HOPEDALE, Ohio

When the Cleveland Clinic announced it had performed the country's first face transplant -- on a severely deformed woman in December -- rumors quickly spread that the recipient was probably a former bar owner in this tiny town of 800 a little more than an hour from Pittsburgh.

Residents were hopeful the recipient was Connie Culp, 46, whose face was horribly disfigured in 2004 when her husband shot her in the face with a shotgun in an attempted murder-suicide inside the couple's Main Street bar, sadly named -- in retrospect -- the OK Corral.

On Tuesday, they learned their hunches were correct when Ms. Culp appeared at a news conference at the Cleveland Clinic to reveal she had been the recipient in the historic 22-hour operation. They couldn't have been happier for Ms. Culp, a mother of two and grandmother of two, whom friends and acquaintances alike describe as friendly, kind and resilient.

"I thought she really looked good," friend Darlene Wilkins said yesterday while waiting on customers at the liquor store on Main Street. "The poor girl has gone down a long road and still has a long road to go, but this is a big difference. I'm so pleased. She is a good person."

For years, Ms. Culp had lived with vision in only one eye, no cheekbones, no nose, no upper jaw and no upper lip. Even after enduring 30 operations to try to fix her face, Ms. Culp could see only dimly, could not eat without a feeding tube, could no longer smell and had difficulty communicating.

And then, on Dec. 10, in the groundbreaking operation, Dr. Maria Siemionow led a team of doctors who replaced 80 percent of Ms. Culp's face with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from another woman who had just died. It was the fourth face transplant in the world, though the others were not as extensive.

The transplant has enabled her to smell, eat solid food, drink from a cup and breathe normally for the first time since the shooting. Dr. Daniel Alam, a lead surgeon in Ms. Culp's transplant, said yesterday that it will take another two to three months before her nerves grow far enough into her transplanted tissue for her to regain flexible facial expressions.

He also explained why she has such a jowly appearance. At the time of the transplant, it was safer and simpler for surgeons to remove the donor's salivary glands and surrounding tissue as a whole unit and attach them to her face.

That means she has two sets of salivary glands right now, but within the next six months, Dr. Alam expects to remove that extra tissue and restore a more normal jaw line to her face.

The transplant has given her a new face that does not look like her old face or the donor's visage -- and that is fine with Ms. Culp, Dr. Alam said.

Before the surgery, he said, she told him, "I just want to be a human being again -- I don't necessarily have to be me again." Ms. Culp has told reporters a child once called her a monster and other people have stared at her.

"When somebody has a disfigurement and don't look as pretty as you do, don't judge them, because you never know what happened to them," she said at the news conference. "Don't judge people who don't look the same as you do. Because you never know. One day it might be all taken away."

Ms. Culp resided in Unionport, Ohio, not far from Hopedale, but she and her husband purchased the OK Corral in the early 2000s, a local hangout where drinks and bar food were served with a smile. Ms. Culp's twin sister, Bonnie, often helped out there, and the Culps lived in an apartment above the bar.

"She was always smiling, very friendly," said Ms. Wilkins, who in the aftermath of the shooting visited Ms. Culp in a Pittsburgh hospital and at two nursing homes. "She was very nice with everybody."

She recalled Ms. Culp wearing a Santa Claus outfit around Christmas outside the bar, telling passersby to come in for a drink.

"It's terrible what she has been going through," said postal employee Marlene McKim. "She was very nice, friendly. Both of them were, actually."

But in September 2004, Ms. Culp's husband, Thomas, shot her at close range inside the bar as horrified customers looked on. He then pointed the barrel of the shotgun to his own face and fired but received relatively minor injuries. He is now in prison serving a seven-year sentence. Ms. Culp has said she forgives her husband for what he did to her.

Terry Trushel, who with Ms. Wilkins visited Ms. Culp during her recuperation after the shooting, said he was shocked not only at how she looked then but also at her resiliency and capacity for forgiveness.

"I'll tell you one thing: She has will power. From day one, she never acted as if she was going to give up on herself. She said she was going to make it," Mr. Trushel said.

"I don't know where she gets the willpower. It says an awful lot about the kind of person she is [to forgive]. She's a very remarkable person."

Jerry Capers, who has turned the former OK Corral into Capraro's family-style restaurant and lounge, said it was amazing that his tiny town had experienced something so horrific as Ms. Culp's shooting that now has led to something so wonderful.

"Not everyone is capable of doing what she has done. God bless her."