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A Man of Inspiration

IT'S ROY AS IN JOY, OF LIVING

Travis Roy has turned a tragedy into a lesson on how to enrich a life

Travis Roy, with his springer spaniel, Effie, became a quadriplegic from a college hockey accident in 1995. He now serves as a motivational speaker while also working for a charity foundation that bears his name and seeks to help others, as well as find a cure for paralysis.

By Rachel Lenzi

COLCHESTER, Vt. -- Each summer at Goodsell Point is an infinite string of good days for Travis Roy. And on each good day, Roy savors all that surrounds him at his seasonal home in Vermont.

On a humid day in mid-June, the summer beckons for Roy. Effie, his springer spaniel, walks by and wags her short tail. The waves gurgle as they hit the rocky shoreline below the deck of Roy's cottage. During the day, Roy steers his wheelchair through the small cottage community and stops to say hello to neighbors.

These are still frames and sound bites of Goodsell Point, a tiny, seven-cottage community on Malletts Bay, in a corner of Lake Champlain. This is where Roy spends his 29th summer, his ninth as a quadriplegic.

Roy's plight became national news late in 1995 when he was paralyzed in a freak accident during his first collegiate hockey game at Boston University.

Now almost a decade later, Roy has moved past the accident. He has chosen to make a life for himself as a motivational speaker, also working in Boston with the charity foundation in his name.

He won't let his handicap get in the way.

Of being a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair, he says, "I don't feel like it holds me back."

Each summer Roy escapes to this little peninsula on Malletts Bay, where he can capture the time that always seems to be so fleeting everywhere else he goes. This is where he watches his mother tend to the flowerbeds and where he wolfs down a bag of cheese Combos, fed to him two at a time by a home-care attendant.

"Gotta have my Combos," he says between bites, slowly grinning.

There are sultry afternoons when Roy simply sits for hours on the deck in his motorized wheelchair, closes his blue eyes and savors the sunlight that shines on him.

Goodsell Point, a piece of land that his great-grandmother purchased in the 1920s with nickels and dimes she swiped from her husband, has become a priceless haven for Roy.

"His heart and soul is there," his mother, Brenda, said of Goodsell Point.

"It almost alleviates all of the pressure and all of the pain, all of the emotions of the real world and having to handle the real world with a handicap," said Jack Parker, the BU hockey coach and executive director of athletics.

Roy cherishes his time in Vermont.

"It's just really what life is supposed to be about," Roy said. "Getting together with family, doing fun things. I act on that."

Travis Roy believes that in this busy world, simplicity is bliss.

AN ACTIVE LIFE

Roy lives in Boston for nine months of the year, and all around him are people whose lives are planned according to the beep of a Palm Pilot or the timetable of the "T."

"When you're in a wheelchair, you do a lot of sitting back and watching," Roy said. "It's a different perspective."

Somewhere in the high-energy city, Roy may have watched the man who calls the office to schedule a spur-of-the-moment afternoon meeting well before he takes a few minutes to call a loved one. He may have watched the woman who balances a portfolio, dry cleaning and grocery bags while trying to walk down the street in a pair of designer heels. From his wheelchair, Roy studies the busy bodies.

"People don't take time out to catch their breath," Roy said. "They don't take a break and see what's around them and see what's important. It amazes me how busy people's lives can get.

"The lack of appreciation for fundamentals, family and friends . . . and communicating with them."

In the spring of 1995, six months before his accident, Roy emphasized the importance of family and friends in a speech to his classmates at Tabor Academy in Massachusetts. The speech was called "Travis Roy's Ten Rules of Life."

Brenda Roy believes the principle of family has been a constant in her son's life.

"Trav has always been appreciative of his family," she said. "His 10 rules of life came before his accident. One of those (rules) is to take time to appreciate, to say, 'thank you,' to say, 'I love you.' I don't think it's new, but I think it's something that's very deep for Travis."

For nine months of the year, away from the solitude of Goodsell Point, Roy negotiates curbs and doors as he proves his independence despite being able to move only his head, shoulders and right arm.

"It's the working part of my life," Roy said. "I live right downtown. When you have a disability, you crave independence. Being in Boston, I can go out my door and go to 100 different restaurants, shops, malls, movie theaters . . ."

