Travis Hearn graduates with class of 2008 despite tragic injury

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By Craig DeVrieze | Sunday, June 01, 2008 |

Travis Hearn visits with schoolmates in the hallway at Rock Island High School. (John Schultz/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Buy this Photo

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Travis Hearn sounded every bit the typical high school senior as he looked forward to donning a cap and gown today with fellow members of Rock Island High School’s graduating class of 2008.

“Of course,” Hearn said recently when asked if this milestone had special meaning. “Because, I mean, high school is boring. School is boring. You know there is still college ahead, but when you are done with your 12th-grade year, it is like a relief.’’

Hearn, most Quad-Citians know, is not a typical high school senior, and his road to today’s pomp and circumstance at Rock Island Fieldhouse has been anything but smooth.

A quadriplegic since bearing the brunt of a freak collision on the high school football field on Sept. 22, 2006, Hearn has battled long odds, lost time, persistent health issues and, occasionally, a debilitated spirit to meet the requirements for graduation.

“It means a lot to him,” said Hearn’s mother, Colleen Stovall, “because there were times when he thought ‘Wow, it is basically over for me because I’ve got to lay here and I can’t move anything anymore. Now what?’ ”

Since the early part of 2007, when Hearn returned to the Quad-Cities from a four-month stay at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, the short answer to that question has been to get to today.

“This has been his goal,’’ said Judy Elliott, the school’s case manager for special services, who first met with Hearn in Chicago to plot his path to a diploma. “We met several times and mapped out a plan. It hasn’t always been real easy for him, but he has done real well.’’

Hearn hasn’t done it alone.

He has had the help of his parents, Stovall and Travis Hearn Sr., two full-time homecare nurses, Elliott, Rock Island football coach Vic Boblett, Rock Island school district homebound tutor Diane Kinser and the thousands of volunteers and donors from the Quad-Cities-wide community who responded to his tragic injury.

Hearn said many of those helpers have kept him pushing toward graduation with a simple question.

“They will ask me how I am doing, and then they will go ‘What are you going to do after you graduate?’ ’’ Hearn said. “Having people ask me that a lot, I thought, ‘Man, I just can’t let a lot of these people down who have asked me to do something.’ I promised them I am going to graduate and (that) I am going to do something after I graduate.’’

Hearn also knows he has done something vital for himself.

“When they call my name and it makes it official,’’ he said, “it is going to be really important, special to me.’’

‘Ready to learn’

Although the final year-and-a-half of Hearn’s high school education has been decidedly nontraditional — he spent only a day or two total in a classroom in each of second semesters — his has been no easy task.

He received credit last year for physical therapy, study skills, training for use of a voice-activated computer and the successful completion of a math class he began prior to his injury.

In the fall, he attended school between three and five times a week for a couple of hours at a time, taking classes in English, federal government and consumer education.

He also served as a volunteer assistant for Boblett’s football team, studying game film and offering suggestions, while attending the majority of the Rocks’ home games.

Lifelong friend and teammate Willie Williams, an honorable-mention all-conference defensive back for the 2007 state playoff-qualifying Rocks, said Hearn’s presence was vital to the team’s success on the field.

“Yeah, it did (help),’’ Williams said. “It kept (Hearn’s injury) from our minds. … him being there and showing the support he had for us meant a lot.’’

Elliott, Kinser and Boblett said the social interaction Hearn experienced last fall was as vital to his recovery and his future as any of his classwork. But because of health concerns, Hearn became homebound with the onset of wintry weather and has been back to school only once so far this spring.

Hearn conceded that has been a setback.

“I hear stories all the time to be careful of upper respiratory infections,’’ he said. “This winter was a caution. In the later parts, it would get to 70 degrees and then the next day it was snowing and 30 degrees. That’s an easy way to get sick, too. Next year, I will get out more than I did this year.’’

At home, Hearn still worked with tutor Kinser as often as his health allowed, again studying English and consumer education, while also earning credits for work on his computer.

Health problems and medication-related issues that kept him up at night and sleeping through large parts of the day often affected Hearn’s educational schedule, Kinser said.

Some weeks, she met with him just twice. Others, they studied daily, typically for 2½ hours at a time.

Still, she called him a willing and eager student.

“If he is feeling good, he is about as eager as they come,’’ she said. “But there are so many complications that come up in his daily life.’’

A life altered

Hearn is confronted daily by the challenges of quadriplegia.

A fullback and linebacker, Hearn was paralyzed from the neck down as a result of a collision with a teammate while both were covering a kickoff in that September 2006 game at Ericson Field in Rock Island.

