Companions in Courage (12 page)

Well, Jimmie got the message that he would never compete on the slopes again. Soon the crippling effects of the degenerative
disease began to affect his daily life. His vision would blur and feeling from the waist down would numb. He was supposed
to avoid stress. So easy to say. His marriage began to fail, his hero role vanished, and he headed slowly downhill, as if
the race was over. By 1975 he had given up and lived as a recluse, frustrated and depressed.

You’ll read the story later of another of my Companions in Courage, Zoe Koplowitz, whose moment of clarity came from a vitamin
pill that she could not swallow. Well, Jimmie’s arrived as he sat by himself, a book in his hand. In his reading he was drawn
to a quote by the philosopher Blaise Pascal.

“‘One of man’s greatest obstacles is to learn to sit quietly in his room,’” Jimmie recalls. “What that quote said to me was,
‘This is the rest of your life. You can sit here and feel sorry for yourself, or you can get back into life.’”

Jimmie drew this from it: “I just couldn’t stand around waiting for a magical cure.”

To move forward, Jimmie looked to his past. He rekindled the same spirit in which he had trained for skiing in his youth in
Squaw Valley, California. He developed his own cardiovascular workout. This included push-ups, sit-ups, swimming, and bike
riding. He slowly got his positive spirit back. In fact he retrieved life itself. Like Zoe, he found more meaning in life
by giving to those who suffer.

In 1984 Jimmie founded the Jimmie Heuga Center for the Reanimation of the Physically Challenged, in Edwards, Colorado. There
he developed a revolutionary approach to living with MS, with a focus on physical activity. “I’m the least qualified person
to run a medical center,” says Jimmie, “but I do know how to live. You can’t just wait for the lights to be shut off.”

He did not do all of this by himself. I am once again moved by the companions in Jimmie’s life who gave their love and support
and in turn received such a large reward.

First came romance, with marketing executive Debbie Dana. She was engaged when they met, so he was very cautious about asking
her out. She had just been through brain surgery herself and told Jimmie that she felt newly alive and in touch with the world.
So Jimmie made his move. “In our next life, I’d like to get together with you,” he said. Debbie responded, “I think this is
my next life.”

Love’s magic did the rest. Debbie’s years of caring for Jimmie, who now uses a wheelchair, epitomize the true spirit of loving.
Jimmie is all but helpless. After all these years Debbie has concluded, “In physique, Jimmie is very small. Yet he has so
much heart he is the biggest man I know.”

A second inspiration in Jimmie’s life was his lasting friendship with Billy Kidd, the companion in the 1964 Olympics who came
in a whisker ahead of Jimmie for the silver medal. For over thirty years their friendship has deepened. Kidd is on the board
of the Jimmie Heuga Center and is godfather to two of Jimmie’s sons. Jimmie in turn is godfather to Kidd’s daughter, Hayley.
Their friendship has been an irreplaceable source of encouragement to Jimmie.

“Jimmie is an inspiration to everyone,” Kidd says. “He doesn’t think about MS as a disability, but as a challenge.”

And he never could have imagined that he’d win his uphill battles the same way he won the downhill.

A
nnie Leight had a vision. A vision and a goal. To usher in the new millennium as a time of transition and transformation,
she planned to walk 10,000 miles on a route shaped like a butterfly.

Why a butterfly? To symbolize new times, freedom, personal evolution, in the same way a caterpillar disappears into a cocoon
and emerges ready to fly.

Talk about a huge aspiration. To walk 10,000 miles? And Annie would accomplish her mission—at least in part. She would ultimately
complete 3,300 miles of her visionary project, slowed at first by injuries suffered in a car accident, and stopped finally
by cancer.

She had planned to begin in October of 1993, but spent two years recovering and rehabilitating after the accident. And even
as she healed, doctors hit her with the cancer diagnosis.

Annie and her husband, Rob, grieved, but Annie’s walk kept growing in importance. And they decided to make the walk the focal
point of her battle against her disease. “Most people assume that when you’re diagnosed with cancer, you’re going to follow
a tried-and-true path. What my husband and friends did was give me permission to go on my own journey and to live out my own
vision,” Annie said. “My walk had become a sacred task, the outcome of which I did not know. I could do nothing else. In spite
of the setbacks, it was my mission.”

