photographs and the aging wheelchair-bound woman of the present is striking, but don't let Mrs. Erma Butterfield catch you feeling sorry for her.

"I'm very well, thank you,'' the 66-year-old tells people when they ask her how she is doing.

And of course they often do, for Mrs. Butterfield was very well known in the '40s and '50s, when she danced in local venues (limbo and voodoo mostly) with partner and ex-husband Mr. Brian Butterfield.

"I was a good dancer,'' Mrs. Butterfield, who also worked as a physical education teacher, told The Gazette in a recent interview. "It came naturally, but I also worked very hard at it over the years.'' The former limbo queen and current mother of two, alas, doesn't do much dancing these days, having been stricken with a chronic and progressive disease that has become a focus of much research and attention in North America and Europe but is still relatively unknown in Bermuda: multiple sclerosis.

In the United States, the profile of MS -- which attacks the central nervous system and can result in speech and visual disorders, muscular incoordination and partial paralysis -- has been raised in recent years through its affliction of such celebrities as Annette Funicello and Richard Pryor.

But, said Ms Ronny Chameau of the MS Society of Bermuda, "There is a lot that we don't know'' about the disease.

For example, "it seems to afflict Caucasians more than blacks and males more than females. And there is no known cure for it yet.'' In a bid to raise the public's awareness of the disease, the Society has joined with the current Canadian MS campaign to sponsor its first-ever tag day on Friday.

From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on that day, Society volunteers will distribute red carnations in Hamilton as part a global campaign to raise money for MS research and increase the public's knowledge.

The Society, which has about 20 members, applies more than a third of its resources to MS research.

Committed to providing a forum for MS sufferers and their families, it also holds a 7 p.m. meeting at St. Mark's Church in Smith's Parish on the first Thursday of every month.

It is at those meetings that you are likely to find Mrs. Butterfield's daughters, Ms Yvette Butterfield and Ms Renee Lawrence, each of whom has been tending to Mrs. Butterfield's needs since she was first diagnosed abroad -- there was and continues to be no neurologist in Bermuda -- with the disease.

As a black woman, Mrs. Butterfield is an a typical sufferer of MS, although she has experienced some common symptoms, including the loss of muscular coordination and the partial paralysis.

"It (her mother's condition) could possibly get worse,'' Yvette Butterfield said, referring to the frightening unpredictability of the disease. "She could be bedridden. She could be blind. In fact, she did lose her eyesight for a week once but then she got it back.'' Mrs. Butterfield herself remains largely unfazed, claiming, typically, to have coped "very well'' with MS.

"I have my moments,'' she said with her charactertistic vim. "It is not the end of the world.'' Her advice to others who may be struggling with the disease? "Stay with it, honey. Have a positive attitude at all times.'' THEN AND NOW -- Mrs. Erma Butterfield (above) in her heyday as Bermuda's premier limbo dancer and, below, as she is today.