ORDINARY PEOPLE: HEROES, CREATORS, SURVIVORS

John Edgell

This is a pain I mostly hide, but ties of blood, or seed endure, and even now I feel inside the hunger for his outstretched hand, a man’s embrace to take me in, the need for just a word of praise. Carter, Jimmy, “I Wanted to Share My Father’s World.” Always a Reckoning, Times Books (1994).

Many of us grow up with that pain inside. The hunger for the embrace of a father too busy to offer the outstretched hand of compassion and encouragement at a critical moment. The moment is lost forever to our conscious in the backwash of time, but rests in our subconscious, goading us to sadness, loneliness, even desperation.

John Edgell is the antithesis of that father. His arms have reached out to embrace the child, to offer encouragement and praise. Not for the fleeting moment of need, not for the instant of achievement, not for the flash of recognition, but daily for every day it takes. He is a popular math professor at TxSU and the father of five. All successful, all worthy of a father’s praise and devotion. Due to limited space, this article will deal with this father’s relationship with only one of his children.

Five days a week they are a familiar sight at the Texas State Student Recreation Center. John unloads the wheelchair from the van and proceeds to the passenger’s door where he gently and patiently assists his 34 year old son, Johnny, out of the van and into the chair. This is all a part of the commitment John Edgell sees as essential to being a father. For 17 years now, he has been Johnny’s legs and arms and guide, encouraging him, praising him, assisting him in whatever way necessary.

In 1983, Johnny was ready to graduate from San Marcos High School--he was already taking courses at TxSU--when his father, in keeping with established family habits, asked Johnny how he would like to spend his spring break. Johnny chose to take a long motorcycle trip with his dad. Their destination was Leavenworth, Kansas where John grew up.

“We had a great week,” John said. “We visited the Federal Prison where my dad and brother worked for years. We went to the University of Kansas and then over to Pittsburgh  State where I met Lucy, my wife, when she came there on a dance tour from Texas Women’s University. Johnny met a lot of his relatives; I showed him where I lived as a student and it was just a wonderful week.

“On the way back to Texas, we were in Oklahoma on an interstate highway, trying to outrun a ‘blue norther.’ We topped the crest of a long hill and found ourselves facing the rear end of an 18-wheeler. I drifted out to the left to get around the truck and checked my rear-view mirror where I observed Johnny moving over to the left. Everything looked perfect. Seconds later I glanced in the mirror and saw Johnny go in the air. He came down free of his bike, but hit right on his head. I went back and yelled at him, ‘Get out of the road, you will get run over.’ He didn’t move. A nurse was in the first car that came by. The second car had a physician. So, there I am with a nurse and a physician on the scene and I don’t have a clue about what’s happening.”

Johnny was taken to a hospital in McAllister, Oklahoma where they were already trying to locate a neuro-surgeon. When the local medical facility failed to locate a surgeon, Johnny was transferred to a hospital in Tulsa. The surgeon told John, that Johnny had contusions on the brain stem.

John relates, “That is where all the nerves come together. Every bodily function is affected; temperature, heart, breathing, everything. For fourteen days we had to do everything for him. He was surrounded by machines and just changing one of those machines was a life-threatening procedure. We were desperate. To keep my sanity, I challenged people to solve complicated math p