Neither her injuries nor cancer would keep her from her goal. She would walk hampered by the effects of both, but she would
walk nonetheless.

“What I consciously wanted to do was to open my heart and, at least on a small scale, mirror other ways of being alive,” she
said. “Everybody should have dignity and respect. Because if we don’t, we don’t have anything.”

Wow. What a clarity of purpose and sense of meaning.

Annie began her walk on January 1, 1997. And she continued for eight months, before the ravages of cancer forced her from
the road.

Rick Murrie Stearns, publisher of
Personal Transformations
magazine, interviewed Annie a week before she died. She was bedridden in a motel not far from where her walk had ended, and
she was celebrating every step she had taken.

“The walk brought me into a relationship with everything at very, very deep levels,” she told Stearns. “Physically, at first,
the walk was agony because of all the pain. So the first six months was a conscious commitment, sometimes for five minutes,
just to stay with the walk.”

So how did she cope and continue driving herself?

“I learned that all we have is now. I also learned that even though I was fifty years old, I could be remarkably resilient.
One of the main things I learned was how to stay with something. Being and living in nature much of the time, I learned that
there is a softness underlying all of life—a gentleness, a tenderness. Learning to trust that became very important for coping.
I could simply be present to anything. The walk allowed me not only to have a connecting point but to have a place where there’s
no disconnect. I learned that to be open to life, instead of fending life off, allows for each moment to count. I want to
say to everyone: Live your life in the present moment.”

Didn’t she fear dying?

“I’m not afraid anymore,” she told Stearns. “I could get back into fear in the next five minutes. I assume fear is always
a companion. It is a matter of what kind of allegiance it’s given and how much energy is devoted to it. It’s like breath is
there, or like the capacity for joy and love and awe is there. You just don’t have to feed it. I feel that I am in a relationship
with God now; like I am one with God. That is real stuff for me, not just conceptual like it used to be. It is no longer a
concept. Right now it’s my way of being alive in the world.”

At the end of their conversation, Stearns asked Annie what thoughts she wanted us to take away from her journey.

“Stay with your own life,” she said. “Don’t get distracted by trying to be somebody else. Learn to enjoy and be open to the
beauty of any moment, even though there may be enormous pain, ugliness, and injustice. Finally, risk opening your heart to
love and allow the beauty of love into your life as much of the time as possible.”

Butterflies vanish with the season, their beauty a memory. Love never ends. Love never fails.

M
eet Travis Roy, college graduate. Five years after enrolling at Boston University, there he was, getting his degree in communications
in May of 2000. Sadly, Travis could not walk over to the dean, accept his diploma, and enjoy a hearty handshake. There’s more
to his story than academic pursuits and the minting of another graduate.

Travis Roy went to BU to play ice hockey. That’s where his future lay. That would be his career path. But his college hockey
career lasted eleven seconds. It had barely begun, yet it—and life as Travis and his family knew it— had ended.

Travis, a freshman, took his first shift on October 20, 1995, and eleven ticks of the clock later slammed headfirst into the
boards. He tried to get up but he couldn’t move. The ominous silence that filled the hockey arena made the tragic scene unfolding
on the ice even more scary. The Roy family credo—“Get up. You’re not hurt”—echoed in Travis’s head, but he could not comply.
The connection between his thoughts and his body was broken.

What a sad and horrible fate for anyone. But think for a moment about athletes and the special relationship they have with
their bodies. They hone their reflexes, develop wonderful specialized skills, and live fast-paced, action-oriented lives.
And in an accident such as Travis’s, suddenly all of it—not only what they worked for but what their core being strove for—no
longer exists.

