| Hard Loser
Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: The U.S. of FRIGGIN' A! Age: 27 Posts: 593 Rep Power: 71 
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(Women's Physique World, Dec '99)
It’s not much bigger than a cell-phone and she wears it in a pouch on her belt. She wears it quietly, unobtrusively, eight hours a day, five days a week. And she simply refers to it as the Pump, which is a nice way of referring to a humungous, battery-powered hypodermic which pushes a medicine called Deseferal through a tube into her gut all these eight hours. The Pump pushes iron. It pushes it out of her liver, just one of a succession of processes in her struggle, not just to maximal function, but to stay alive.
The 1998 Philadelphia Classic was well-run and well-attended, but though the Ms. Olympia show was born here, Philly’s not exactly a hot-bed for bodybuilding. Thus Vonda Kline might have gone unnoticed by the bodybuilding media, but for the presence of Lenda Murray as the MC. And you had to know something was up when Bob Bonham, the owner of the Strong and Shapely Gym, producer of the Women’s Extravaganza, and a connoisseur of female muscle, burst out into the lobby shaking his head: "I don’t know who the hell she is or where she came from, but nobody’s gonna touch her!" Later Vonda, surrounded by family and friends came out into the lobby, swaddled in layers of sweat-clothes and quiet in her triumph. Here was a fighter, wholly appropriate to a town famous for underdog scrappers, from Rocky Balboa, the Eagles, Flyers and Phils, who nonetheless rise to the occasion, apparently coming out of nowhere to do something big.
Vonda Kline never thought she’d be matching muscle onstage against some of the amateur bodybuilding’s best heavyweights. Modeling would be her ticket from the outskirts of North Philadelphia; at 14, she began doing fashion shows and beauty pageants. Elite Modeling picked her as a "new face," but she’d have to move to New York, a plan her father quickly squelched as unfitting for a young girl. So Vonda pushed on with modeling locally and performed as a background dancer in shows and videos for music groups. "It was a lot of fun, but I wanted more, something bigger, like acting. In high school, I played Anita, Bernardo’s girlfriend in West Side Story. I was very convincing as a Latino woman. Everybody always told me I’d be a good actress."
Valentine’s Day 1993: "I’m in Hahnemann Hospital receiving bags of blood, one after another. That night they ask me to sign my death certificate and organ donor card. I’m just sitting there with this big smile on my face and a slight laughter to my voice as I’m answering them and signing papers." Vonda’d been bleeding, inexplicably, for five days, before checking into Hahnemann; now her platelet and hemoglobin levels were fractional. She was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a little-understood but often-fatal condition wherein the bone marrow stops producing blood cells. Unfortunately, neither of Vonda’s sisters could provide a match for a bone marrow transplant (itself no guarantee; Garrett Hamm, the brother of soccer superstar Mia Hamm, lived a highly-athletic sixteen years with the disease, then died of complications at age 28 after a "successful" transplant). The next step was a series of drug treatments, during which time Vonda sought a second opinion. But at Jefferson Hospital, the picture was no brighter. Dr. Scott Murphy put her on a drug called Epogen, which she had to inject three times a week for close to a year. It caused severe bruising.
"I’m walking around with bruises all over my legs because if I simply tapped into something, I’d be bruised –people were always thinking my boyfriend was beating me, but when I tried to explain about platelets and hemoglobin they thought I was just trying to cover it up."
Finally the bruising went away, but Vonda’s condition wasn’t improving and she still needed the transfusions. Her white cell count was low, so her doctors tried Cyclosphorine, then a series of other medications. They put her on steroids which broke her skin out with severe acne. They gave her something called A-T-G which required a catheter into an artery on the left side of her chest for four days straight.
"I broke out in hives and my face swelled up like a blow-fish. I’m walking around with a tube hanging out of my chest. I lost a tremendous amount of weight, was very weak and disoriented. I’d sit motionless, staring at my family and friends. But on the inside I desperately wanted to show them I’d be better. I’d get by."
