Companions in Courage (16 page)

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.”

T
he 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.

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 incessantly 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.”

S
arah Reinertsen remembers the night her dad came into her room to take her picture.

At seven, she did not understand much. But she knew she’d be undergoing surgery in the morning. She knew when she awoke from
the anesthetic she’d be missing a leg. She knew she was scared. She knew this photograph would be the only lasting image of
herself as physically whole.

Don and Solveig Reinertsen’s daughter was born with her left leg considerably shorter than her right. When Sarah became a
toddler, doctors fitted her with a brace. It served her well until she was approaching school age and the difference in the
size of her two legs became more pronounced. After consultation with their doctor, her parents decided that it was in Sarah’s
best interest to amputate her left leg above the knee. Little Sarah cried uncontrollably.

The surgery was done in two stages. First her knee joint was fused. The actual amputation followed three weeks later. Sarah’s
leg was put in a cast to protect it and her from any damage that might occur in an active seven-year-old girl’s life. Her
grandparents came to help, which was wonderful for Don, Solveig, Sarah, and her brother, Peter, who was four.

Sarah’s toughest challenge was staying indoors when she would rather have been playing in the snow. But she couldn’t play
with anybody. She just had to wait out that winter until she could begin rehab that next summer. And when rehab came, it began
slowly. Sarah had to learn to walk, run, and skip all over again. A very active child needed to find a different way to be
active again.

Because her family was athletic, there was always competition going on among the Reinertsens. Sarah had learned to swim when
she was three. Her parents encouraged her, but, more importantly, treated her like everyone else. When she fell, they didn’t
make a big deal out of it. They waited until she got up and then they all moved on. “They never saw me as limited,” Sarah
says.