Heroine

In 1936 radios played The Music Goes 'Round and Around. And round & round danced Jessie Simpson with the boys in Teaneck, N. J., who admired her because she was pretty and full of pep, and had won a beauty contest at Atlantic City. Her mother would not let her capitalize on her prize: Jessie was too young--scarcely 17.

So when she graduated from high school, she got a job in the Hackensack office of Sears, Roebuck & Co., and for eight hours a day, at least, put her mind on card files and customers' complaints. That was where James Steward first saw her. He was the advertising manager, a graduate of Alabama University, 22, quiet and reserved. Jessie's brown eyes stopped him in his tracks.

It was not long before Steward's mind was made up, even though the crowd around Jessie was always thick. She left Sears for a job as a receptionist at the New York Telephone Co., but it did not discourage him. And Jessie admitted one spring night that she liked him quite a lot.

One morning, when she was late, Jessie's mother drove her to the station. As the train was pulling out, she raced headlong across the platform, slipped, plunged forward. Her mother screamed as the wheels of the train ground over her.

Fearfully mutilated but still conscious when they dragged her out, Jessie lay on the platform. In a whispering voice she tried to calm her mother. "Call Jim," she said.

Hours later, a white, shaken Jim Steward left the hospital, went home. Jessie would live, but both legs had been amputated, one at the calf, the other above the knee. The music still went round and round but Jessie could never dance again.

While Jessie slowly recovered Jim Steward visited her every day. He told her that the accident changed nothing so far as he was concerned. She lay in the hospital for sombre, painracked weeks.

There were three other children in the Simpson family, and not much money. Mr. Simpson sued the Erie Railroad for damages, was finally awarded $30,000. But the Erie was tangled in bankruptcy and no money seemed to be forthcoming.

A Manhattan newspaperman, "Red" Gallagher, then of the Post, went to Teaneck to get the story, was struck by Jessie's beauty and her lovely hands. Back he went to Manhattan, saw some friends in the commercial photography business. He knew advertisers frequently used pictures of hands, faces. One photographer who was interested was Hal Phyfe. Phyfe called, asked Jessie if she would model for him. She would and did. With her hands and face, Jessie earned enough money to buy artificial legs.

She learned to walk again. She even learned to drive a car. She was determined to have a job, and she leased a shop in Hackensack, opened a beauty parlor, hired operators. There she stayed on the job six days a week, from 9 in the morning till 6 at night. Pity was the one thing she shied from. In defiance of it, she played golf, rode horseback. She even devised little tricks to make her disability less grim. One was to bend over, slap her ankle as though she had a mosquito bite. Her friends forgot to pity her, laughed with her.

Last week Jessie's story came to the traditional happy ending. Outside the First Presbyterian Church of Hackensack, a curious crowd filled the street. Inside, 700 people watched as Jessie walked radiantly down the aisle on Jim Steward's arm.

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