Still Me

by Christopher Reeve

  Even before my injury I had always thought of scientists as gifted individuals of superior intelligence but wondered why they seemed to work so slowly. I respected their need to proceed cautiously, to perform thorough investigations, and to verify their data; but I often teased my half sister Alya about the endless number of conferences and symposiums that scientists attend. When I became a vent-dependent quadriplegic, my desire to resume a normal life made me more aggressive in my dealings with the scientific community. In many of my speeches around the country, I found myself referring to the Apollo 13 mission and the now famous line, “Failure is not an option.”

  On behalf of people around the world who suffer from serious illnesses or disabilities, I often long to make the scientists understand that, figuratively speaking, we are in the same predicament. There is an emergency. If we fail to support cutting-edge research immediately, it will be the equivalent of saying that nothing can be done to save the lives of three astronauts about to die of CO2 poisoning. If we insist on sticking to the standard, cautious checklist in our approach to research, if we let the bureaucracy of the FDA or the NIH prevent new therapies from reaching the public, we will have needlessly perpetuated the suffering of millions of members of the American family.

  Fortunately, from the spring of 1996 on, more money has been raised and more research accomplished. In November 1996 nearly 25,000 neuroscientists met to share information and ideas at the Convention Center in Washington and in sessions in nearby hotels. It was the largest such gathering in history. In March 1997 a meeting was held of the APA’s research consortium—a collaboration of neuroscientists in Europe and the United States. Dennis Choi reported on his work on cell death, Fred Gage on the growth factor NT-3, the Bunge laboratory on Schwann cell transplants, Wise Young on his progress with 4-AP and L-1, Martin Schwab on his efforts to humanize the antibody to the protein inhibitors; Lars Olson on his bridging technique. Gene therapy was discussed—the efforts to stimulate the growth of damaged axons by changing the function of an injured animal’s cells to produce a growth factor at the site of the injury. It was all immensely exciting.

  When I met with Martin Schwab at UC Irvine in September 1996 to give him the research award, he showed me what he’d been doing—work that hadn’t even been published yet. He’d been able to take a rat who had been injured for two months and get nerve fibers to regenerate 2 centimeters. That’s a long distance. With my injury at C2, you would only need to regenerate 20 millimeters to obtain functional recovery—first breathing, then arm movements, control of my hands, and so on down the line. If the regenerated nerves grew to the lumbar area, I would get up and walk. The last thing Dr. Schwab said to me as I was leaving is that by the end of 1998 we ought to be able to do things at the clinical level that had been thought impossible only a few years ago.

  But when I left Kessler in December 1995, much of this work had not been accomplished. Wise Young’s words to Barbara Walters—that over time hope ebbs—still haunted me. I was absolutely unwilling to give in to that way of thinking. I remember talking with Dr. Kirshblum late one night and saying that I didn’t want to join the ranks of spinal cord victims who had given up. While I could certainly understand that someone who has been in a chair for thirty years would have a hard time believing in a brighter future, I had only been injured for seven months. For my own emotional well-being I had to banish negativity from my mind. Lindbergh made it across the Atlantic; Houdini got out of those straitjackets; with enough money and grass-roots support, why shouldn’t I be able to get out of this wheelchair? When you’re trapped in a dark room, you think: Where’s the exit? You find the exit by remaining calm and slowly feeling your way in the dark until you reach the door.

  By the beginning of 1998 it seemed more certain than ever that victims of brain and central nervous system disorders would be able to escape from that dark room. The first fetal cell transplants into a human spinal cord were accomplished by researchers in Gainesville, Florida. Martin Schwab, having succeeded in developing the antibody to the protein inhibitors in rats, moved into primates with similar success. After studying my latest MRI, taken at UC Irvine in September 1997, he wrote to say that I would be a prime candidate for the first human trials, which were scheduled to begin within a year. Articles about spinal cord research began to appear on the front pages of the leading newspapers around the country.

