Martha Mason defied many odds in her life — not least of which was living in an iron lung longer than anyone else in the world.

Unfortunately, Mason died Monday at the age of 72 after living most of her life in an 800-pound airtight tube that breathed for her. She contracted polio at the age of 11 in 1948 and was paralyzed from the neck down. She didn’t, however, let her physical limitations restrain her in any way. She graduated first in her class at Gardner-Webb College and at Wake Forest, where she was a member of an honor society. She wrote papers in her head and then had her mother write them down to hand in. She also got a voice-activated computer and used it to produce her 2003 memoir, Breath: Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung, and recently set up a Facebook account to stay in touch with people. She loved to talk about politics, gardening and any number of topics with her visitors.

"I’m what goes on inside my head," she said in an interview in 2003, reports The Winston-Salem Journal.

"Martha was the most amazing example of what the human spirit is capable of despite all the adversity," longtime friend Charles Cornwell of Charleston, SC, told The Charlotte Observer. "She was a very strong person."