Vonda got by. But she wanted more, a visible testament to her recovery. Like a young Laura Creavalle, she had thick legs topped by a thin upper body. Other than doing the 550 relay as a high-school senior, her athleticism hadn’t gone beyond dance. Bodybuilding had never been a consideration. It was more of the Everywoman mantra ("tone up-tighten up") which took her into the gym. Then a personal trainer named Jeff Brown saw her at a nightclub and was impressed enough to coax her to the Twelfth Street Gym. Results came quickly, impressing Vonda’s sisters and friends enough to start them training there as well. By 1995, Vonda was entering her first contest, the AAU Mid-Atlantic, where she took 1st heavyweight and overall. Ditto the following year at a local affair called the Philly Classic. It was promoted by a gym owner and trainer, Dr. Richard Brown, who unbeknownst to either of them, would soon play a major role in Vonda’s life.
She swears she’s not shy, even though she maintains the low-key appearance, and says very little. Perhaps it’s modesty; at the Arnold Expo, she vanished from the booth where she’d been exhibiting her pictures, outright hid from her potential fans, because she didn’t feel she belonged alongside Renita, Andrulla, Jitka and Dayana. Of course this shyness intrigues fans even more. And you can’t miss her, even full-swathed, because there’s something about her dimensions which catches your eye, that "who is she?" factor which registers on the faces of the lobby lizards watching her chat with one of the magazine scribes at the Hotel Roanoke during the Jan Tana. If she’s shy, reserved, or aloof, all trappings of that restraint vanish when she’s onstage. Vonda comes alive.
Meanwhile, she’d lived with the disease for four years, receiving regular transfusions, and in 1997 her doctors embarked on another course of treatments which left her unable to walk, or even dress herself. Her mother and her sisters, Lillian and Vanessa, as always were there for her, around the clock. They took her to the hospital in the middle of the night. They provided the blood for her transfusions. They watched her alternate between bursting energy and basket case. But hadn’t they been there all along? Hadn’t they stood up to the other girls from the ‘hood, enduring the taunts ("your sister be losin’ her hair, wastin’ away ‘cause she got AIDS…that’s what she gets") and the physical scuffles? "I just want to thank God for my family who were always there for me." Vonda says. "It’s times like this you find out who really cares about you. I wouldn’t have gotten through this without them."
Dr. Brown was there for her too. She’d heard of his expertise in nutrition, training and wellness. IFBB pros like Alq Gurley and Nancy Lewis had sought his counsel. He’d seen something special in this quiet girl, and now, at his River’s Gym, he took Vonda under his wing. The regimen was brutal, something Vonda would never prescribe to her own training clients, a violation of every "overtraining" precept in bodybuilding lore: upwards to six different exercises per bodypart, four sets of six to eight reps each, with little rest. A workout usually lasted two hours. Hard medicine, but Vonda found it to be just the thing. Not only did it make her grow, but it took her mind off all those needles which kept her alive.
Vonda has one of those trademark poses/movements, an archival thing every bodybuilder dreams of establishing, much as Sharon Marvel’s thigh flap and Lenda Murray’s lat spread. This one raises a few eyebrows. But some who were at the 1999 Junior Nationals where Vonda took 2nd Heavyweight will tell you it brought down the house, and left a previously nonchalant audience yearning for more. Amidst the flaring display of a rear lat-spread, Vonda flexed, churned her glutes, one at a time, with the exquisite control of an exotic dancer. She denies any experience in that occupation, but credits her prior stage-work as a model and dancer. "I'm a performer," she says. "Put me onstage and I can cut loose." Did someone say Vonda’s shy?
If she’s had any idol in the sport it’s been Lenda Murray. Appropriate, since she invites comparisons to Lenda from many, including Steve Wennerstrom, who’s seen a quite a few remarkable women pass through the portals in the past twenty years. In fact Lenda made such an allusion herself, telling Vonda backstage: "You remind me of me." That’s heady. A girl can grow on such stuff. "I want to be Ms. Olympia." Vonda says. "I want to continue in her style."
But she has other inspirations, and one of them is only a memory. As she was getting ready for the Pittsburgh Championships earlier this year, her father lost his long struggle with cancer. His travails ended the day before her birthday, nearly six years after hers had begun. But he remained with her, steeling her on, and she dedicated her winning performance in Pittsburgh to him. Even at eighty-four, he’d been vital and active as one half his age -a fighter- and the disease hadn’t taken him without a struggle. Struggle is something Vonda understands. We can only thank her for doing it so well, for offering us her visual treat, but far more important, her example.
(The Aplastic Anemia Foundation of America seeks any and all support. Please write P.O. Box 22689, Baltimore, MD 21203 or call 1-800-747-2820.)
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