Companions in Courage

by Pat LaFontaine

  She was the best, and she was extremely proud of the voice her success gave her with sports fans and sponsors to view disabled athletes as just that—athletes. In 1986 she won the U.S. Ski Association’s Beck Award, given to the best American racer in international skiing. Ski Racing magazine named her 1988 U.S. Female Alpine Skier of the Year, and the U.S. Olympic Committee named her Female Skier of the Year. Not disabled skier. Flat-out, Skier of the Year. In October 1997 she was inducted into the Women’s Sports Hall of Fame.

  Diane’s story of overcoming adversity is without question one that would inspire anyone who grapples with the meaning of life. Diane’s athletic excellence, love of life, perky sense of humor, physical vulnerability, and journey through the highlights of victory and depths of despair have given us a deeply personal look at what it takes to overcome. One of her pet peeves is the use of the word “courageous” when talking about disabled athletes, but there is no other word that can describe the manner in which she played the cards she was dealt.

  Diane’s parents owned a vacation house in the Canon Mountain ski area close to their home near Boston. At five years old she was on skis, and her exceptional ability was soon obvious. At twelve, walking through the snow to her house, her right leg gave out. The diagnosis: bone cancer. Her leg was amputated above the knee.

  “Even before surgery, my first question was, ‘Will I be able to ski?’ When they said yes, I figured it wouldn’t be too bad,” Diane says.

  Her accomplishments were an expression of her spirit.

  “All of us on the U.S. Disabled Ski Team were missing one body part or another. For some it was a leg or two, others an arm. Some were paraplegic. We all became quite casual about body parts. We knew that the fullness of our lives had little to do with the form of our bodies and had a great deal to do with the spirit.”

  This attitude was tested again on New Year’s Eve in 1992. A biopsy was performed on her right breast. She had cancer again and would require a mastectomy. Again, her sense of humor and positive attitude prevailed. “Considering what I had seen, losing a breast wasn’t such a big deal. Sure, I’d be a little lopsided, but so what?”

  A week later the doctor recommended a biopsy on the left breast because of some concerns in the report. “It’s probably nothing,” he said, using the same words as the first test. “Just to make sure.” Diane grew to hate those words. The results came back positive, and a double mastectomy was scheduled.

  Soon after that surgery, during an annual gynecological exam, the doctors recommended a standard surgical procedure for what they said “was probably nothing,” and she awoke to, “We had to remove your uterus.” How much is too much?

  I include Diane as a Companion in Courage for many reasons, one of which includes my understanding of the dark place the mind can go when our physical well-being is threatened. Diane remembers, “For the first time the bravado of ‘Hey, a couple of breasts, and they weren’t that big to begin with …’ wasn’t working.”

  I know that feeling. I remember after my concussion in Buffalo how the pep talks to myself didn’t work. My frustration intensified. Life seemed to be unraveling and the fears were increasing. I couldn’t sleep at night and my mind became a very scary place to go. For Diane it was depression and a suicide attempt. She wrote:

  Do they laugh

  that they ripped her into half

  of who she was before?

  A gross game

  of tug-of-war. They made sport until

  she danced

  No more and laughed no more

  and dreamed no more Oh, the Great Gods’

  tug-of-war

  Whatever for?

  When I write of Diane’s courage, my words cannot always describe the full pain of the battle. Her therapy, her falling in love and marrying Steve Brosnihan, her dog Midnight Sun, and her return to the ski slopes are all stories within themselves. But the profound result of her loving and being loved have brought Diane to a place where she states, “I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. And this right now is more important—even in the eyes of those who care about me—than whatever sadness might someday come.”

  Most of us do not live as if death has called on us so often. It makes a difference in how each day is lived. To live with love creates a boundary of protection from the vulnerability of despair.

  It’s all downhill from there.

  33

  Zoe Koplowitz

  I never thought of a vitamin pill as some sort of miracle drug. But then I heard about Zoe Koplowitz and now I’m a believer.

  The funny thing is, taking the pill isn’t what helped Zoe. Not being able to—that’s what made all the difference.

  At twenty-five, Zoe Koplowitz was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Physical frailties changed and complicated her life, but, like so many who struggle with this crippling disease, she carried on as best she could. A success in business, she was co-owner of a trucking company by the time she reached her mid-forties. She led a busy life but not one filled with physical activity. Vitamin therapy and a pair of crutches helped her through her daily routine.

  All of the vitamins she took surely did some good. But one day in 1988, the vitamin pill she could not take forced her to reexamine her life. What happened? She choked on a vitamin pill.

  Anger and helplessness overwhelmed her. So did disgust with her physical limitations. Enough is enough. She chose at that moment to conquer twenty years of subjugation by a disease. Where could she even begin to climb such a mountain? Believe it or not, Zoe chose the most outrageous goal possible. She began to train for the marathon.

  This was not your typical training program. She did not need a watch for timing the mile breaks. Nor was speed of the essence or the purpose.