Although he has made a number of significant steps in the intervening months, his life never will be the same.

Hearn is attended by a nurse 18 hours daily, and typically is under watch from his family only in the evening hours.

“Getting him through the day, it takes some time,’’ said Curtima Hearn, a cousin and licensed practical nurse who provided much of his care until last week, when she returned to school to pursue a degree as a registered nurse.

“When he gets up in the morning, he is usually not hungry right off the bat, but we try to get him to eat,’’ she said. “His mom fixes him breakfast, we feed him, bathe him, brush his teeth, and we get him dressed.’’

The nurse said Hearn takes medication for his bladder and for muscle spasms, as well as two separate blood thinners. He must be catheterized every four hours and his limbs and muscles stretched on a daily basis.

Hearn is encouraged to spend time sitting up in his motorized wheelchair for two-hour intervals once or twice each day.

“His lungs are not as good as a normal person,’’ the nurse said. “If he lays in bed a lot, we have to suction him on a daily basis.’’

Hearn requires use of a ventilator, traveling with a battery-powered system that has to be plugged in and regularly charged when he is out of the house.

He can operate the chair through a tube with his mouth, but during a recent outing to school, he asked his dad to accompany and push him.

‘This is me now’

Hearn lives with his family on 8th Street in Rock Island in a house that was built in a day by 1,300 volunteers through Habitat for Humanity.

The house is being paid for on contract by the Travis Hearn Fund, a trust administered at The National Bank and funded largely by Quad-City-area donors.

According to John McEvoy, a senior vice president at the bank and one of three original trustees for the fund, the donated money also provides for specific needs for Hearn beyond what Medicaid will provide, including the purchase of a specially equipped van in which Hearn travels.

The Rock Island senior has not forgotten the generous assistance the community has provided him and still feels embraced.

“Most definitely,’’ he said. “Even though I don’t get as much attention now — which most people think is bad, but I am kind of happy (about) — I feel I still have lots of love from the community. And I have lots of respect for people around the community.’’

His mother said Hearn has angry outbursts and mood swings.

“His life basically was taken away,’’ she said, “but not completely. He has to learn it is not completely taken away.’’

Hearn said he well understands that and said his moods essentially are no better or worse than prior to the accident.

“My attitude toward life? I have been down at times,’’ he conceded. “Yeah, I have been down. (But) I think of it just as a normal person. Life goes up and down. You have changes in it. Some changes are good, and some changes are bad.’’

He admits he was angry early about the loss of use of legs and arms.

“Not no more,’’ he said. “I look at my injury as ‘OK, this is how I am.’ I’m dealing with it like it’s my fault. Every time I talk to somebody, (they say) you have got to take these injuries like if a young person messed up and had a kid. ‘OK. My bad. I made a mistake, but I have to live with it.’

“Well, mine is kind of like ‘Well, OK. This is me now, and I have to live with it.’ I am not saying it’s my mistake, but I have to live with it. I have been over my injury for a while now.’’

On with life

And, so, as best he can, Hearn is going about the business of getting on with life.

Among his most vital tools in that mission is the computer, financed through the trust fund, that he operates through voice-control software.

“I am on the computer almost always,’’ he said. “Can’t stay off of it.’’

It has been a valuable learning tool.

“When he first got his computer, he didn’t even know how to check his e-mail,’’ said Kinser, the tutor. “And now he is all over that thing and has figured out so much on his own.’’

That’s why computer programming is one potential future interest. Business is another.

Either way, Hearn sees a future that includes a vocation.

“You have to,’’ he said. “I can’t sit back and live off my trust forever.’’

Toward that end, he is considering college, either online or by attending a local business school such as Brown Mackie College in Moline or Kaplan University in Davenport.

“The future is college,’’ he declared. “But what course right now, what I am going to do, is up in the air.’’

Today, of course, Hearn is going to collect his high school diploma, an accomplishment that just might mean more to those around him than to Hearn himself.

Boblett recently attended his daughter’s graduation at the University of Illinois.

“It’s kind of a similar feeling,’’ he said of Hearn’s graduation. “Just real proud.’’

Classmate Chris Dasso, who was on the field when Hearn was injured and occasionally mows the lawn at Hearn’s house, seems more excited about his teammate’s graduation than his own.

“It shows how hard Travis has worked and how he can overcome anything,’’ Dasso said. “He has showed great character. He hasn’t lost hope. I want to see Travis succeed. Good things can come from bad things.’’

Craig DeVrieze can be contacted at (563) 333-2610 or cdevrieze@qctimes.com.