  Then, on January 3, 1998, The New York Times carried a headline that many thought would never appear: GOVERNMENT SET TO INCREASE MEDICAL RESEARCH SPENDING. And on the continuation of the article: CONGRESS APPEARS EAGER TO INVEST IN A CAUSE POPULAR AMONG VOTERS. Beginning with a $900 million increase in the 1998 budget, the Clinton administration proposed to increase funding for the NIH by $1 billion per year over the next five years. Momentum was gathering in Congress to go further—to double the NIH budget within that period. Members were beginning to recognize the economic advantages as well as the popularity of the issue in an election year.

  I was particularly gratified by a comment the president made in the Times article. He said that this century had been devoted to discoveries and achievements in the world around us, including the conquest of outer space. In the next century we should focus on solving the mysteries and conquering the difficulties of the world within us.

  If the president and Congress follow through with the vision made public at the beginning of the new year, it will be a major victory for all the advocates of research who have worked so long and hard to make this happen. I felt that a part of the speech I gave at the Democratic Convention had been validated: at first something seems impossible; then it becomes improbable; but with enough conviction and support, it finally becomes inevitable.

  Chapter 6

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  I was only fifteen, but the summer of 1968 marked the beginning of my independence. I had spent the previous summer in a theater workshop at the Lawrenceville School, just ten miles down the road from Princeton. Now I was accepted as an apprentice at the Williamstown Summer Theatre on the Williams College campus in Massachusetts. The apprentices were needed from the middle of June right through Labor Day, so there would be no time to visit either of my families, which I have to admit was a relief.

  There were about sixty of us. We did everything: ran sound, hung lights, and painted scenery; attended classes in acting, voice, and movement. And because there were eight plays to produce in a ten-week season and only fifteen Equity actors in the company, we were sometimes cast in decent parts on the main stage.

  The theater was run by the wonderfully eccentric Nikos Psacharopoulos, who taught acting and directing at Yale and at the Circle in the Square Theater School in New York. He was about five feet six and usually wore a uniform of sandals, a striped sailor shirt, and a floppy straw hat. On black tie opening nights he generally went barefoot. Much like my friend Juice from Jamaica, his Greek accent had grown more pronounced the longer he lived in America.

  Nikos’s devotion to the theater was intense, and he knew its history and literature backwards and forwards. By the late sixties he had been at Williamstown for thirteen years and was well on the way to transforming it from a typical summer theater into the proper theater festival it is today. The choice of plays in the summer of my apprenticeship reflected his vision for the theater. We began with Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, moved on to Brecht’s Galileo, served up a crowd pleaser with Wait Until Dark, then did Chekhov’s The Seagull, Peter Shaffer’s White Lies/Black Comedy, Tennessee Williams’s Camino Real with a cast of fifty, repeated Wait Until Dark, and sent them out humming the cheery score of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

  I was cast in a small part in Iphigenia. Actually I was human set dressing. John Conklin, the designer, had specified that eight soldiers should stand motionless on the ramparts through the entire play, which ran for an hour and fifty minutes with no intermission. We were draped in heavy blankets, carried spears, and wore plastic helmets. During rehearsals
we could turn around and watch the actors—Olympia Dukakis, Louis Zorich, Ken Howard, and Laurie Kennedy. It was exciting to see them develop such exceptional performances in Kenneth Cavander’s modern translation of the play. But by opening night we had to remain frozen on the ramparts, facing upstage. The soldier to my left, Jason Robards III, often failed to hold still. Out of the corner of my eye I would notice his head bobbing and weaving, and sometimes his body would sway in an almost rhythmic motion. After a couple of performances my curiosity got the better of me, and I asked him what was going on. He showed me his helmet: taped to the inside was a small transistor radio with a wire and an earplug. During the performances he was quietly grooving to the Supremes, Santana, and Blood, Sweat & Tears.

