Family nominates a granny on the go as an Oklahoma Hero

"If you get thrown for a loop in your life, you don't have to let it destroy you or completely take you out."

When NEWS 9's Doug Warner heard about our next 2007 Oklahoma Hero nominee he thought she would be pretty easy to keep up with since she's someone's great-grandmother, but it turns out Webster could have been talking about this woman when he defined a hero as "one that has great courage" or a "great warrior".   Doug introduces us to this week's Oklahoma Hero nominee. 

As the fall weather blows in the pecans have come blowing down in Perkins.

"They bake, they sew, they do crafts, they take walks every day," Orlanda Bastianelli said.

And Orlanda Bastianelli knows these pecans have now become the latest pet project for the woman that never stops, her mother.

 "We actually got her a cell phone because we can't find her half the time," Bastianelli said.

And it didn't take us long to see there's no 'slow gear' in Glenda's day. Within 30 minutes of our visit Glenda had knocked out errands at the Post Office, over at the hardware store and returned some books to the library.

"We talked about getting a G.P.S. so we can locate her," Bastianelli joked.

Glenda even made a deposit at the bank, through the drive thru in her motorized wheelchair.

"She's just an inspiration to people and it just lead me to feel I wanted to share that," said Bastianelli.

Today Glenda was unknowingly spreading that inspiration from the post office to her church, flat out overlooking the disease that put her in a wheelchair in the first place.

"It was a gradual process over the years of watching things change in her," Bastianelli said.

Orlanda was 11 when the diagnosis came that her 35-year-old mother had an adult form of Muscular Dystrophy.

 "If you get thrown for a loop in your life you don't have to let it destroy you or completely take you out," Glenda Murray said. "You just adjust, you accept and go on, and do the best you can."

Glenda says acceptance is what's gotten her through the last 25-years of days packed full with errands and days spent helping others at church. And her daughter says that's exactly what makes her mom an  Oklahoma Hero. 

"It just really makes me feel that if I can just be half of what she is as I grow older, it just makes me know I am who I am because of her," Bastianelli said.

Sadly, truer words have never been spoken.

"That is harder to take than it was for me in my diagnosis. Because it's hard to see the ones you love go through something that you wish you could stop," Murray said.

Glenda's daughter, Orlanda, was just diagnosed with M.D. earlier this year, and the fear looms that this inherited attack to the nervous system could continue to be passed on unless a cure is discovered soon.

"You just make the best that God gave you, and that's what she does and what I intend to do," said Bastianelli.

 "I just want people to know if you're in a wheelchair it's ok, you can still live, you can still have a full complete life," Murray said.

--News9.com