By Gretchen Keiser

In years past, sculptor Bill Thompson has taken up his tools to chisel the prominent likenesses of people such as Robert Woodruff and Richard Russell in Stone or a Madonna in wood.

A physical as well as an artistic labor, sculpting had been his life's work, expressed in religious sculpture as well as civic commissions, until, about two years ago, he became too weak to continue.

A visit to the doctor led to tests, the blood tests to a cancer specialist, or oncologist, who took a sample from his bone marrow to examine on a slide. From this study, Thompson and his wife, Claire, were stunned to be told that doctors believed he had a type of fast-growing, small cell cancer and that he was terminally ill.

Parents of six grown children and an integral part of the Athens community, through the university and St. Joseph's parish, the Thompsons were already in a period of great change. They were in the process of moving into an historic home that had been relocated from Stephens, GA, and that would need to be almost completely rebuilt. Their own house was about to be sold.

Temporary quarters, depending upon friends' interim hospitality, the disruption of several moves still lay ahead.

So did the suffering that comes from living with the diagnosis of a terminal illness and fighting that diagnosis with everything they judged would lead back to health and life.

Yet, reflecting upon this time, Bill Thompson says that "I really felt the Lord was looking out for me. I had a certain calm. I knew that prayer was my hope and I had many, many people praying for me."

Not glib or facile in speaking about his faith, he says that this intensely difficult time, lasting for about 15 months, was also a time when he experienced a groping and trusting dependence upon God that led him through and out of the darkness.

The initial May 1985 diagnosis was confirmed in Atlanta, using the same slide, and led Thompson to accept one chemotherapy treatment which "knocked me out." Although he says chemotherapy must be weighed for benefits was well as risks, Bill Thompson and Claire decided he would take no more treatments because his doctors had not located a primary tumor in his body, and chemotherapy negatively affects the immune system, which they hoped would naturally aid his battle against illness.

A visit to the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in New York and a second bone marrow scan produced a slide without signs of cancer, but the diagnosis was reaffirmed.

Claire, he says, would become "a real tiger in not accepting some of these diagnoses" and in reexamining them, reading research and medical material, pursuing changes in diet and nutrition that might help. Other key people, friends and some doctors, would step in also. For his part, Thompson continued to teach all his classes at the University of Georgia, where he has been a professor of art for 23 years, and to turn, through a colleague's introduction, to the art form of etching, less physically demanding than sculpture.

Images of the story of Creation -- the Garden, the temptation and the fall of Adam and Eve, the Lamb of God expressing the promise of Redemption - began to take shape in his etchings.

In addition to the prayers of his parish, the sisters at St. Mary's Hospital, Athens, the monks at Conyers, he took steps to strengthen himself with prayer and reading. "I would read from the Bible every day -- try to read passages that would be strengthening" and he read spiritual books, live of the saints, "trying to see the spiritual side of things and get strength."

Seeing the spiritual side of things enabled him to continue to trust in God's loving presence despite the worrisome and threatening events. In order to keep that focus despite anxiety," you have to place yourself first of all in the hands of God." Thompson said. "Focus in on his concern for you, and his concern is of a very loving Father concerned about his child. Then you have to pray for wisdom and then you have to ask him to lead you, and he'll put some of the right people in your way. But you have to be discerning about who are the right ones."

Two special patrons were St. Theresa and St. Joseph. A nurse friend whose son had experienced a physical healing from lung cancer after visiting Lourdes stirred hope in them and led them to a doctor emphasizing nutrition and a drastic change of diet. They ate the macrobiotic diet for a period of time, Claire taking on the tasks of studying the diet, buying the needed special foods, and learning to cook and prepare it. Later Bill was on a strict vegetarian diet, losing about 50 pounds and a great deal of strength. But, he says, the diet and the doctor put him on a "health track" of nutrition and exercise.

Several frightening episodes came -- one, a fainting spell, in class, that rushed him to the hospital. The second a middle of the night collapse, in which he lay speechless on the floor, frightened that he had had a stroke, was a crisis that became a turning point. One doctor severely criticized Claire for not accepting the diagnosis of cancer. Briefly, brain surgery was considered that night before drastic chemical imbalances were found to be the problem. But another doctor looked at his patient who, by now, had survived more than a year and questioned the original diagnosis, suggesting a trip to the renowned Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to reexamine the entire medical picture.

That visit came about in August, 1986, and after nearly a week's stay, doctors determined two things. The first was that Thompson had an unusual form of anemia in the bone marrow, serious but treatable through medication and vitamins. They also detected a tiny congenital cyst located on his pituitary gland, treatable by delicate and stressful surgery through his nasal passages. The cyst, if untreated, would have caused eventual blindness as it pressured the optic nerve.

Thompson says his first reaction to the lifting of the weight of the fatal diagnosis was, "I went out and ordered a Rueben sandwich and a beer," a far cry from a regimen of rice cakes and seaweed.

A second reaction was to understand for the first time the nine cleansed lepers who did not return to thank Jesus after they were healed. "There is such a sense of release" that it almost seems to eclipse the reality of the sickness, he said. "You want to forget about it," he reflected, adding, "You should forget the hardness (of the experience) but keep the sense of our dependence upon God for life, for any kind of life at all."

Looking back upon the series of events that led to the Mayo Clinic, he sees "God's hand gently leading" even though the events were harrowing. "The real miracle of the thing is that He lead us to the solution of two problems and He helped us to avoid through misinterpretation getting into more problems." While the anemia might have been recognized eventually, he believes the congenital cyst would not have been discovered in time, except for the intensive examinations at the May Clinic.

The severe aspects of the experience -- the months of uncertainty, the tribulations of searching for medical healing, the opposition and skepticism of doctors and friends -- he regards as chiseling that is necessary to shape people as they need to be shaped in the eyes of God. "To help us become the people that we could become, that He wants us to become, the only way we can do that is through the trials we have," he said. But "that sense of a loving God is never absent," especially present to Thompson and his wife through people who radiated the love of God to them through hope, prayer and steadfastness during his illness and through a peace that came despite the events.

One of the providential legacies of this unusual time is the suite of etchings, 19 in black and white, two in color, including two large portrayals of "Father Adam" and "Mother Eve" commissioned by the University of Georgia as awards in the field of social science. The etchings are drawn from a copper zinc plate that has been scratched with a stylus, bathed in acid and inked, with proofs picking up the inked design under pressure. Some are heavily detailed, others are lightly drawn and almost whimsical in depicting moments in the Creation event such as the naming of the animals. The thought of now drawing the images together into a book that would present them as a collection appeals to Thompson. The suite was on view at the University in May.

Other legacies of the period are more difficult to measure and express. "I'm sure it has given me a greater appreciation of life and death," Thompson said. "You die a little bit each time you're sick" and in the experience as described in the lives of the saints, it is a moment of distillation in which what is not essential is separated from the eternal. In more contemporary language, "being sick is a graphic way of losing something you always thought was your natural due," he reflects. Restored health provides a greater appreciation of the gift of life, and an impetus to set priorities straight again and again.

But suffering can create an emptiness that is filled by wisdom and understanding. The experience, although not chosen, reveals God when room is left for Him, Thompson said. "It is only through self-denial that you leave room for God."

Besides having the happy experience of being a witness to others "that there is a loving God," he also knows that he has been shaped to a new form by the master sculptor.