Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(94)

One of the amazing things about the experience was the perfect timing of the burst pipe. If our pipe hadn’t broken, we would have still been living at home when Dad needed emergency brain surgery. Our house is farther from the hospital than the hotel, and every minute counted in the rush to get him to the hospital. If not for the burst pipe, Dad might not have lived.

When I thought about that, I remembered something I have heard in church. We each have a purpose in life, and if we’re serving God, following him, living out God’s calling and purposes for our life, then we can have faith that God is leading us, and even difficult times can turn out all right. God can cause all things to work together for good.

Only a year after Dad’s emergency brain surgery, Moira needed another back surgery, her sixth. Her back problems had begun more than a decade earlier. She had surgery on her spine, but the first surgeon had made a mistake, seriously damaging nerves in her right leg that would never properly heal. Three months later, she saw a different surgeon who was able to fix some of her issues with a spinal fusion, but in the following years she needed three more surgeries. Her fifth, in 2016, was another fusion of a few more discs that had fallen apart.

But this latest surgery was the most serious of all. At the end of this seven-hour surgery, Moira had fourteen inches of metal rods and screws in her spine, everything fused together, totally locked in place. In May 2017, she spent four and a half weeks in the hospital recovering, and I canceled everything to stay with her, sleeping on the room’s tiny sofa at night. For the first two and a half weeks, Moira lay in terrible pain, and it took a while for the team to nail down the right mix of pain relievers. I’ve met a lot of families whose loved ones needed an extended hospital stay, and I couldn’t help but think of all the families of our nation’s defenders who have faced the same thing—multiple surgeries, lots of pain, trying to get their loved ones through it safely, staying by their side day after day, night after night.

Moira has recovered well, although she will never again be able to fully twist her torso from side to side. One thing lightened our load during those weeks in the hospital: our first grandchild. Sophie was due with the baby just before Moira’s surgery, and since first babies often arrive late, Moira was afraid she would miss the birth. Amazingly, our granddaughter was born exactly on her due date at the end of May. Four days later, Moira went in for her surgery.

Before the baby was born, Moira and I went to a movie. As we climbed into our car after the show, the phone rang. “We were going to tell you this in person,” Sophie said. “But we can’t wait. We’ve decided on a name for our little girl. We’re going to name her after you, Mom. Moira.”

Moira burst into tears. My eyes filled too. We were so touched, so moved—so grateful.



I’ve had my own brush with life’s frailty in recent years.

In March 2012, I landed at Reagan National Airport and jumped in a town car, headed to Walter Reed to visit wounded troops. A busy day was planned. After my visit to the hospital, I was scheduled to do an event with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and folks from the USO. The following day I was to head out to Martinsville, Virginia, for a concert to raise funds to build a smart home for Marine Corps veteran and triple amputee, J. B. Kerns.

The driver of the town car cruised at the speed limit on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, a twenty-five-mile highway that runs along the Potomac River. I don’t remember our car slowing. I was engrossed in plans for the next day’s concert.

I didn’t see anything. Feel anything. Hear anything.

The next thing I knew, I woke up in the emergency room. Ella, who attended nearby Catholic University of America, hovered above me with a concerned face. I felt her hand on my shoulder. I heard her voice. My neck ached terribly. I burst into tears and said, “I have to get to the hospital . . .” meaning, I need to get to Walter Reed to visit the wounded veterans.

“Dad! You gotta stay here,” Ella said. “You were in an accident.” Her voice echoed, like I was in a long tunnel.

Heavily sedated, I blurred in and out. I remember lying in the CT scanner. I remember a loud noise. I remember lots of faces I didn’t know. Pieces of the past few hours shuffled through my mind. I vaguely remembered paramedics placing me on a spinal board and carrying me to an ambulance. I found out later that the driver had slowed to let a pedestrian cross the road where there was no crosswalk. A van had rammed us from behind at full speed. An off-duty firefighter happened to be driving by just as our car was hit. He’d stopped and called 911 for us and put a blanket over me so I wouldn’t go into shock. My seat belt had snapped. Paramedics found me in the back seat, toppled to my left side, with the driver’s seat lying on top of me. The driver of the van was fine. The driver of my ride, the town car, was injured and at the same hospital as I was. I was in and out, but they said I mumbled to the first responders to call my brother-inlaw Jack. As it happened, Moira had just had her fourth back surgery. So we were both down for the count.

At the hospital, doctors apprised me of my injuries. My neck was fractured, so I was fitted with a thick neck brace. I also had a bad concussion, and my head ached. I remembered I was in a band when Kimo called to check on me. I told him to play the next day’s concert without me, but he chuckled softly and said in a low voice, “No, Gary. Nobody wants to do this concert without you. You just heal up, buddy. Get better real soon.”