Two Hearts One Fire: A Glimpse Behind the Mask of Leprosy

“Two Hearts, One Fire” is an eminently readable collection of human interest accounts, often amusing, and sometimes poignant, of life in Jamaica, British West Indies, from the hitherto unpublished collections of an Army Medic, and the heart-to-heart experiences of a missionary Sister with her leprosy patients, as gleaned from the letters of the Nun to her community back home in the United States. Neither the Sergeant nor the Nun had any idea that their brief encounters at the old Leper’s Home had any particular significance for the future, or even that their paths would cross again. The war over, the Sergeant, looking for help in the fulfillment of a promise he had made to himself to provide personally-inscribed gifts at Christmas for the leprosy patients he could not forget, rallied his family and friends to the cause.

Seeking advice, he decided to visit the Massachusetts headquarters of the Marist Missionary Sisters who staffed the leprosarium in Jamaica. There he again encountered the Nun who was back home for medical attention. She was allowed to help him in his project -- a joining of efforts which today flourishes as the Damien-Dutton Society for Leprosy Aid.

As the Society’s horizons expanded, so did its membership and its world recognition. Five decades later it was not only “two hearts, one fire” but thousands upon thousands of generous hearts afire with the need to alert the public to the unique problem of a much maligned, much misunderstood leprosy affliction, known today as Hansen’s Disease.