After 30 Years, New Hope -- Former Pole Vault Record Holder Faces Surgery To Restore Movement

Helen Sternberg wrapped her hands around a cup of coffee.

"His time in front of the public was so short," she said of her son. "I'm amazed almost every day how many people remember Brian."

For five months in the spring of 1963, Brian Sternberg, a 19-year-old University of Washington sophomore, was a comet against a dark sky, his long, muscular body arching over the bar at dizzying heights, a world pole vault record in Philadelphia in April, again in Modesto, Calif., in May, once more in Los Angeles in June, and then history's first attempt at 17 feet.

There was no ceiling for him; just a basement of despair. As quickly as the comet had lit, it was doused.

Later that year, John Kennedy would be assassinated. People around here remember the news of Brian Sternberg's accident July 2 in a similar, stunned way. He broke his neck training on a trampoline.

Thirty years have passed. Sternberg recently turned 50. He is a quadriplegic, physically bound to a bed and a wheelchair but emotionally the same character who dared to dangle on the end of a fiberglass pole.

"What if you had this opportunity and turned it down because you were too scared," he said. "I'm ready to try it."

There is some hope

For the first time since the accident, the Sternbergs believe there is hope for Brian's physical improvement. There is not the expectation that he might walk and run again, but there is hope that he can do some of life's little things.

"Walking would be great," said his mother, "but what we're hoping for is improvement. What if Brian could pick up a pencil, hold a cup of coffee, open a door, brush his teeth?

"Anything would be better than what he's had. If we had known it would be 30 years before there was even a glimmer of hope for him, I'm not sure we would have made it."

Brian and his mother want him to undergo an experimental operation aimed at healing injured spinal cords, a costly, controversial and risky operation.

Dr. Harry Goldsmith of Boston University's Medical Center has had some success regenerating blood vessels in the spinal cord.

The complex operation surgically lengthens a large, fatty, blood-rich tissue in the abdomen called the omentum so that it can be stretched and tunneled under the skin of the body and around to the spine.

In a companion part of the surgery, bone and scar tissue is removed from around the damaged area of the spinal cord.

A painful operation

Sigrid Laegreid, a 1985 graduate of Seattle Pacific University, underwent the surgery in June as one of 26 people involved in "clinical trials" to see if what had worked on animals would work on humans. Two years earlier she was left paralyzed after being struck down by a drunk driver.

In SPU's official publication, Response, Laegreid said she was not sorry she had undergone the painful surgery.

"I could feel again," she said. "I hadn't experienced pain for so long, and the circulating blood hurt. My spinal cord turned bright red. There was blood moving through it again."

Laegreid is in Houston, at the Walk Back Institute, which has become a center of controversy surrounding the surgery, causing Boston University temporarily to halt planned spinal cord operations.

Patients have accused Barbara Devine, head of the Houston rehabilitation center, of not only giving them false hope, but of recruiting them for the operation for her own financial benefit.

The BU Medical Center is investigating the charges.

"We've been assured by Dr. Goldsmith that he will do the operation (somewhere other than Boston if BU doesn't resume doing the surgery)," Helen Sternberg said. "We wouldn't want Brian's rehabilitation to be done in Houston; perhaps it could be done here in Seattle."

The Sternbergs are turning to their friends to raise the $125,000 they believe is necessary to pay for the operation and year of rehabilitation. They are members of the Free Methodist Church, and Brian is active in Kiwanis and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. A Brian Sternberg trust fund has been established at all Seafirst banks.

For his part, Brian has prepared for years in the hopes of a medical breakthrough. Twice a week since 1985 he has been transported to Everett, where he works out on various exercise machines, pedaling a bike with both his arms and his legs.

Electrical impulses, directed by computers, do the jobs of nerves.

"Can you imagine that?" he said with his wry grin. "Those legs actually doing something."

Said his mother, "Brian's always told me, `If something comes along, I'm going to be ready for it.' "

As for the pain involved in both the operation and the rehabilitation, Brian said, "It looks pretty grueling to me. But if I can tough it out, it might be worth it."

Brian was injured weeks before he was to represent the U.S. at a meet in the Soviet Union. John Pennel, who was to become the first vaulter in history to clear 17 feet, took Brian's place in Moscow.

Earlier this year, Pennel, 53, died of cancer.

"I've been lucky to have lasted this long," said Sternberg, who spends hours each day tapping out letters and drawing pictures on a computer by using a stick held in his teeth.

"Many people in my situation don't last," he continued. "I've had a lot of very good care."

Helen Sternberg turned the pages of the scrapbook she and her husband, Harold, who died a few years ago, kept for their son.

She stopped on the page that showed him breaking the world record at the Compton Relays in Los Angeles, vaulting 16 feet, 8 inches. Two years before, he had been vaulting 13 feet with a metal pole, but in switching to fiberglass he was able to translate a rare blend of strength and gymnastic ability to become world-class.

"He tried 17 feet that night, the first person to ever do that," she said. "I remember later he said, `There's lots of time to get 17 feet.' "

There was lots of time. Not for 17 feet, but to think about the day he might stand alone again.

"If it goes haywire," he said of the operation, "it can actually kill you. I'm kind of scared, but being like this is not a lot worse than being dead. I'm ready."