Viewing page 230 of 356

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

promote circulation in his lower extremities. He suffered through torturous periods on the treatment table learning to roll over, and spent exhausting sessions at the weight machines to strengthen his feeble wrists.

Sometimes I wondered if Campy would ever make it. He was a man who loved speed and action and bone-jarring slides to the plate. He needed to catch and throw, and jaw it out with the umpire, and smash a ball over the fence to the roar of the crowd. Did he possess inner resources that he could draw upon to rebuild his life?

The first intimation that he did came one evening as I heard Campy talking on the telephone. "Hello," he was saying. "Is this the Dodger clubhouse? I want to speak to John Roseboro." Then, "John? This is Campy. I've been watching you play on television and, John, you're crowdin' the plate too much." Campy listened for a moment while John Talked. Then he said, "Everybody gets in a slump sometime. But that's no time to feel sorry for yourself. You can't just quit. You got to try all the harder."

I walked on. I knew then that Campy was coming back. He'd dug down, and somewhere found a new kind of courage.

Patiently, he continued his painful exercises, never complaining. Toward the end of the year, the star athlete who could no longer walk had begun to inspire hope and courage in the other patients. He'd talk baseball to them, or he'd get them talking about themselves, or he'd tell them about his own accident, and how he thought his world had come to an end. But it was all different now. Campy believed in his own future, and he made others believe in theirs. 

Late that fall, in a wheelchair and neck brace, Campy was discharged from the Institute. For all the odds against him, he was determined to support his family-his wife Ruthe,their three children, and her son by a former marriage. He started his own radio show, "Campy's Corner," a program of baseball interviews, and accepted a spring-training coaching job with the Dodgers.

Then came another blow. David, his 15-year-old stepson, whom he loved as his own, was arrested on a burglary charge. Campy was heart-sick. There was a second upsetting. He spent long hours with the boy trying to give him the father's love and support that David needed. It was a bad time for both, but it worked.

Campy told me about it later. He'd come into the office for a checkup and I said I'd seen the stories in the papers. For a moment he looked down at his helpless body, imprisoned in a wheelchair. Then he raised his head, smiled a quiet smile, and said the most moving thing I ever heard a patient say.

"You know, doctor, this trouble my boy was in." He spoke slowly, reaching for the right words. "I know that breaking your neck is a tough way to learn a lesson, but lyin' in bed, paralyzed, I learned two things: tolerance and patience, toward myself and everybody else." He hesitated. "That's love-isn't it?"

Not long after, Campy's wife, from whom he had recently separated, died at age 40. It was a tragic time for Campy. Some years later, he married his present wife, Roxie, and together they kept the family going.

Never once did he let anyone feel sorry for him. He told me how he and Roxie would go out to dinner, dances and other social events. "It makes me feel great," he said. "I know everybody has problems. But people look at me and get the feelin' that if a guy in a wheelchair can have such a good time, they can't be so bad off, after all."

In the summer of 1976, Campy called me and said he was in deep trouble. Bedsores, a constant problem cause by impaired circulation, were worse than every. Moreover, he had developed other complications. We put him into intensive care at once. Before we were through, he had to have seven surgical procedures, with skin grafts and dozens of blood transfusions. He stayed with us for more than a year. Most of the time he had to life flat on his face, in a special frame in which he could be turned over several times a day. Again, he never complained. 

One night as I was leaving his room, something made me turn back. "Campy," I said, "here you are, back where you were almost 20 years ago. Yet you still manage to be cheerful, uncomplaining, helpful to others and full of plans. Tell me, what keeps you going?"

"Well," he said, "I go back to the Scripture my momma taught us when we were kids in Philadelphia, the Twenty-third Psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.' I say it over and over."

The first time, he said, was right after the accident. With his broken neck, he was already in bad shape. Then he contracted pneumonia. "I was in an oxygen tent, but I couldn't breath right. The doctor said, 'Campy, the only thing I can do is cut a hole in your throat and insert a tracheotomy tube. It'll help you breathe. But I can't give you any anesthetic.'

"I was feeling so bad, I just thought of Momma, and how she taught us to get down on our knees and say that psalm; and while he operated on me, I kept sayin' it over and over in my head. The next day I was all right. The tube was in.I was breathin' good. There was no pain.

"Roxie and I have taught that passage to our kids, and they have taught it to theirs. I say it every night in bed before I go to sleep. And when I'm out of bed and don't feel right, I say it. So many times it has pulled me through."

When we released him, Campy didn't waste much time getting on the phone. More than anything now, he wanted to go back to work. There might be something in public relations, he thought, with the New York Mets. (As it turned out, there was.)

Some months ago, my office door opened and there Campy was in his wheelchair-cheerful, feeling good again, looking ahead. He'd come in for a checkup. He told me that he and Roxie intend to move to California. They like warm weather-and they'll be closer to his beloved Dodgers. 

I'm having a wonderful second life," Campy told me. "I want to tell everybody about it. I want them to remember that when trouble comes, it ain't always bad. Take it with a smile, do the best you can and the good Lord will help you out."

To me, this Campy-Campy of the fighting heart, the Roy Campanella I'll always remember. His neck was broken, but never his spirit.

[[5 images]]

228