Sometimes when Darryl Stingley is with Kenneth Jennings, he catches himself staring at his young friend. The face Stingley sees looking back at him isn`t always Jennings`.
”There are times when I look at Ken, I see a lot of myself,” Stingley said. ”It`s almost like looking in a mirror.”
There are the inevitable comparisons. Like Stingley, Jennings suffered a crippling injury on the football field; Stingley while playing for the New England Patriots in 1978, and Jennings while playing for Simeon High School last fall. They`ve both gone through the exhausting, frustrating, depressing and exhilarating rehabilitation process in an effort to start over again. Now they are trying to make a life for themselves, a quality life.
Yet there is more to the tie between these two former football players than a tragic injury. They`ve formed a tight bond. They see each other often, and talk frequently on the phone.
A funny thing happened to Stingley while he was trying to inspire Jennings following his injury. Jennings wound up inspiring Stingley.
”I`ll sit back and catch myself,” Stingley said. ”I stare at him in amazement. How did he come so far so fast? It`s unbelievable. I can only hope that I`m handling my situation as well as he is.”
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Stingley knows exactly what Jennings has gone through since Oct. 8. During a preseason game in 1978, Stingley`s life changed forever. The New England Patriots` receiver suffered a broken neck when he was tackled by Oakland`s Jack Tatum, leaving Stingley paralyzed.
Jennings didn`t know what fate awaited him when he lined up for the opening kickoff of Simeon`s game with Corliss on an early fall Saturday morning. However, looking back, he now says he did have a premonition.
”I don`t know what it was, but there was something about that week,”
Jennings said. ”The closer it got to the game the more things were telling me not to play.”
Jennings had hurt his lower back in the previous game. He had it checked out by the team doctor before the Corliss game, and Dr. Paul Meyer Jr., who performed surgery on Jennings at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after the injury, said the ailment didn`t have any connection to what eventually happened to him on Oct. 8.
Other things bothered him that week. Jennings had been living with his aunt, Gussie Bridgeman, because it was closer to school. But a couple of days before the game, his mother asked him to move back home. He didn`t feel as if he was relating to his friends. In general, he felt out of sorts.
”I woke up the day of the game, and a voice told me, `Don`t play,`
” Jennings said. ”It was like the Twilight Zone. I didn`t think about it at all until I got hurt. It was a week of hell. Anything that can go wrong did go wrong.”
Nevertheless, Jennings said he still wanted to play against Corliss. At 5 feet 7 inches, 155 pounds, he lacked the size and athletic prowess that his two older brothers, Thomas and Joel, had when they played at Simeon. Jennings, who also was on the wrestling team, still managed to work his way into the lineup at outside linebacker and running back.
”He didn`t possess a lot of athletic ability, but he was a hard worker,” said Simeon coach Al Scott. ”He was totally dedicated, and he always hustled.”
Jennings hustled down the field to cover the opening kickoff against Corliss. Barring a miracle, those will have been his last steps.
Jennings made contact with the return man at Corliss` 35-yard line. With the runner traveling north, Jennings went in trying to make the tackle. According to Scott, the runner`s upper left arm rocked Jennings` head back at approximately a 45-degree angle. The runner kept going and was tackled 10 yards further upfield.
The force of the collision broke Jennings` neck. He`s now a quadriplegic. ”He went down rather calmly,” Scott said. ”Ken`s head wasn`t down. If it was, maybe it would be easier to understand. It was a freak thing.”
Dr. Meyer wasn`t so sure. ”It had nothing to do with the wrong type of tackling,” he said. ”It had to do with the trauma of playing football. I`m surprised it doesn`t happen more often.”
Jennings said he wasn`t in pain in the moments following the collision, but he did realize the gravity of the situation.
”I checked to see if I could move anything,” Jennings said. ”I couldn`t. Somebody from the team was going to move me. My first instinct was that I said, `Don`t move me.` The doctor said it could have saved my life.”
Scott got to him almost immediately, and he couldn`t help but have a flashback. He held the late Simeon basketball star Ben Wilson moments after he was fatally wounded in 1984. ”I knew the seriousness of the situation,” he said.
The paramedics wanted to take Jennings to a local hospital, but Scott protested. He held out until a helicopter was ordered. Jennings was taken from the South Side school to Northwestern.
Jennings remembers going up in the helicopter, but he passed out shortly thereafter. Playing in his honor, Simeon went out and crushed Corliss 50-0.
Jennings said he`d like to see the game films from that victory, specifically the opening kickoff. The Chicago Board of Education currently has the films.
”It was my last game,” Jennings said. ”I want to see how it happened.”
Jennings holds no grudges nor does he have any regrets about playing football. If anything, his love for the game is more intense. He hopes to one day be a coach. He plans on being on the sidelines with Simeon next fall.
”If my limbs come back, I`ll get myself in shape and I`ll play again,”
Jennings said. ”I knew what I was going into. I knew there was a chance I could get hurt.
”Considering my background (Jennings grew up in a low-income part of the South Side), I feel better that I got hurt out there doing something positive, instead of being involved in a gang and getting hurt because of something negative. I was trying to make something of myself. I was doing something I love.”
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Stingley, who lives in Chicago, was one of Jennings` first visitors at Northwestern. He spends much of his time these days at local hospitals, counseling victims of paralyzing injuries.
”I don`t have any other purpose in life but to help people who have been injured,” Stingley said. ”I`ll always be there for them.”
A couple of days after Jennings had surgery, Stingley wheeled into his room. Jennings broke into tears.
”I wasn`t sure what to make of it,” Stingley said.
”To think that someone like him would visit really meant a lot to me,”
Jennings said.
