Loss is a part of everyone’s life, but how we deal with it determines how it affects us. An inspiring true story of loss and triumph is presented with some great insight from someone who took his loss and used it to help hundreds of patients suffering from paralysis. We can all gain from hearing the great things he did in the face of tremendous personal adversity. 

 

Transcript:

We all have to deal with loss in our lives, and sometimes it can be a major one, with deeply traumatic consequences. No matter who you are, there’s really no way around it. Loss just comes with the territory here. But like so many other things we face in life, it isn’t so much what happens to us that determines our destiny. It’s what we do with it that counts.

In this regard, I have an incredible story to pass along about someone who took a major loss and turned it into a remarkable triumph.

The man was Jerry Segal, a Philadelphia attorney who passed away in the summer of 2020. At that time, he and I were in the process of writing a book about his life and I had interviewed him for over thirty hours, so I got the story straight from the horse’s mouth, which, as he always used to say, was a lot better than getting it from a horse’s ass. He always was hysterically funny, right up to the very end, which, once you hear his story, is a fact that will amaze you, but it’ll also make perfect sense.

Jerry didn’t come from a rich family, but within a few short years after starting his own law firm, he became quite wealthy. By the time he was in his early forties, he owned a large mansion with a swimming pool and tennis court, on the revered grounds of the Merion golf club. A great athlete since childhood, he was a tournament-level, single digit golfer and a champion tennis player as well.

Then, at the age of 47, he started having weakness in his right leg, which was eventually traced to a nerve being pressed on by a growth on a bone in his neck. It was soon determined that the growth had to be removed and Jerry found an expert neurosurgeon to perform the operation.    

Following the procedure, his wife was assured that the all had gone well. But two hours later, when he emerged from the anesthesia, Jerry Segal found that he was paralyzed from the neck down with absolutely no feeling in his body whatsoever. It seemed that his spine had been severely injured during the operation.  

He was quickly admitted to the Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia for evaluation and possible therapy, and this is where the story really starts. As he began a grueling regimen, trying to salvage whatever motion he could, Jerry found that being with his family for meals helped sustain him through some of his very darkest hours.

He also began to notice that there were several patients who always dined alone and he soon learned that their families couldn’t afford to eat with them. “I’ll pay for them,” he told a hospital administrator and he began to cover the meal costs for anyone whose family needed help. It quickly blossomed into a charitable foundation that he formed to include travel and hotel expenses as well.

According to him, this simple act unexpectedly changed his life forever. Inspired by empathy and compassion, he found himself filled with a new kind of satisfaction that he had never known before.  For the rest of his life, he lived by the adage that whenever you feel down, just help somebody else. He said it never failed to lift him up. 

Finally, after six months of constant hard work, he recovered his ability to move and eventually walk with crutches, but he would never regain any feeling in his body for the rest of his life.

He came home to his new normal, which was filled with constant obstacles and hurdles. But Jerry was a born fighter and immobilized with a halo cast, he had actually been had been running his law firm from his hospital bed for months, so he was more than up to the task.

At one point, three friends took him to the country club for the first time since the injury. They strapped a golf club to his hands, and he was able to make a few half-swings on a couple of holes. Then, after dinner, one of them jokingly gave him a $25 check for the hospital and said they had just played the Jerry Segal Classic.

They all had a good laugh, but to Jerry, it was no joke. The next season, he exploded the idea into the real world, and to make a long, epic story ridiculously short, over the next three decades, he developed the Jerry Segal Classic into a beloved Philadelphia tradition, raising a total of $20 million for Magee and turning it into a truly world class facility. He changed the lives of hundreds of patients and their families, in countless ways, both financial and otherwise.  

Over the years, Jerry played many roles with the hospital, but there is one that he cherished above the rest, and it holds a major teaching for us all.

He was a permanent fixture at Magee, there for regular therapy as well as needing to be re-hospitalized from time to time. And he would always visit the other patients as they were working on their rehabilitation. Most of the time, he’d cruise around the place on his mobility scooter.

Now you have to understand that all of these patients in Magee are in distressing situations and some of them are dire. Often the staff would tell Jerry that they had a patient suffering with such severe depression that the psychologists just couldn’t reach them.