  In 1991, Zoe ran in her first marathon—the biggest and best of them all, the New York City Marathon. What a thrill. While she finished last, some twenty-seven hours after the start, she brought courage and determination across the finish line. And it wasn’t even the finish line anymore—it had been dismantled and cleaned up hours earlier.

  I’d love to tell you that she improved with time, but I cannot, and it’s almost beside the point. One year it took her more than an hour to get over the Queensboro Bridge. The reason—the marathon crew had picked up the carpeting and her crutches caught in the grating. Each year since her debut, Zoe’s time has actually increased because of the crippling effects of MS, but so has her impact on the city of New York and the world of runners. Her indomitable spirit, incredible determination, and absolutely fearless courage continue to inspire.

  She encourages others in their own efforts to come to grips with disabilities. She addresses classes in the New York City schools, especially in the poor neighborhoods, teaching others that they can live against the odds. Her philosophy, to those who seem to have a very limited future, shouts the message, “Triumph can come through self-acceptance and a reluctance to admit to boundaries set by others.”

  She is part of a Chemical Bank program called the Achilles Ambassadors. What an incredible example she is to both kids who are disabled and to others who are learning to be sensitive to the potential of the disabled. “Disabled people have the same needs, wants, and feelings as everybody else,” she says. “They just move at a different pace.”

  Zoe’s story epitomizes what Companions in Courage means to me. Those who achieve their potential by tapping their inner strength give not only to themselves but also to others. When we unlock our own spirit and potential, we want others to experience the same confidence. We are encouraged and blessed by one another. What a powerful magnet for human compassion.

  Consider Zoe’s run in 1993. A few miles into the race, she saw a woman holding a sign encouraging all Achilles runners. Zoe asked, “Who do you know in Achilles?” The mother pointed to her disabled little girl, two-year-old Meena. Later Zoe told the mother, “I dedicated this race to Meena.”

  She had all kinds of unexpected company as she made her way to the finish. A
group of French runners saluted her with their version of “La Marseillaise.” Mexican runners gave her roses and kisses of support. As she neared the end, dozens of runners from all over the world saluted and cheered her.

  A final story that truly touches my heart represents the capacity fellow athletes have for one another. Grete Waitz, nine times the New York Marathon winner, wanted to add something to Zoe’s effort by offering a medal to celebrate her long run. Since Grete’s husband had run the previous day, she rushed back to the hotel to get his medal. “Jack won’t mind,” she said, “and we must have one to give Zoe.”

  The hour grew late, but Waitz and friends talked the crew out of tearing down the finish line. They threw together some flags and re-created the finish. The cheering and the chanting, Zoe, Zoe, Zoe, touched the hearts of the crew, who now went running to get their cameras.

  Up the final hill came Zoe, crutches and all. Nearly a hundred runners and passersby accompanied her. What a great moment—in sports and in life.

  Zoe had once again fulfilled the message that hangs on a poster over her bed—“The race belongs not only to the swift, but to those who keep on running.”

  34

  Haley Scott

  The University of Notre Dame women’s swimming and diving team bus pulled away from Northwestern University’s campus in Evanston, Illinois, and headed out into darkening skies.

  The weather worsened on that January day. The wind whipped the snow into blinding whiteouts and glazed the surface of the road with ice. The bus fishtailed to the left, then to the right, and finally turned completely around before its momentum pushed it over the edge of the road into a ditch, barely a mile outside of campus in South Bend, Indiana.

  The first swimmer to climb out into the icy ditch was Susan Bohdan, a freestyler. The bus had turned upside down and its tires were still spinning. Susan couldn’t believe her eyes. She had a momentary fear that she was the only one to survive the accident. Starting to climb back in through one of the shattered windows, she saw some of the others struggling to escape.

  Inside, the luggage and her teammates appeared to be piled on top of one another. Bohdan found Haley and instantly knew she was seriously hurt.

  Swimmers and divers emerged from the bus with scrapes, broken bones, lacerations, head trauma. Help began arriving almost immediately. The women were taken to three hospitals in the South Bend area. The night became colder and more ominous when the reality that two of the Notre Dame swimmers hadn’t survived the accident began to make its way from hospital to hospital. The grief and heartache, coupled with the physical wounds left by that tragedy, made January 24, 1992, a day the University of Notre Dame can never forget.

  Haley had broken her back. Dick Rosenthal, the Notre Dame athletic director at the time, remembers Haley well: “You talk about courage. Unbelievable! I rushed to the hospital and found Haley, an eighteen-year-old kid from Phoenix, Arizona, discussing her surgery options with the medical staff. Her maturity stunned me. They are talking about exploratory surgery and the reality that she may be paralyzed for life. She says, ‘Well, let’s get going. What are we waiting for?’”

  Haley Scott underwent two operations that night and early the next morning. In the first, doctors inserted two metal rods along the back of her spine, then grafted bone from her hip and ribs into the vertebrae area that was shattered. In the second exploratory surgery, the doctors hoped to find a blood clot that might have been causing her paralysis, without success.

  For the next few days, Haley tried a zillion times to get her toes to move. She could not. But on the fifth day, with her mother standing by and encouraging her, she wiggled her toes. Her stunned mother screamed as Haley made her first move on the long road to recovery.

