Deacon Don Grossnickle isn't a saint. He is, though, walking an elevated path thanks to his Broken Neck Boys.
Twelve years ago, Grossnickle, a 63-year-old Chicago minister and educator, was called to the bedside of a suicidal teenager named Rocky Clark. Clark, 19, was a former high school football star who'd broken his neck the previous year and was in serious need of inspiration to guide him back from the brink of despair. Trapped in a frozen body, with no hope of physical recovery, Rocky believed that he had no reason to live. Doctors had been forced to insert a feeding tube into his abdomen to keep Rocky alive after he refused to eat.
Deacon Don, who resembles St. Nick and is fond of speaking in superlatives, arrived at the Rehabilitation Center of Chicago that day accompanied by Rob Komosa, a paralyzed, 18-year old athlete with whom he was already working (Komosa had suffered a football tackle fracture of the spinal cord just the year before). Rob navigated his 600-pound, sip-and-puff-controlled wheelchair into the room. Physically alive but emotionally broken, Rocky appeared "bewildered, overwhelmed, and inescapably trapped" when Deacon Don met him that day. Yet Rocky's attitude began to shift quickly when Komosa shared his own experience. "Rob's ‘rescue presence' helped a lot," says the Deacon. "Rob knew intuitively what those of us who haven't had broken neck syndrome cannot know. He knew that Rocky's life would need to become -- as his own had -- an emerging story of self-reinvention. He knew that Rocky's story had the potential to become an heroic adventure. Over time, Rob had come to experience a sleeping giant of spirit within. And he communicated that to Rocky."
This is how the Broken Neck Boys, with Deacon Don's paternal encouragement, have been helping each other ever since. "Emphatically, without uttering a single word, Rob's example showed Rocky that life could indeed move ahead. He could have a future, even with a broken neck." This transition from hopelessness to determination began with a redefinition of what movement means. "Inch by inch, Rocky learned how to move in life along with his paralysis," explains Deacon Don. "He learned to move from suffering to struggle. From struggle, he moved to coping as he adapted himself to his home and his partial mobility. He then moved with his decision to attend classes to finish high school and begin college on a scholarship. Like an entrepreneur, he called upon whatever resources he had, pulling in the services and support of friends, family, professionals to get the job at hand. Try to imagine having a totally dysfunctional, rock-solid body that refuses to move. Imagine having to deal with the endless hours, the inability to move, the attacks of overwhelming despair, the body tremors, the grief over what was lost and what can never be again, and the need to counter hopelessness that threatens to swallow you."
The willingness to be transformed by suffering is key to how these boys survive. "The journey begins with suffering that can be transitioned to struggle," says Deacon Don. "Most of us take for granted the voluntary ability to feed ourselves, shake hands, scratch our noses. The frustration of not being able to do what once could easily be done is unimaginable." The boys' struggle leads to a new kind of coping. "Proficient coping leads to accommodation," Don reports. "Accommodation mastery leads to assimilation." One does not get over the real physical impact of catastrophic injury. Instead, one aspires to reach out for transformation."
The Broken Neck Boys have amazed audiences at their public lectures: six paralyzed high school athletes in wheelchairs talking like wise old men. "People ask, 'Wow, how do they do it?'" says Grossnickle. "These men exude the talent that it takes to creatively connect life's dots and compose their own new life story. They're comeback artists. Engineers. A frequent question posed to the guys is: With all you face in your own life, how do you have anything left to care compassionately for others? Rocky Clark's motto became, "'Man it ain't nothing. It ain't about me. Pay it forward. Give back the goodness. Somebody needs a helping hand. Jump in."
Inspired by his disabled brothers, Rocky survived another eleven years till his death on January 5, just weeks before his thirtieth birthday. Over a thousand people came to his funeral to pay tribute, including the Governor of Illinois and members of the Chicago Bears. "Rocky gave us an end-of-life model that everyone can look to and say, "Wow, if only my life could matter that much to so many people," Deacon Don says. "The spellbinding resilience, spirit, and synergy of these boys."
After a lifetime as an educator who specialized in motivating high school students,Don Grossnickle now fees like a student himself. "For the past 12 years, I've lived as a student in life's broken neck recovery laboratory," he says with gratitude in his voice. "They've taught me so many powerful lessons." Now Deacon Don is on a relentless mission to bring the boys' message to the world in an upcoming book in search of a publisher. He is determined to help them communicate the "wonderful, life enriching mysteries, and magic, of breakthrough resilience in action." "The Broken Neck Boys offer insights that all of us can use to address the problems, big and small, that we face in our own lives," says the smiling Deacon.
If this isn't the work of a saint in the making, I don't know what is.