Accessibility is a key for Roy in asserting his independence.

"He can do just about anything he wants to, and he can do it independently," Brenda Roy said.

There are places in Boston he can't go, like inside the trendy shops on Newbury Street.

Lofts, stairsteps and cubbyhole-sized portals simply aren't conducive to a motorized wheelchair.

Likewise, he has to carefully plan his traveling and speaking engagements.

While each day is structured, Roy admits he doesn't look more than a day or two ahead.

When it comes to coping with his place in the world, Roy worries only about what he can control.

"I don't look too far ahead," Roy said. "I live one day at a time. Otherwise it would be unimaginable."

Roy says he only returns to Maine a few times a year. A trip to Maine involves coordinating a car trip home and scheduling home-care attendants. Also, the restlessness that came with being a teenager confined to one town caught up with him when he was growing up. He chose to leave Yarmouth.

But after growing up, after college, after the accident, after learning to live independently in spite of a physical challenge, "you appreciate everything (Maine) gave you and everything that it is. That's absolutely true with Maine."

MAN WITH A CAUSE

Roy's causes are centered in Boston. He is a motivational speaker, an advocate for stem-cell research and a ready contributor to the search for a cure for paralysis. He openly acknowledges that yes, there is a cure out there and that he may walk again.

Since its inception in 1997, the Travis Roy Foundation has raised and distributed more than $1 million in research grants and adaptive medical equipment to people across North America who have suffered spinal cord injuries.

Unlike Roy, some people don't have the medical insurance or lifestyle he's fortunate to have.

"I've been amazed at the success it's had," Roy said of the foundation. "It's been a really unique experience. It's done really good things. People that can't afford wheelchairs and modifications to get through their houses . . . all the things that have made my life easier and given me a chance to be successful, I want to return that."

Roy has found a niche in reaching out. He talks about what he holds dear to audiences in auditoriums and concert halls throughout New England.

"It's a story I believe in," Roy said. "The experiences I've had and the choices I've made."

In the comfort of his summer cottage in Vermont, Roy declines to read his speech to a visitor, but he emphasizes its touchstones.

Roy stresses the importance of setting goals and the significance of finding a passion. He stresses self-reflection and having a positive attitude. He can't say enough about the love and pride he has for his family and friends.

"It's all a part of what was important to us as a family," Brenda Roy said. "He's come to it on his own and he's been able to articulate it as an adult."

The message in his speech is clear to those who have listened.

"What he's trying to tell people is, take advantage of every day," said Ed Carpenter, the assistant athletic director for communications at BU and a close friend of the Roy family. "There's somebody who's talking from experience.

"You have no idea when it could be taken away from you."

Roy talks about the on-ice accident that left him paralyzed at 20, unable to feel anything below his shoulders.

Parker recounts that Roy says in his speeches that he knew right away what happened, that he knew it was the end of his hockey dreams as his chin rested on the ice as trainers and doctors manipulated his numb limbs.

STORY STIRS LISTENERS

Dan Ronan, Roy's roommate and teammate at BU, sometimes drives Roy to the speaking engagements. Ronan sits in the back of the audience as his friend speaks of the moments after he went headfirst into the end boards and fell awkwardly, an attempt at a body check gone horribly wrong.

"I was there when everything happened," said Ronan, a BU law student.

"To hear him say certain things, I get a little choked up."

But in that same speech, Roy also talks about his road back and how he had to reassess his entire life.

Roy realizes that each time he delivers that speech, each time he takes a question and gives an answer, each time he interacts with another person, people in his audiences can relate.

In his audiences are people who have dealt with tragedy. A person may have a parent who has suffered a stroke, or a child who has been disfigured after an auto accident.

Or a person simply is stirred by his story.

People he has never met come up to him after a speech and tell him he's their inspiration, their reason for taking a different approach.

"That's what I use as a reasoning to make it worthwhile," Roy said as the sun peeks out of the clouds above Lake Champlain.

"It wasn't all for naught, the life I planned on living. My life has more value, more meaning. People can take something of it, something positive."

Growing up, Roy's passion was hockey. At a hockey camp one summer in junior high, he planned the rest of his life around the game.

