Thursday, November 25, 1999
Extra helping of inspiration
Paralyzed ex-player has family, law degree, dreams
BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Brian Frazier gets a kiss from son Brian Jr. and wife Kimberly.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
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There is much to be thankful for in the little house on Elm Park in Bond Hill, where the Frazier family, close and extended, gathers for Thanksgiving dinner. Two 20-pound turkeys cool on the racks, the earthy smells of fresh greens drift from a pot on the stove. Everyone is home.
Ms. Annie Freeman, 79 years new, a Thanksgiving guest for 15 years and by now an honorary Frazier, will say the blessing, which will go something like this:
“Thank you, Our Father, for allowing us all to gather here and be of good health. Let us appreciate the bounty you've set before us and the comfort of friends and family.”
They'll eat at 3. Close to 40 people will assemble, drawn by the magic of Beverly Frazier's cooking and the human need to re-connect with family and friends. It's an annual show of strength, pride, togetherness, sharing and love at the Fraziers, its power and presence as inescapable as the smells of homemade macaroni and cheese and sweet potato pie.
At its epicenter sits a man in a wheelchair, paralyzed in a football game 14 years ago, his spine bruised after he made a tackle during a spring scrimmage.
What Brian Frazier recalls about that day at Miami is next to nothing. The hit, some pain, darkness. An inability to speak.
“Can you move your legs, Brian?” someone asks.
Brian, mouthing the word, “No.”
Then Brian, mouthing to his mother Beverly, who had rushed onto the field: “I'll be all right.”
Waking up at University Hospital, a nest of tubes running this way and that, paralyzed, wondering for the first of many times who he would be the rest of his life.
Brian played high school football at Woodward, attended junior college in California, then came home to walk on as a safety at Miami. This was the spring of 1985. He was 20. He was competing for a starting spot and had earned a partial scholarship.
His friend Ozie Davis recalls the moment: “When he hit the ground, the stadium went silent. The way he fell ... it was a sickening feeling.”
Brian was 10 weeks on a respirator and 18 months in rehab. Davis, a Walnut Hills grad, was his roommate when Brian returned to Miami. He helped him bathe and dress. He helped him to class. He helped him do just about everything.
There are two ways to go when devastation finds you. Brian wasn't going to make the easy choice which, more often than not, is the wrong choice. “I remembered thinking, There's a purpose in this,” he says now. “I could try to help motivate others.”
It's understating the achievement to say Brian returned to Miami in 1987 and graduated in 1990. That he earned his master's in 1992 and his law degree in 1998. That he married in '93 and fathered a son. But those are the facts. It's not what happens to us that matters. It's what we do about it.
Brian has received support. He has known the innate kindness of people. He couldn't have made it this far without it.
The Center for Independent Living Options, a downtown agency whose efforts for the disabled are as grand as their recognition is small, provided money for a personal care assistant. Brian's family is a constant source of help and support.
But it has been Brian's struggle and his triumph. It is his good fortune to have had so many people to share it with. And theirs. Because here's the thing about loving people with disabilities: You help them. But not nearly as much as they help you.
“He has given us a lot of faith,” says his mother, Beverly, the author of those championship kitchen aromas. “He is so determined to do what he has to do, he makes you want to do more.”
Says Ozie Davis, “To see how he fought through it. Other than my mother dying, it has been the most inspirational relationship I've ever had. In the down times, I'm not down. When he says not to quit, he's a living example of that.”
Brian isn't that impressed with himself. “It's just my life,” he says. “It's what I have to do to make a better way for my son. I mean, you have to look at yourself and decide what you're made of. I got hurt when I was 20. I'm 36 now, so I'm going on half my life in this chair. It's part of me. But it doesn't stop me.”
He has interviewed for a job as a county probation officer. He will take the bar exam in February. He hopes one day to work with Ozie, who runs a personal management firm for athletes. Brian's road back hasn't been easy, but his road ahead has only just begun.
Brian's friends will drop by today. Ozie and Patrick, Larry and Jerome, taking strength from him as he gives it to them, feeding off his courage, as he feeds off their encouragement. They'll lift his spirits. But not so much, probably, as he'll lift theirs.
In the Frazier home on Elm Park in Bond Hill, lessons of the spirit will mix with the smell of pecan pie. They'll have the gift of family, and the bonuses of perspective and grace. They'll share the sort of peace that comes from surviving big storms.
“It's a small place,” Brian says. “But we'll make room somehow.”
It's a good lesson, this notion of making room. Brian Frazier depends on it. But no more than the rest of us.
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