Christopher Reeve, a fine actor and equestrian, suffered a spinal cord injury in a fall from a horse. You know how he has
labored to direct films from his wheelchair, the war he fights just to survive each day. You’ve heard how hard he has worked
to raise funds for research into finding a cure for paralysis. Much the same can be said for Marc Buoniconti, a college football
player (and son of famous Miami Dolphins linebacker Nick Buoniconti) injured and rendered quadriplegic in a game. And there’s
a wonderful story to be told about Tim Strachan, a promising high school quarterback who suffered a horrible neck injury in
a swimming accident before he went off to the University of Maryland. Strachan, in a wheelchair, certainly couldn’t play for
Maryland, but the school gave him his scholarship nonetheless and he found a new outlet in working the sidelines for the radio
station that broadcasts the Terrapins’ games.

Now Travis’s father, a former Division I MVP at the University of Vermont, knew Travis was in trouble within seconds of that
head-on collision. Lee had never seen his son lie on the ice without moving. Brenda and Dodi, Travis’s mother and sister,
along with Tim Pratt, Travis’s last high school coach, watched nervously while Lee bent over his son. Travis did not move.

When Dodi, a nurse, got to her brother, she knew he was in trouble. Her father was crying. Travis’s first words when his father
reached his side were, “Dad, I’m in deep s——. My neck hurts and I can’t feel my arms or legs. But, Dad, I made it.” Lee responded,
“You’re right, son. You made it to Division I hockey.”

Travis’s coach at BU, Jack Parker, walked to where his player was lying on the ice. His heart sank when he saw Travis talking.
Hockey players move their legs first to reassure themselves that they are going to be able to keep skating. Parker had never
seen a player down on the ice who didn’t move his legs and talk at the same time. Travis was placed carefully on a stretcher
and taken to Boston City Hospital. X-rays confirmed the Roys’ worst fears—quadriplegia, with a slim chance of recovery.

Travis’s fourth cervical vertebra was seriously damaged. It had exploded when his head hit the boards. Travis’s brain could
no longer send signals to the rest of his body.

He underwent surgery to stabilize his neck and remove the bone fragments lodged in his spine and back. He came down with pneumonia
and developed stomach ulcers from the steroids that were being pumped into his system. His temperature went off the charts
and his right lung collapsed. For two weeks he was fed through one tube while he received air through another tube. When the
tubes were removed, Travis had to have a tracheotomy in order to breathe. This made it impossible for him to talk. His ability
to communicate was reduced to eye blinks, slight nods, and occasional smiles. When asked if he were angry, he shook his head,
“No.” Asked if he was sad, he nodded, “Yes.”

Not much has changed for Travis’s body in the time since the injury. He is still listed as a quadriplegic with a poor prognosis;
however, the indomitable spirit that motivated him to become a Division I hockey player is still very much alive and well.
How does a talented, hardworking athlete move on after such a tragedy? A review of what brought Travis to that Boston University
rink that fateful October day answers that question.

When Travis was born in April 1975, his father was the manager of the Kennebec Ice Arena. Shortly after his birth the family
moved to Yarmouth, Maine, where Lee managed the North Yarmouth Academy rink. One might say that Travis was born to be on the
ice. He was twenty months old when he shuffled across the Yarmouth ice in a pair of figure skates. By age three he was skating
with kids ages four to eight because his father didn’t have enough players to field a pre-mite team.

Hockey in Maine was not a sport that attracted many kids during the seventies. Over the next four years Lee alternated Travis
between offense and defense, so he would learn all aspects of the game. When Lee accepted the assistant director’s job at
the Cumberland Civic Center, the home of the Philadelphia Flyers’ minor-league team, the Maine Mariners, Travis would accompany
his dad to watch the Mariners practice. At an early age he became a student of the game. When he turned seven, Mariners general
manager and coach Tom McVie made Travis the team stickboy and locker-room gofer. He kept water bottles full, carried tape,
supplied gum—he was always bringing the players something. It wasn’t long before Travis was an integral part of the Mariners
team.

For nine years Travis was in the Mariners locker room, soaking up every bit of hockey knowledge and strategy he could from
the likes of John Paddock, Mike Milbury, Rick Bowness, and E. J. McGuire. He skated with some of the players after practice
and occasionally went on road trips with the team. By the time he reached high school, he had a knowledge of hockey rare in
a teenager and a savvy that offset his average speed and lack of size.