Stingley said it was the last time he ever saw Jennings when he wasn`t upbeat and smiling. Jennings credits Stingley for being one of the people responsible for his positive outlook.
Stingley gave Jennings some valuable advice. ”I told him, `Don`t act like I did after I got injured,` ” he said.
Indeed, Stingley hardly was the model patient. Staffers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) recall him being difficult and uncooperative. And bitter, very bitter.
”I had a lot to deal with,” Stingley said. ”I was older, and I was a professional player. I had experienced the `American Dream,` and then it was all taken away from me. I had a great deal of bitterness. I kept asking myself why.”
Stingley told Jennings that grieving about his situation wasn`t the way to make it better. Jennings listened.
”He eliminated the `why me?` stage,” Stingley said. ”He was determined to put his life back together.”
”When he told me how he was, I wanted to be the opposite,” Jennings said. ”He told me that nobody else could say more to me than he could, because he`s been through it. I could see his outlook. He`s really been great to me.”
Jennings needed all the help he could get. Following his surgery, he was in traction with a halo-device attached to his head. He was breathing with the aid of ventilator, which prevented him from talking.
”I was scared,” Jennings said. ”It`s a lot to take in right away.”
Jennings said he was ”depressed” for a couple of days, before Stingley and the support of others helped him to start the long road back. He spent a month at Northwestern and then was transfered to the RIC.
Jennings still was on the ventilator when he arrived in mid-November.
”We were looking at him going home on the ventilator,” said Dr. Gary Yarkony.
Jennings, though, desperately wanted to shed the machine. ”It was like a drug,” he said. ”I was totally dependent on it.”
Jennings` muscles eventually became strong enough that the doctors decided to wean him off the ventilator at Christmas. He had a hard time at first.
”I was frantic,” Jennings said. ”As I calmed myself down, it got easier and easier.”
After a couple of days, the doctors decided to let Jennings try to breathe on his own through the night. He remembers being monitored by nurses, because when asleep, he wouldn`t be consciously breathing. Jennings, though, didn`t get much sleep that night.
”It was scary,” Jennings said. ”I don`t think I got to sleep until 2
(a.m.). When I woke up the next morning, I said, `Am I still here?` ”
With that major hurdle cleared, Jennings now could concentrate on his most important goal: learning a new life. The RIC`s mission is to prepare disabled people to integrate back into society. Using a team concept of doctors, therapists, nurses, and social workers, they teach the patient how to cope with the changes in their lives, so they can handle a world that hasn`t changed.
”We create problem-solving situations,” said Jennings` physical therapist, Betsy Cross. ”If there is a problem, he has to solve it. Ken has to take charge. He`s not going to rely on other people to get it done. They can help him, but he`s ultimately responsible.”
Jennings had to be taught how to direct his own care. He had to learn how to operate a wheelchair by using a sip-and-puff device. By blowing in and out, he can move the chair in all directions. Cross usually had to tell him to slow down.
Jennings` occupational therapist, Janet Bischoff, trained him in learning how to function without his hands. A mouthstick now serves as a replacement.
With it, Jennings learned to turn pages in a book, turn up the sound on the television. He can operate a computer or a typewriter, which will allow him to do papers for school.
”He gave me a Valentine`s Day card from the computer,” Cross said.
Every chance he could get, Jennings went on field trips. He`d venture out to movies, basketball games and to restaurants. That gave him an education on finding curb cuts so he could get by on the streets.
”The first time I went outside, I didn`t know if I`d like it,” Jennings said. ”I didn`t know what it would be like, using curb cuts. People recognized me, and that put more pressure on me. It was kind of weird.”
Jennings, though, eventually became mobile in the outside world. Now he talks about taking a ride to his aunt`s house by himself. She lives 12 blocks away.
Jennings left the RIC in early April. Cross, who worked with him every day for five months, said she felt like crying.
”I was happy he left,” Cross said. ”But at the same time, I knew I`d come back Monday and he wouldn`t be there. He was such a pleasure to work with. Some people can do what he`s done, but they don`t. They`re too caught up in their own injury. Ken didn`t want to be like that. He wanted to make something of himself.”
Jennings became extremely close with Cross and Bischoff and several other members of his team at the RIC; social worker Ed Smeltzer, nurse Patty Perschke and recreational therapist Adrienne Tarnoff. Their encouragement and prodding helped him prepare for his new life.
”The people who worked there were fabulous,” Jennings said. ”They didn`t go easy on me. They made me work.”
The staff, though, says Jennings is ultimately responsible for whatever gains he made at the RIC. In just under six months, Jennings learned a new lifestyle.
”It was like starting over,” Jennings said. ”It was hard, but it also was challenging. Everything they had me do, I took it as a challenge. I challenged myself to prove I can do it.”
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Stingley wrote a book about his experiences, and Jennings hopes to write one about his. However, when they talk on the phone, they rarely discuss their conditions.
”I`ll tell him from my own experiences to keep his hygiene up, so he can avoid urinary infections, or to wear his braces,” Stingley said. ”But mostly, we just talk about what`s going on. We talk about sports, school, everything else.”
Stingley is proud of Jennings` progress since the injury. He`s confident that his young friend will enjoy a fruitful, happy and productive future.
Stingley himself says he`s happy. He recently visited his alma mater, Purdue, where his son will start school next year.
When he`s not working on behalf of organizations for the disabled, Stingley watches his son play baseball, or spends time at home with his birds. ”I always say this is not as bad a life as it might seem,” Stingley said. ”Ken won`t miss out on anything. As long as he can see, touch, taste and smell, he`ll still experience life. Just not in an upright position.”
Next: What lies ahead.