  About a month later, Tim Welsh, the Notre Dame swim coach, was sitting in his office when Haley Scott walked in. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He got up and hugged her very carefully.

  Haley returned to the pool about ten weeks after the accident. However, she had to leave the water when it became apparent that the rods in her back couldn’t withstand the pressure that her swimming stroke was putting on them. They began to bend, and finally broke through her skin, necessitating more surgery.

  During the first operation, which lasted for two hours, the rods were removed. The second operation lasted eight hours and required the temporary removal of several of Haley’s organs in order to insert new rods. The third operation straightened her spine. It too lasted eight hours. The ordeal of procedures lasted ten days.

  Where did this swimmer from Notre Dame get such tenacity and determination?

  “For a while I didn’t think I would be able to return to school for the fall semester, but that is where I wanted to be,” she said. “I wanted to be back with my teammates and my friends. The accident is something we shared in common and each of us survived it in our own individual ways. We became each other’s support system. We learned from each other. I wanted to be with the people who lived that experience with me. Back at school is where I belong.”

  Haley Scott began reporting on the swim team’s events for the school newspaper. She used a golf cart to get around the campus, but each night she would walk a little. Gradually she began walking to class and to swim meets.

  She also found a different Haley Scott, a mature young woman attuned to the pain in the world around her. “I am much more aware of suffering and what people have to go through when their lives are turned upside down,” she says. “When I hear about an accident, I think about the people involved and what they face in order to recover. I’m more aware.”

  Haley Scott is a courageous young woman who inspired me when I heard her story. The clarity of what she wanted gave her the motivation to accomplish her goals. The team’s tragic accident, the loss of her teammates, and the challenge of her recovery remind us not to give in to the temptation to feel victimized and get caught up in self-pity and martyrdom.

  35

  Paul Binnebose

  I’ve spent a lot of my life on the ice. I’ve seen a lot of great things and some that were pretty awful. I’ve had my share of the good and the bad. And yet, in all my years in hockey, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen or heard of the equal of what happened to Paul Binnebose as he trained for his shot at the 2002 Winter Olympics.

  Binnebose and his partner (and girlfriend) Laura Handy, top competitors in pairs figure skating, were on the ice at the University of Delaware’s arena on the morning of September 29, 1999. Paul lifted Laura above his head in a move that shouldn’t draw any undue attention. But then Paul fell. He and Laura hit the unyielding and unforgiving surface with a crash that changed their lives forever.

  The impact split his head open from his neck to his forehead, and he went into seizures at the rink before he could be taken to the hospital. To add to the horror, his mom was there with her video camera, taping the workout. Instead she got a horror show.

  Once Paul arrived at the hospital, doctors set out to save his life and had to employ radical strategies to do it. With his brain swelling three to four inches outside his skull, they could find only one way to relieve the pressure—they cut from one ear up across the forehead and to the other ear, and then cut out a piece of skull above his eyes.

  The chunk of bone went into a freezer at seventy degrees below zero, marked with his name, to be reattached later. The doctors packed his head in gauze and labeled that too: “No plate, no pressure.” The exposed brain area was covered by only a thin layer of skin.

  Paul doesn’t remember suffering the fracture. Or the surgery. Or the eleven days in a coma. Or three more weeks spent unconscious, infections of the heart and blood, a collapsed lung, and pneumonia. Twice doctors brought him back from clinical death.

  Not remembering differs from not knowing. His body tells him every day what happened, and he can’t pass a mirror without seeing the awful results of that on-ice slip. The right side of his face is paralyzed; he wears a black patch over his right eye, an eye that tears in
cessantly and wanders. His muscle definition is gone, his arms and legs like those of a stick figure. The impact of his fall on the ice severed the nerves that control the sense of smell, and he will never regain it. His days involve intense therapy and training.

  All of that work and pain centers on a goal. Some people, including his mom, think he should give up on it, but Paul refuses to stop aiming for the ultimate.

  “Forget the skating? I’ve been doing it for seventeen years,” he says. “It would be more selfish to stop. I want to make an Olympic team.”

  The 2002 Games would have been his and Laura’s best shot. The pair finished third at the U.S. Championships in 1999 and made the U.S. team that competed in the World Championships that year. Now 2006 looms, if Paul can make it back. I find it hard to believe he laced up his skates in mid-January of 2000, three and a half months after he died twice. Doctors told him he could skate without his protective helmet in a year to eighteen months.

  Don’t tell Paul Binnebose about the odds against his and Laura’s making it to the Olympics. Look at the odds he has already overcome and listen to the way he keeps himself on the emotional high road:

  “Good things have happened. I didn’t die either one of those times. I got rid of the pneumonia. I don’t have to have heart surgery. I don’t have brain damage. As far as skating goes, I don’t think we will know that until I get stronger.

  “It’s never a good idea to sit around and say, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ I’ve been skating pairs for seventeen years and this is the fourth time I’ve ever dropped a girl. I fully intend to have great things come from this.”