Louisa Arnold

Steve Virgen

A wave crashed and Louisa Arnold was not ready. But, then again, who

is, when catastrophes come charging?

She was unknowingly smiling as she lay her belly on an inflatable

flotation device. That wave took Arnold and twisted her. Then the

wave drove her down, headfirst into a bed of jagged rocks. She broke

her nose and hemorrhaged an eye. The rocks peeled off portions of her

face and jammed her neck into her spine.

Her body was paralyzed.

However, that freak accident is of no comparison to the pain

Arnold is feeling now. There is a hole in her heart. Something,

actually someone, is missing. It’s her husband, Philip, who died last

year.

But Arnold doesn’t want you to feel sorry for her. She wants you

to be happy. She wants to be happy. After all, that’s what Phil would

have wanted.

“I realize that I’m not the only person who lost a husband, but

none of the others had Phil Arnold,” said Arnold, who is a fixture at

Newport Beach Tennis Center, having played there for many years. “I’m

grateful for the 28 years we had together. That doesn’t make it any

easier. I thought my accident that paralyzed me in 1980 was the most

difficult thing, but it wasn’t. Getting through that was the most

difficult thing in my life until Phil died last year. There’s nothing

that can be worse than that.”

However, Arnold is pressing on. She is set to release a third

printing of her book, “Tennis Ticklers,” probably by the end of the

year. She said the book, which contains comical poems, was one of the

many ideas inspired and supported by her late husband.

He was the biggest reason she was able to overcome odds when

battling back from the accident.

“The doctors thought I would be bedridden for the rest of my

life,” Arnold said. “There was no hope for me.”

After the accident, Arnold remembers being on the beach, draped

across the sand. She felt as if she were on the verge of death. But

then she looked up at Phil.

“I said to myself, ‘I can’t do that to this man,’ ” Arnold said.

“He had been widowed. His first wife died of cancer. I had to hang on

for him. He was so supportive of me and carried me through it.”

There was plenty of love between Arnold and her husband. They

complemented each other well. At Phil’s memorial service last year,

Phil’s children said Louisa taught Phil how to play because he only

knew how to work.

“I taught him how to play and he taught me how to live,” Arnold

said.

She gradually found life after the accident. Arnold had been

playing tennis prior to her ordeal. She has always been passionate

about the sport and she longed to go back on the court during the

days her body could barely move.

Slowly, methodically, she improved her health and, through the

help of her husband, she was back on the court, back where she felt

at home.

She regained her strength and improved her skill in tennis, the

sport that was so cruel to her in the beginning. Arnold had trouble

just hitting the ball when she first started, but because of her

competitive spirit, she overcame her shortcomings.

“Every time I went out there, I won,” Arnold said. “It’s not that

I’m good, because I don’t have anything fancy. But, by the grace of

God, my ball went back over the net. And, once I started winning,

there was no stopping me. You know why? I was programmed to win.”

Among Arnold’s many tennis highlights was the time she played

despite dealing with ovarian cancer. She never missed a match and she

would win.

However, Arnold now pain in her shoulder and the joint needs to be

replaced. She misses the game, but can’t play because of the pain.

“In my mind, I haven’t told myself I will stop playing,” Arnold

said. “It’s a part of me. I played tennis every day.”

Without tennis, Arnold tries to find other activities to fulfill

her needs. She is involved in charity work and she also stays busy

with seven children and 16 grandchildren.