  In Camino Real I had a real part as one of the policemen who patrol the streets, providing a threatening presence to the people trying to escape. One day as we rehearsed a confrontation between the police and the crowd, I received a supreme compliment from Nikos. Frustrated because he wasn’t getting enough noise and commotion from the extras, he stormed up onstage, pointed at me, and yelled, “Why can’t you all be like Chris Reeve? He can make the sound of a crowd all by himself.” I reveled in the moment, but later I wasn’t sure what he’d meant. Maybe he was impressed by the intensity with which I attacked any assignment I was given at the theater, whether onstage or off.

  I think that was the purpose of that summer; it was a test of our commitment to the theater. Some of the apprentices left after a few weeks. Some didn’t show up for crew calls and were asked to leave. As usual I tried to act older than I was (hardly anyone knew there was a fifteen-year-old in the midst of a group of mostly college students) and did everything expected of me, although I begged the apprentice director not to send me back to the costume shop. One week of sewing buttons and hemming sleeves had been more than enough.

  We revered the Equity actors tremendously, not only for their talent but also for the discipline they showed in tackling so many parts in one short season. They in turn were interested in our development. In our acting classes we worked on scenes with Michael Posnick, a graduate student at Yale. Toward the end of the summer, ten of the best were chosen to be presented before the Equity company. I had been working on a scene from Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge with a wonderful young actress from Boston named Michael Curtin. We were both thrilled when our scene was picked for the big night. I was playing the young Italian immigrant Rodolpho and suddenly worried that my Italian accent and strong characterization would be torn to pieces by the assembled Equity gurus. Michael Posnick urged me not to back down or play it safe.

  The scenes were presented in one of the rehearsal rooms at midnight, after a performance of The Seagull. The room was packed with all the apprentices, actors, and theater staff. Much to my surprise Michael and I both stayed calm, connected with each other, and avoided the temptation to “sell” our performances to the audience. Instead we succeeded in drawing them in.

  I was especially pleased because as Michael and I had worked on the scene, I had made a number of suggestions and continually voiced my opinions about blocking, props, pace, and other details that normally arc the concerns of a director. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to mind. Either that, or my natural bossiness was too overwhelming.

  Actually, I already had a minor credit as a director. At Princeton Day School a few months earlier I had directed Hello Out There, William Saroyan’s one-act about a young drifter in a small-town jail who befriends the young woman who brings him his meals. Auditions were open to the whole school, but I ended up casting myself in the lead. (At least this kept arguments between the actor and the director to a minimum.) The set consisted of a single square cell in the center of a bare stage. My stepfather and I had built it ourselves. The bars were made of thin wooden dowels, which we had to be careful not to break. Sometimes after the girl dropped off my meal, the cell door would swing open and I would have to close it myself in order to remain a prisoner.

  In May we were invited to join a one-act play festival at Princeton High School, where student work from many of the surrounding towns was presented over the course of a week. On the night of our performance, the jail held together, the door stayed shut, and our production won a prize. This was my first taste of directing, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

  Michael and I received a nice critique from the actors after our scene from A View from the Bridge. The next day I was standing at the notice board when Olympia Dukakis came up, poked a finger at me, and said, “I’m surprised. You’ve got a lot of talent. Don’t mess it up.”

  This was very good advice because at the time only a small percentage of my attention was on acting. The rest of it was on the chorus of female apprentices in Iphigenia. Their costumes drove me wild: they were all running around in short, flimsy tunics. One of the group absolutely knocked me out. Her name was Alison. She was seventeen and had just graduated from Dana Hall. I was fifteen, this was my first major crush, and I was clueless. Occasionally we made eye contact—or at least I thought we did—and once, as she came out onstage, she touched my arm when she passed by. I was so excited I nearly fell off the ramparts.

  Unfortunately, I was so attracted to her that I stumbled over myself at every opportunity. I had always been fairly awkward around girls, but I became particularly inept and clumsy around Alison. The problem was that, at seventeen, she was far ahead of me in every way. She dated college guys. (Rumor had it that she was involved with a student at Amherst.) A mere fifteen-year-old had an uphill climb to gain her attention.

