Email
Print
Ex-WFU basketball player fights the odds on paralysis
Rogers injured a critical vertebra in an ATV accident last week
Rodney Rogers had a celebrated three-year career in basketball at Wake Forest University.
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: December 5, 2008
Rodney Rogers is in the fight of his life --Part 2.
Rogers, whose first victory against the odds was to escape his poverty-stricken neighborhood in Durham, is rehabilitating at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. He was moved there Wednesday after having surgery for a fractured vertebra Saturday at Duke University Hospital.
The N.C. Highway Patrol reported that Rogers was injured last week after he fell off an all-terrain vehicle in rural Vance County, north of Raleigh. Family members have requested that there be no information disclosed about his condition.
Rogers, 37, was an ACC Player of the Year and second-team Associated Press All-America during a celebrated three-year career at Wake Forest. His No. 54 has been retired, and hangs from the rafters at Joel Coliseum. A first-round draft pick by the Denver Nuggets, Rogers played for seven NBA teams during 12 seasons. He retired in 2005.
Powerful and explosive at 6 feet 7 inches and 270 pounds, he also had the agility and shooting touch to be a threat all over the court. Rogers was in the first recruiting class of WFU Coach Dave Odom, who yesterday called Rogers his most important recruit during his 12 years as the Deacons' head coach.
"When we signed him, it was a sign to Wake Forest, to other recruits and to the ACC that Wake Forest was serious about winning championships again," Odom said.
Now Rogers is battling another set of odds. The vertebra that was injured in the accident is the C4, which controls the upper-body muscles such as the deltoids and biceps.
"He is currently paralyzed from the neck down," a close family friend from his childhood said yesterday.
The friend, who asked not to be named, said that the prognosis, at least at this point, is not good. Whether Rogers will ever regain control of his body remains a question.
"I'm hoping, but we don't know," the friend said. "They had given him a slim chance at Duke. But, you know, God is still in the healing business.
"Once the inflammation and swelling and all that goes down, perhaps he will have a better prognosis. I'm hoping he can have movement of his arms and hands and at least be in a motorized chair.
"I would rather see him walking, but I can deal with him just having the upper part of his body."
Odom, who visited Rogers at Duke for 90 minutes on Wednesday, declined to discuss the details of Rogers' injury, other than to say that it is serious. Odom said he is optimistic that those who know Rogers will rally around him.
"He is the most gentle and kind and caring person you'll ever be around," Odom said. "And he's got wonderful support around him, both internally with his family and Durham as a community.
"And I know that the Wake Forest community is going to have an outpouring of support that will be unceasing. It won't stop. That's important, because in serious situations, everybody wants to do something, but they do something for a day or a week and then they go back to doing what is important to them.
"In this situation, Rodney needs people on a continuing basis. And I think Wake Forest is committed to doing that. I also think the NBA will step forward in a big way. He meant a lot to the NBA."
Rogers was raised in McDougald Terrace, a crime-infested neighborhood in Durham then overrun by drug dealers. His father, Willie Wadsworth, died when Rogers was 7. Rogers' brother, Stanley, served time for armed robbery. His mother, Estelle Spencer, was in a nearly fatal automobile wreck during Rogers' sophomore year at Durham's Hillside High School.
But along the way, people looked out for him.
The drug dealers left him alone, and Rogers knew and understood enough to not seek them out.
"It's just something you've got to be strong enough to say, ‘I'm not going to mess with it,'" Rogers had said during his time at Wake Forest. "You've got to have priorities. You've got to know what you want to do in life.
"You see other guys who were right there at the time -- and one little mistake and they blew it. So you say to yourself, ‘If I ever get to that point, I'm not going to blow it.'"
A Durham masonry contractor, Nathaniel Brooks, and his family took Rogers in while his mother was convalescing, further distancing him from the perils of McDougald Terrace. The one stipulation was that Rogers follow the same household rules as Brooks' two sons, Nathaniel Jr. and Daryl.
"That was understood," Brooks said five years ago. "We don't try to take the place of his mother, but we offer him spiritual and personal guidance. When he comes and stays with us, we go to church."
Sadly, Rogers' accident was the second one in five months to rock the Brooks family. Nathaniel Jr. was killed in a motorcycle accident on Aug. 8.
When Odom learned that Rogers was admitted to Shepherd Center in Atlanta -- a hospital committed to helping people overcome catastrophic injuries -- he took it as a hopeful sign. Rogers, Odom said, will still need the love and support from his friends and family, including his two daughters and a son.
His daughters are 14 and 11, and his son is 5.
"As I look at him as an athlete and a person, God has endowed him with great strength and a powerful body," Odom said. "And those are important elements when you're fighting the battle that is ahead of him. You've got to have a strong body, and he's got one.
"But I think the most important people in this particular battle are his three kids," Odom said. "He loves his two daughters and his son, and to see him interact with them, you know there's a great bond of love that way. And that will give him the will to fight. That's what you've got to have in a situation like this."
■ Dan Collins can be reached at 727-7323 or at dcollins@wsjournal.com.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
Click a region for news specific to that area.
 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
Advertisement
