to be a transformational experience, and she describes him in great detail in her manuscript fragment:

"His face was rough and brittle as if he had not shaven in a few days. It was clear that his hair hadn't been washed in weeks because it was dull grey and stiff, sticking straight up in the air, going every direction after he took off his thin knit hat. His grey sweater was way too big for his size and I could tell that it had been stretched out by the times he had taken it off and put it back on over the winter months. His hands were large and rough like he had done a great deal of work in his lifetime His voice was fluently clear and flowing, gentle and caring as if I had heard it before at another time. Little did I know that the manner in which he spoke to me, let alone what he was about to tell me, would change the world as I knew it "

Almost in spite of herself, Mrs. Wolff sat down with the stranger and struck up a conversation. Mr. Wolff looked on quizzically.

The stranger asked her name, and she told him. Without prompting, he said: "Janet, I know all of your hurts. It is time for you to open up and share your pain with others. It is time for you to let go of the hurts you have carried for so very long inside of you."

By now, Mrs. Wolff said, tears were streaming down her face and restaurant customers were staring. She was unable to finish her meal. On the return drive to Maumee, her thoughts swirling, she resolved to write her memoir.

She said she has never written before, and finds it a difficult process. When told that her manuscript shows an impressive eye for detail, she replied that she has always been observant.

Her goal is to keep the finished manuscript's length to a few hundred pages. She's not sure what she'll do with it. She may shop it around to literary agents or publish it herself.

Mr. Wolff, for his part, is bemused but totally supportive. The couple have been married for 36 years.

Their rambling, antiques-filled home in Maumee is wheelchair-accessible and has an in-ground pool.

Mrs. Wolff emphasized that she does not consider herself a specimen of suffering humanity. She said she has enjoyed more than her share of blessings and accomplishments. When she first ran for the school board in 1987, she beat two incumbents. She has served ever since, with the exception of a two-year hiatus. In November, she ran unchallenged.

She is grateful that society is so much more considerate of the handicapped today than it was when she was young. Children using wheelchairs today can have a pretty normal school experience, thanks to ramps and elevators in the buildings, she noted

"I would have loved to have the world they have," she said. "We've come a long way. When I was in Maumee High School, I depended on a group of nice boys to carry me up the steps."

One of those boys was Harry Barlos, who went on to become a Maumee mayor and Lucas County commissioner.

"We did it because everybody liked Jan," Mr. Barlos recalled. "It would be nice to carry her up the steps one more time. But I couldn't do it now. I had a back operation."

First Published March 5, 2008, 6:04 p.m.