Many patients struggled with a condition called retrograde amnesia, which means they had no recollection of how they had gotten there. Maybe they had been in a car or motorcycle accident, or had suffered a serious fall, but they had no memory connected to it. All they knew was that they had been going along normally, and now, all of a sudden, they find themselves in a rehab hospital being told they would be paralyzed for the rest of their lives. And of course, some of them could hardly handle it.

So, on occasion, the staff would alert Jerry, then tell the patient about Jerry’s history. Soon after, Jerry would scooter over. Now when you saw Jerry for the first time, it was disconcerting, but in a good way. Here was this guy who had suffered an incredible loss and his body was obviously severely damaged. But if you looked just at his face, you’d never know it. He always had a certain smile about him. It wasn’t a goofy, isn’t everything great - kind of smile. It was far different. It was the smile of absolute, unconquerable strength. Like hey, this is tough, but you know what, I handle it and so can you. So, let’s go.

Also, he had these steel blue eyes that stared right into your soul. And there was a light in them that never wavered, imparting that most important feeling of all for people facing a really tough situation. It’s the feeling of real hope, and for these patients, it was the most welcomed lifeline imaginable.

After a few minutes of getting acquainted, Jerry would give them all the same message, and he would deliver it with the full power of someone who really knows what he’s talking about. You have to stop looking back, he would tell them. The past is over and you have to forget about what you lost. Forget it. It’s over. Let it go. Focusing on what you once had is where your pain is, but focusing on what you have left, being grateful for it and building on it, this is where your freedom is. So, stay focused on what you have. It’s your doorway back home. 

 No able-bodied therapist could reach them like this. But Jerry could talk the talk because he walked the walk, and they knew it. He consciously imparted the strength of his experience to them and he could see them come back to life, right before his very eyes. And it always knocked him out.  

He said he could never put into words what that moment felt like for him, and he told me more than once that on one level, the injury was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him, because it opened up a side of himself that he considered to be his finest, and he may never have found it otherwise.  

 Here’s something that really drove it all home for me. Once, when I was interviewing Jerry’s wife, she told me that after dinner, he would often sit on the back porch overlooking the golf course, and watch the golfers make their way up the fairway, onto the green.  She said she used to wonder what it was like for him, this former championship player, whose body had been withered away by paralysis, unable to play his favorite sport, which used to be his passion. She added that so many of his favorite things had been taken from him, through no fault of his own, that she couldn’t imagine how painful it must have been for him to sit there and watch.

One day a little later, I finally got up the nerve to ask him what he felt as he looked out over the fairway and watched the golf. “I’m in heaven,” he said, simply. You can’t add much to that.

There’s one final part to this story that speaks volumes. There was a football player at Penn State name Adam Taliaferro who suffered a broken neck while making a tackle and had been told he probably would never walk again. It was a serious tragedy, not just for him and his family, but for the whole university as well. Adam was admitted to Magee, and Jerry immediately took him under his wing.

After months of intense therapy, along with constant encouragement from Jerry, Adam finally regained his ability to walk. He returned to school and it was widely announced that at the opening football game, the college would honor Adam, who would walk all the way out to the fifty-yard line for the presentation.

On the great day, Jerry came to Penn State to be with him. The stadium was filled with 110,000 people and Jerry, Adam and his family stood in the tunnel. As they were waiting for his introduction. Jerry turned to him and asked, “When they announce you, why don’t you run out there, instead of walking?”

“I’d love to be able to run out there,” Adam said.” But what happens if I fall down.”

“If you fall down, you get up,” Jerry replied. “If you think you can do it, then you can. Stay focused and you can do it.”

The next moment, they announced Adam’s name and he took a few steps onto the field. As the applause started, Jerry shouted to him, “Run, Goddamn it.” Adam took a few tentative skips, then broke into a full jog. The place went wild, erupting into a prolonged, earth-shattering standing ovation. Inspiration, guts and hard work had triumphed over severe adversity and everybody loved it.

So, here are two quick takeaways from Jerry, and you could look at them more as commands than advice. First, when you’re faced with a serious loss, let go of your anxiety over what you once had and focus on what you still have left. Shift your focus from what you don’t have to what you do have. Be grateful for it and work to develop it. That’s where the door to your freedom is. 

 And second, when you finally find the strength to start to make your way back, don’t just walk, run. Don’t worry about falling down. If you fall down, just get up. You’ll soon be revelling in the triumph of moving on to your higher ground.  So, run, Goddamn it!

Well, that’s it for this episode. Let’s get together for the next one!