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Article
Courtesy of The Palm Beach Post
By
Emily J. Minor
Published June 1, 2006
We all have some narrow-minded dislikes thrown into the shallow end of our personalities, and here are some of mine.
I don't like foolish rules. I'm not that fond of dogs. And I really wish people would stop talking on their cellphones and just drive.
Shirley Kravitz holds her dog, Baby, close at her home on Wednesday in Golden Lakes Village Condo in West
Maybe that's why I love this story.
It's lacking the cellphone, but it does have Baby.
How could you not love Baby?
"That dog has given her a sense of purpose in life again," says Bruce Kravitz, talking about his mother's pet Chihuahua.
But can you guess the next part?
The condo people say Baby has to go.
We hear these stories all the time. The guy who can't build a pole for his American flag or the family that has to tear down the treehouse or the kid who won't wear the school uniform.
They're just stories, with a beginning and a middle and, often, a maddening end.
But what happens when you actually stop to see the life inside? Shirley Kravitz, 79, the sick lady with the two grown kids and the first husband, dead from cancer, and the second husband, Sal, who brought home the little puppy six years ago. |
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Shirley
Kravitz holds her dog, Baby, close at her home on Wednesday in Golden Lakes
Village Condo in West Palm Beach. |
Small pet fills big void
The lady who used to be so depressed she'd stay inside all day, buying things she really didn't need from the Home Shopping Network, returning them with the prepaid labels once they finally arrived.
What about this lady — with diabetes, depression and arthritis — who had breast cancer, fought it, then found out it had settled right into her bones?
That dog, no bigger than a mouse when the two first met, gave this woman a new love, a new life.
"It was remarkable," says her son.
For the most part, getting old in today's world is hellish. Most residents living in Golden Lakes Village, where Kravitz and her husband live in suburban West Palm, perhaps know this firsthand.
They bill these over-55 places as havens, quiet corners to meet and play shuffleboard and bridge. But, truth is, the shuffleboard court usually needs a new top coat and the sun in Florida is awfully hot and the neighbors are mostly locked inside.
"We throw our old people aside," said Bruce Kravitz, 47. "We take away their human dignity."
He watched Baby give his mom hers back.
'That place is full of dogs'
The condo people say now that the rule's been the same all along: No dogs. But Kravitz's argument is the opposite.
"I never once hid this dog," says Kravitz, who said she was told the dog was OK as long as it wasn't a nuisance.
Says her son: "That place is full of dogs."
Once, not long after this started about eight weeks ago, Kravitz was waiting on a certified letter from the condo people and she happened to tell the mailman her troubles.
"He just laughed and said, 'Do you know how many dogs are here?' " Bruce Kravitz says he thinks they'll prevail, but Golden Lakes manager Lawrence Franklin says the same thing.
"It's an unpleasant situation," Franklin said. "I do feel sorry for these people, but that's the rule."
The rule is two inside cats, no inside dogs.
Franklin said he recently found out about Baby after Kravitz "was standing in her door with the dog and a gentleman saw her," and then told him.
What kind of person snitches on a 9-pound Chihuahua?
I'm adding that guy to the list of things I don't like.
"If I have to live on the street, I don't care," says Shirley Kravitz. "I'll never give up Baby. Never."
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