  Oh, I had it so bad. She and her roommate Trisha had a dorm room that was right in the front of the building on the second floor, and sometimes I would stand below the window trying to overhear any conversations, or just because I knew she was up there. I made mistake after mistake. One day she came down for breakfast. I didn’t know that she hadn’t washed her hair in about three days—it was piled on top of her head with a couple of rubber bands. As she went by I said, “Gosh, I love your hair.” She looked at me like I was some kind of crabgrass.

  But I kept trying, and gradually I began to be less self-conscious around her. Finally—sheer heaven—she started to reciprocate a little as the first night of Iphigenia in Aulis approached. At the opening night party we started talking. I don’t know where I got the courage, but I suggested that we take some food and a bottle of wine from the party and go down the hill for an impromptu picnic by the stream. It was a night of complete euphoria. We dragged ourselves back to the dorms just as the sun was coming up.

  The next day she dropped me like a hot potato. Maybe Trisha and some of her other friends had seen her go off with a tenth-grader, or perhaps her college boyfriend had called. It was a summer of such highs and lows.

  One night it rained really hard for a long time. By about three in the morning, the lawn in front of our dorm had become very slippery. So a group of about twenty of us stripped down to our underwear and slid across the lawn. With a good running start you could slide about thirty feet. It was wonderful. Of course the event was bittersweet for me, because it was all happening below Alison’s window.

  On a typical day I was in a movement class at nine, then a voice class, built a set, and had a Snickers bar for lunch. When my mother drove up from Princeton to visit, there was only enough time to take her out for a quick burger and an A & W root beer. In spite of my bewildering rejection in the romance department, it was one of the best summers of my life.

  Much to my surprise, the next one topped it. I was hired by the Harvard Summer School Repertory Theater Company at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge, for the impressive sum of forty-four dollars a week. Nineteen dollars went to the rental of a Radcliffe dorm room, leaving twenty-one for food and entertainment. Our season included Brendan Behan’s The Hostage, in which I had a minor part as a Russian sailor; Miller’s Death of a Salesman, for which the set was a junkyard, symbolizing the American ethic of discarding people when they are no longer useful; and Turgen
ev’s A Month in the Country, in which I played Beliaev, the young tutor at a Russian country estate. Elliot Norton, the so-called dean of American theater critics, who could make or break a pre-Broadway production with a few well-chosen words, wrote in The Boston Globe that I was “startlingly effective.” This was good for my ego.

  A Month in the Country with Joanne Hamlin (not my summertime romance).

  Even more so was the fact that the lead actress in the play—twenty-three, beautiful, and a recent graduate of Carnegie-Mellon—was interested in me. She was engaged to a fellow Carnegie alumnus, who was in California for the summer writing sketches for a television variety show. They planned to save some money and get married in the fall. He used to phone exactly at seven o’clock every Sunday evening. But before long I had moved from the fourth floor of the dorm down to her room on the second, where we’d light candles, listen to the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, read from The Prophet, and work on my education as a lover. Soon she stopped answering the phone on Sunday evenings.

  The summer and our relationship progressed beautifully. One morning, however, our smooth romance turned briefly into a French farce. There was a knock on the door at seven o’clock. Still half asleep she called out, “Just leave the sheets by the door.” There was a pause, and then a male voice boomed, “It’s me!” I bolted out of bed and began a frantic hunt for my clothes, which were strewn all over the room. For a moment I considered jumping out the window; then I remembered that we were on the second floor. There was no choice but to face the music. Once we had pulled some clothes on, we took a deep breath and opened the door. There was an excruciating silence; then she said simply, “This is my friend Christopher. But you wouldn’t understand.” I quickly excused myself and retreated to the fourth floor. The two of them spent the day taking a long walk by the Charles River. That evening he caught a plane back to Los Angeles. I don’t think they ever saw each other again.