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EDEN — Melissa Whitten looks at her life from the perspective of Robert Frost’s famous poem, The Road Not Taken: The narrator comes to a fork on a wooded path and must decide which way to go.

Relating to a poem is second nature to Melissa. She retired from teaching literature at Holmes Middle School in Eden and, after a few bumps, is now on another road, museum studies. She is a student in the master’s in museum studies program at UNCG working toward a certification.

Becoming executive director of the Eden Historical Museum is a dream realized. However, she had no choice in the diagnosis of breast cancer, which came July 1, 2008, after a routine mammogram.

There were no signs. Although her mother and grandmother had battled breast cancer, Melissa was stunned by the diagnosis and the fear it generated. She, husband Pat Whitten and their daughter, Jessica, began to face the disease as a family.

In August of that year, Melissa started chemotherapy. Despite the treatments, she continued to put in 40 hours a week at the new Eden Historical Museum building on Washington Street, a donation from Tommy and Jean Harrington and a long-awaited project of the Eden Preservation Society.

Melissa curtailed her Greensboro classes for three or four days of treatment every two weeks. She felt pretty good during this time, she says, and working at the museum gave her a break from worrying about the disease.

As hard as cancer is for the patient, Melissa recounts the toll it took on family and friends. Her friends came to visit and to cry.

“Talking cancer to death makes it more real and helps to deal with what happens,” she says.

As a young soldier in Vietnam, Pat worked as a medic. His presence and knowledge became invaluable. His pragmatism holds her steady.

When Melissa didn’t want to face her hair falling out, as many cancer patients experience, she jumped ahead of her fear and had her head shaved. Pat shaved his head as well.

Jessica, 24, who lives in High Point, also is a comfort to her mother. The family shares a sense of humor — even about the disease.

Within five months of the diagnosis, Pat took Melissa to the emergency room at Morehead Memorial Hospital. She was having a heart attack, which meant a slow down in chemotherapy. But as soon as she was able, Melissa was back at the museum.

Although Melissa talks openly about her health, she prefers talking about the museum. She proudly tells of the renovation of the building in the late summer months of  2007, when she and a small army of Eden Preservation  volunteers prepared for the opening the following October, an exhibit on the life and times of Jesse James.

Following the success of the opening, people within and outside the community began to donate pictures, artifacts and other memorabilia to the museum.

The goal of 10 exhibit spaces, called bays, will complete the space available in the museum. After a major fundraiser (and old fashioned arm-twisting) the first five finished bays were the centerpieces of a recent exhibit.

As executive director, Melissa will be in charge of planning the exhibits for the new bays, as she did for the first five.

Her eyes light up when talking about what is to come at the museum. She doesn’t dwell on the work involved or upcoming cancer treatments.

Right now, she is enjoying the museum’s newest piece of history. It is a mill whistle, sold to the museum by William Payne of Madison, a fan of collecting antiques.

According to Payne, the whistle once sat atop the demolished Leaksville Cotton Mill.

Burned in the 1800s, then rebuilt, the mill was demolished in the 1900s. All that remains of the mill today are the stone walls in Spray. Melissa says the whistle was part of the rebuilt mill.

The whistle itself, Melissa says, is a symbol of the rhythm of life in a mill community.

Driven by steam, the sound of the whistle called workers to and from their jobs. The shrill whistle meant prosperity.

Rachel R. Wright is a retired language arts teacher at Morehead High School who now tutors in a GED class at Rockingham Community College. She can be reached at 336-623-2881.