"I wanted to make the Casco Bay travel team," he wrote in "Eleven Seconds," co-authored in 1998 with E.M. Swift of Sports Illustrated. "I wanted to make the Maine all-star team. I wrote down how many points I wanted to score that season, how many points I wanted to score the next season, that I wanted to make the top three in scoring my freshman year in high school. There were 10 or 15 steps on that list.

"At the bottom I wrote that I wanted to play for a Division I college, then in the American Hockey League, then for the U.S. Olympic team, then in the National Hockey League."

He never thought he would have to reassess his goals and search for a passion away from hockey. It's what he tells people in his speech, that there are times when they are forced to re-evaluate.

Up to that moment at BU when his passion was taken from him on the night of Oct. 20, 1995, he had met every goal. Until then, nobody had told Roy he couldn't do whatever he set out to do.

Yet the "could haves" remain. The big one was hockey. Roy could have continued to live his passion.

"My passion," he says with a sad sigh, his blue eyes turning downward. "I'm still trying to find it. I have not found anything that compares to the love I have, the passion I have for hockey."

He compensates in other ways. His home in Vermont helps.

"I live my life three months of the year to relax," Roy said. "In Boston, it's more competitive, me trying to make a living."

He has his artwork. He has the Travis Roy Foundation. He tried his hand at broadcasting University of Maine hockey games, doing in-studio analysis this past season.

He admits he can't quite put a finger on his identity, yet his mother sees a familiar identity in her son, one fostered well before his life changed nearly nine years ago.

"It's as a person of character, a person who has values," Brenda Roy said. "A person who has something to share with others to enrich their life. The identity is that same person before, minus the physical part of it. He always prided himself as being more than a hockey player."

Parker agreed.

"It's his own persona," Parker said. "People have allowed themselves to define themselves by what they do, I'm-doctor-so-and-so, I'm hockey-so-and-so, I'm novelist so-and-so. What you do for a living isn't necessarily who you are. He's come to realize that. That transcends the loss of the ability to play hockey."

Roy likens his identity now to his personal growth.

"I feel that I've learned and have found the most important aspects of life," Roy said. "My identity is a lot of clichés: one day at a time . . . making the best of it. . . . But I appreciate what I have.

"My confidence is back. My pride is as strong as ever. My motivational speaking ­ I feel like I'm a productive member of society. That's a good thing."

Roy can't stress enough the importance of the positives, and of keeping perspective.

"There are dark times," Roy said. "Times I'm frustrated and tired and I want to cash it in. But there are people who are dealing with far bigger issues than I'm dealing with."

HIS TIME AWAY

Through the afternoon, as the temperature on the digital thermometer creeps to 83.5 at Goodsell Point, Roy can't reiterate enough the importance of Mom, Dad and his sister, Tobi.

Each rising degree comes with a better understanding of Roy's utmost priority.

"I have a full appreciation for the people around me," Roy said. "Probably the biggest blessing in my life is my family and friends."

Ronan remembers watching Roy's family help him move into their residence hall at BU in the fall of 1995 and thinking, "Wow, they're really close."

Ronan hasn't been to Goodsell Point, but understands its importance.

"For him, because family is so important to him, he really relishes that time," Ronan said. "We don't talk a ton about the summertime, but I can tell he really enjoys it."

Carpenter knows that Goodsell Point holds a special place in Roy's heart.

"He cherishes that time more than any other time," Carpenter said.

"It's the family compound. His best times are up there. His family is very important and plays an incredible role in his life. That's where his family gathers."

This time in Vermont is Roy's escape. This is his love. This is his part of his life.

He is surrounded by people he loves and values at Goodsell Point. During the still summer nights they sit on the deck and discuss politics, fishing and professional sports. Or they play poker until midnight. Or they watch the sun set on the Adirondacks and savor the simple moments.

There are, after all, so few of those in a person's busy life. This is what makes each day for Roy a good day.

Summer at Goodsell Point is why Travis Roy wakes up during the hottest months of the year, maneuvers himself to the deck in the early afternoon, gazes out on the water and cherishes the simplicity each good day brings.

"I tell people I find out things I enjoy," Roy said. "Friends and family. Time in Vermont. Good food.

"As long as I've included one or more of those things in my day, it's a good day."

Appeared in the Maine Sunday Telegram - July 11, 2004