Continued: 2005: celebrated Minnesota author Jon Hassler struggles with illness

And someone. He and his third wife, Gretchen Kresl Hassler, have been married 11 years. His PSP was diagnosed just months after their wedding. A former special-education teacher in the Minneapolis public schools, she tenderly cares for him, reads aloud to him each evening and says she doesn't regret her caretaker role. "He never complains; he never gets crabby," she said. "He's still the same wonderful guy."

"It must be love," he said, grinning.

They have a townhouse in south Minneapolis and another in Florida for winters. Last month they sold their Florida place for one that's more handicapped-accessible. Several times a week, he falls at home and can't get up, and the Hasslers have figured out a way to restore him to verticality. It involves a nudge from her leg and strength from his arms.

Hassler also draws encouragement from his three children - Liz, who runs a bookstore in Brainerd, Minn.; David, who is a service technician for a company in Alexandria, Minn., that makes packaging machinery, and Michael, a Brainerd poet - and his two granddaughters. On his wife's side of the family are three more children and three more grandchildren.

Sometimes he wonders which disability he'd choose if he could switch. He can't come up with a substitute. Despite PSP, he can think critically, he can write, he could travel to Italy last year, he can enjoy life, he can pray. His fictional characters still speak to him, still surprise him with what they say and do. And happily, his wife said, "When we get out and people recognize him, I see a little extra gleam in his eyes."

Just like his favorite character, Agatha McGee, he keeps on plugging. "Life goes on" - that's their philosophy.

Better get started

If his wife had her wish, every Hassler fan would have a copy of his first and bestselling book, "Staggerford," and also his account of writing it. It's called "My Staggerford Journal" and begins like this:

"I can trace my desire to be a writer back to the age of 5 when I was being read to by my parents and cousins and uncles and aunts. However, not until I was 37 did I, upon waking one morning in September 1970, hear a voice in my head saying, Half your life is over, Hassler, you'd better get started."

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