Wendy Booker: Extreme Athlete, Mom, MS Survivor Who Aims High

New Year Eve is always a time of reflection and making promises, both realistic and outrageous, for the coming year.  It is a time of rebirth, renewal and endless possibilities.

While many of us will celebrate by watching the ball drop in Times Square and tipping some champagne with loved ones, Wendy Booker will ring in 2012 with another goal: completing a 17-day trek to the South Pole with three comrades.

While it would seem a bit odd for a 55-year-old woman, the trip will be a relatively easy one for Booker, a Westchester, N.Y., native now living in the suburbs of Boston.  Booker, you see, will be on the second leg of completing the Polar Trilogy, which includes journeys to the North Pole (which she did last year) and then Greenland, which could happen in 2012 or 2013.

Those treks are all in a day’s work for the former interior designer, who has also conquered the largest peaks in the world (except Mount Everest, but more on that later) in a later-in-life mission to prove to all that every day counts, and to be a shining example of how the human spirit can overcome even some of the biggest obstacles in our way. 

Maybe it sounds like a bit of a midlife crisis, a sort of fifty-something Boston women-gone-wild ego trip.  The actual story couldn’t be further from the truth.

In June 1998, Wendy, a mother of three boys, was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis. At the time, the disease usually became a death march for the patient, one marred by a debilitating down-slide into dependency on others as the body betrayed the mind.

However, MS had never met anyone like Booker, and the results are what has led to this January’s trek across the Antarctic.

A casual runner at the time of her diagnosis, the Ohio University graduate raised more than a few eyebrows when she decided to turn her running into a conquest to finish a marathon and raise awareness for MS.

That one race turned into 10 marathons, thousands raised for research, and a new appreciation for what the will to succeed can do not just for oneself, but for others around you.

Not wanting to stop at distance running and with her MS in check, Booker looked to another goal, one that “symbolized the great challenges we all have to deal with every day,” she said. That next step was mountain climbing, and in 2002 at the age of 46, she joined a team of climbers with MS who were attempting to climb Mt. McKinley (Denali) in Alaska.

That test did not bring her to the summit, but her next trip did, and she reached the top of Denali on her second try in 2004.

Since that rise to McKinley, she has gone on to reach the summit of six of the seven highest mountains on each continent—Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. McKinley, Mt. Elbrus, Mt. Aconcagua, Mt. Vinson Massif and Mt. Kosciuszko—with only Mt. Everest keeping her short of her goal of seven-for-seven.

Everest and its height and extreme weather forced her back twice due to her MS, but she remained passionate and thinking about another potential try somewhere in the future. 

All through her climbs, Booker’s perseverance won out over the extreme conditions. Her examples of what can be done, even injecting herself every day with the MS drug Copaxone, which she says has been a lifeline for keeping her disease in check and helping her maintain a vibrant life, was the stuff of wonder. She said of the drug:

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I tell people every day, the Copaxone injection and the research that we are able to help raise money and awareness for is what makes it all worthwhile. If I can find a way to give myself the shot on the side of a mountain or a glacier, and find ways to keep the medicine in a temperature range to make it work, anyone can use it safely and effectively in their normal everyday lives, and that normalcy is what anyone with an affliction strives for.

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With her drive to ascend, both symbolically and physically, along with her MS, still in check, she has set herself on more horizontal challenges, completing the Polar Trilogy, with the next stage beginning on New Year’s Day.  The trilogy is a trek to three of the most remote places on Earth, the North Pole, South Pole and Greenland.

She reached the North Pole on April 23, 2011, using a team of sled dogs, but will have to go it on foot to reach the South Pole in January due to a ban on sled dogs in Antarctica. “It might be horizontal but it is still in high altitude, so dogs would have been nice,” she joked. “Heck I never thought I could run a marathon so hiking to the South Pole won’t be that bad, could it?”

Wendy chose the South Pole this January as the second leg to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Robert Scott’s ill-fated “discovery” of the pole, on or around January 17, 1912. Scott, a British officer, led a team in a race to the pole, only to realize that Roald Amundsen of Norway had arrived there about two months earlier.

Scott and his team perished from exposure, lack of nutrition and extreme weather, on their return, a fate Booker added, she will look to avoid with the latest technology and common sense.

She said of the challenge:

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Hey, my heroes have always been Amelia Earhart and Ernest Shackleton, and I hope to continue to inspire people with challenges much in the way they did, only using the best technology and the lessons of others to succeed in our quest. It’s very exciting and extremely challenging but I’m ready for the journey.

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But what about her family? Do they share her wanderlust and sense of adventure, much of which came when she was settled into what most would consider a pretty normal life? Her three sons, Christopher, 33 (a reporter for The Financial Times, Jeff, 28 and Alex, 22, understand her desire to inspire, and share in her passion for life.

She said of her family's support:

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They are here for me and I’m here for them and we support each other, especially emotionally. I think sometimes it may be a little hard to explain in the past why your mom is off doing these unusual things, but they understand how and why I do what I do and what it can mean to others who are struggling with MS or other issues, and for us that’s what is most important.

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Also important to her is the work she does educating kids in North Boston on achieving their goals and aspiring to a life of service and adventure. “The lives of the people we touch around us, and how we can make their lives better through what we do, that’s what really important,” she added.

Is it ever scary?  To that, she replied:

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Yes for sure, when you are lost in a whiteout for six hours, or if you have to worry about making sure the medication you need is kept at the right temperature in the farthest corners of the planet. But the reward and the journey for me has made it worthwhile, and hopefully it will continue to make it worthwhile for whatever is next.

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That next step begins New Year’s Day. Booker has again been working with personal trainer Jeremee Norman getting ready for the trip, and making sure that physically and mentally she's alright.

She said of her preparation:

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I have a loss of sensitivity in certain places, but it hasn’t really gotten worse over the years, thanks to Copaxone and the work I do to stay in shape. My right side is stronger than my left so I build that up, and Jeremee knows how to drive me to make sure I’m ready, which I will be when we leave.

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While many are heading home with resolutions swirling in their head, it is the pure resolve of Wendy Booker that we all can aspire to in 2012. One that says we can overcome the greatest obstacles with hard work, a passion for life, and a drive to make us better.

A great way to end 2011 and move toward the future, is with an amazing person setting the example.