Three years ago, she lost more than a year of her life in a fog of illness. She couldn't walk or communicate. Much of it, she cannot remember.
Today? Well, is this the same woman?
As an active 83-year-old at Edgewood Summit, Phyllis Osenten scampers off to exercise class and to meetings with a reading and writing group. On certain Sundays, she plays organ for church services and conducts a hymn sing-along.
In her elegantly decorated apartment, she watches WVU games. She doesn't watch with other residents downstairs. In her apartment, she can yell when she wants to.
She talks enthusiastically about a rich life marked by a love of music and travel. The walls of her apartment chronicle her worldwide visits. A Mayan calendar from Portugal. A boomerang from Australia. Paintings from Venice, Finland, the Netherlands and various other ports of call.
A longtime teacher reared in Logan County, she developed a music program at Man Junior High and was music supervisor for Logan County Schools. She started a string program in elementary schools. Organist and choral director stints punctuate a crowded musical resume.
She loves the life she looks back on. Except for Egypt and Peru, she checked off every item on her bucket list. And she has plenty to look forward to as a busy bee in her retirement community.
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"I'm 83 and proud of it. I was never in the hospital until I was 80 except to have two children.
"I grew up in Mallory in Logan County. I lived there until I went to college. Dad was director of purchases for coal companies, so we lived in a coal community. Some people talk about how terrible that must have been, but it was a wonderful life.
"We had Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, anything you can think of like that. I loved the company store. I could go there and get my clothes, or if the family needed furniture, we could get it there. If I wanted an ice cream cone or needed meat, it was all right there. If I couldn't go to the store, they would deliver to me.
"I started on clarinet in fifth grade. Back then, they didn't teach music in elementary schools. My father and another fellow in Mallory would go to Rotary in Man every Thursday night, and this other man's son and I would go take our piano lesson from the high school band director upstairs in his apartment while our fathers went to Rotary downstairs in the drug store.
"My father was sort of a musician. He played a lot of string instruments. He was great on the mandolin. He had a small band and they played on the old radio station in Logan, WVOW.
"After taking elementary music for two years, I immediately went into the band when I got to seventh grade. High school was grade 7 to 12 then. I started going to the band festivals in Huntington. We would march two miles from downtown to Fairfield Stadium.
"I wanted to be a teacher. When we would play school, I was always the teacher. I thought of journalism or music. I loved to read and write, but I got into the music.
"My mother would not let me date during the week. I had to study. I was the class valedictorian. I still love to study. My mother and father didn't have that much background in education, but they made sure my brother and I did.
"I went to WVU. I have my bachelor of music and a master's in music supervision. I went back and went to class with doctoral students. I was going after the superintendent certificate. I could have done the dissertation, but I was married by then and had two small children and a job.
"When we married, my husband went with U.S. Steel in accounting. We lived in Welch and he worked at Gary at the big coal company there.
"In 1954, I graduated and started teaching. The first three and half years, there weren't that many music jobs, so I went back to my old Mallory Grade School and taught fifth grade. I dearly loved those little fifth-graders. I found I really loved teaching.
"When my husband graduated and moved us to Welch, I taught English at Welch High school for two and a half years. Then we decided to move back to Man.
"I established a music program at Man Junior High with Tom Orr, the principal. I taught general music eight and half years, general music to seventh graders. I would have 60 or 70 in a class. I had a 120-voice chorus of eighth and ninth graders.
"We traveled a lot. We went down to sing at WSAZ. It took three buses to carry those students. I'm on Facebook now with a lot of my former students.
"Tom Orr had become superintendent of Logan County Schools, and he knew what I could do with music, so I got the job as supervisor of music for Logan County. We had 38 schools then, and I traveled to all those schools.
"We didn't have traveling elementary music teachers at first, so with his help, I was able to do that. I ended up supervising 25 music teachers. If you can supervise a band director, you are pretty good. They have their own ideas.
"I established a string program in Logan County. We hired a violinist in the Symphony. She came down to Logan County two or three times a week and traveled to our elementary schools.
"I also taught music education classes for teachers for Marshall and Southern West Virginia Community College at Logan. One of my best friends is Joanne Tomblin. She was in charge of media in Logan County. At Christmas we would go around to schools, and they would bring the little fellows in and line them up on the risers on those cold gyms in November and have those children sing Christmas music all decked out in their Christmas outfits. Joanne would put it on the TV station.
"All those years, about 40 years, at Bruce McDonald Memorial United Methodist Church I was the organist and choir director.
"We moved from Man. My husband and I would travel on that terrible Route 10 from Logan to Man so I could play organ on Sundays. This one Sunday morning, we got stopped by a train. It was getting closer and closer to 11. When I got to the church, one of my band directors in the choir was playing the hymns for me. That's when we decided to move to Logan.
"I was assistant organist at Nighbert and sang in the choir. Then the first Christian Church of Logan needed a choir director, so we left the Methodist Church for about five years where I was minister of music.
"In about 1995, we started traveling. We traveled to every continent and traveled a lot in the states. We first went to Hawaii and Alaska and Bermuda, then we started abroad. I've seen four oceans. My husband had seen all five because he was stationed south of the Arctic Circle.
"I had plans to go to Egypt, but we were going to take my grandson and he couldn't go, so we didn't go either. I had made all the arrangements to go to Peru and the Galapagos. We were up in years, and when I read where we would have to wade part way into the island, I decided not to go.
"Those two places were on my bucket list, but I don't do my bucket list anymore. This is it.
"In July, it will be three years since my husband died. He had had a quadruple bypass and just went downhill. Then I got real ill. He got ill about the same time. I was 80 and he was 82. I had never seen him in the hospital.
"I had a gastrointestinal hemorrhage. I got up in the middle of the night and just about bled to death. They thought they'd lost me. I was in ICU for a week. I didn't know. I don't remember. I couldn't walk. I was just out of it.
"I was down in St. Pete and Tampa for a year and a half. In St. Pete, I was in two hospitals for six months, really out of it. I moved to Allegro in St. Pete to do my rehabilitation for six months. I couldn't button my shirt. I wouldn't eat. They said if I didn't eat, I wouldn't make it. I get emotional thinking about it.
"I had a wonderful therapist. She got me to walking and talking better. One doctor thought the medicine I'd been taking might have had something to do with it.
"My daughter started talking about coming to Edgewood Summit. That was Plan B. Before my husband died, we thought we could move back to our home in Logan, 100 and some acres in Mitchell Heights, and help each other. Willie Akers was my neighbor there. I worked with him in the board office.
"When my husband died, my son in Tampa and my daughter here knew I had to do something. I went to assisted living for six months in Tampa. I was using a walker. I still had it when I came up here in January of 2014. I was in assisted living for six months. We saw I was getting better. I took physical therapy here.
"My son says the word is flourished. He says I have flourished here. I miss my husband terribly, but if I'm starting to have a pity party, I get up and do something. I am real active here.
"Jack Albert - he's the president and I'm the vice president of the association here - he heard I played the piano. Now we do the first Sunday worship service here every month.
"I told the activities director I'd like to start a hymn sing-along at 3 on Sunday afternoons, so we do that the third Sunday. So I'm still using my music. I play whenever they need a piano. It's an outlet for my music. I'm enjoying my time here.
"It's still a wonderful life. I've been active ever since I joined Brownie Scouts at age 7. I got that from my father. He was into everything."
Reach Sandy Wells at sandyw@wvgazette.com.