Take a look at Tim’s resume, and you see a snapshot of an accomplished man. Married for 36 years, with one grown son and a grandchild, he has worked as a salesman, has created a board game, has helped pay his son’s way through college, has written a book, and has continued his education by studying calculus and quantum physics.

Take a look at Tim, however, and you realize there’s even more to the story. Tim is paralyzed from the neck down and has been for 34 years. With courage and support from a loving family, he has accepted his difficult fate and has lived fully in spite of it.

Tim jokes that he’s even preparing to go to medical school. He has made plans to donate his body to science, so that scientists can learn more about his condition and why he was able to survive for so long when many, many others in his condition do not. “Whatever I can do to help some individual or society at large, I’d gladly do it,” he said.

Tim broke his neck during a fall into an above-ground swimming pool on July 24, 1971. Tim was 24 at the time. His wife, Barbara, was 22, and their son was 10 months old. Tim would eventually become a surgical patient of Dr. Frank Mayfield, founder of the Mayfield Clinic.

“Barb and I were at a party, a cookout, that started in the afternoon and ran into the evening,” Tim recalled. “I wasn’t drunk; I’d had three bottles of beer between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. They had a four-foot-deep, above-ground swimming pool. I didn’t dive in. I was on the ladder, and I turned to say something to the person behind me and I lost my balance and fell into the pool. I banged my head on the side of the pool and went face-down into the water. I almost drowned. People thought I was kidding. Finally, a woman in the pool pulled my head up. I remember saying, ‘I’m not kidding. Call an ambulance.’ ”

Tim was taken to the closest major hospital, where Barb received a grim prognosis. There was every possibility, she was told, that he would not live through the night. Tim was in an open ward, and during the next few days, several people on that ward passed away. But Tim survived. “Something kicks in, and you want to live,” he said.

His first thought after the initial shock was his relationship with his wife. He had fallen in love with Barb the moment he saw her, and he had proposed three weeks later. Now, married only a year and a half, they looked toward an uncertain future.

“I loved her more than life itself, and I still do,” Tim said. “I thought making her stay with me was selfish. I told her if she wanted to leave she could do that and I would understand completely.”

She stayed.

“I was told that quadriplegic marriages had a high rate of divorce,” Barb said. “The statistics are that you won’t stay married. I said I’d do the best I could for him, and I’d do the best I could the rest of his life.”

As a couple, Tim and Barb defied the odds by surviving quadriplegia in a culture where divorce is rampant. “There’s a lot that we can we learn from these two people,” said Tim’s brother, John. “Commitment … love … stick-to-it-iveness. You stand back and say, ‘He’s alive because she has dedicated her life to caring for him.’ The fact that they’re still married is a testimonial in the culture we have today.”

“Barb is more than just my wife,” Tim said. “She’s my best friend and my caregiver. I do feel bad that she’s had to do so much for me. I wish I didn’t have to ask her to do these things.”

On an intellectual level, they have remained equals. There is nothing maudlin about their relationship.

“I’ve never treated him like a paralyzed person,” Barb said. “If I want to tell him to shut up, I tell him to shut up.”

Said Tim: “She treats me like a man.”

Tim’s motivation included a powerful wish to play a role in his son’s life. “I thought it was important to stay alive for him,” he said. “I lost my own father at 17. I hadn’t gone to college, and I was determined that my son would.”

Following the injury Barb became Tim’s primary advocate, asking questions at the hospital, demanding that physicians outline their intentions in language she could understand. “I learned to question things,” she said. “When they were treating him, it was if they were treating me.”

Tim underwent surgery December 7, 1971, five months after the accident, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati, and was able to regain some movement in his shoulders. Dr. John Tew was originally scheduled to operate on Tim, but the night before the operation Dr. Tew tore his Achilles’ tendon while playing handball. Dr. Mayfield operated in Dr. Tew’s place. The eight-hour procedure involved fusing four cervical vertebrae in Tim’s neck (C3 through C6).

Tim was trying to come to terms with his predicament when a priest told him that God was punishing him for his sins. Taken aback by that injustice, Tim responded by distancing himself from his original religion and by developing his own theological answer to the changed circumstances of his life. The exploration prompted him to begin writing. With a pencil glued to a pair of glasses, he pecked out words on an infrared keyboard and ended up writing a book, which he titled, “My World View.”

He also created an educational board game, called “Making It,” which is designed to teach young people about values and success in the business world. The game, which reflected Tim’s experiences in corporate America, attracted $250,000 from investors and was on the market for four years. It was used in schools throughout Ohio and Kentucky and was sold in college bookstores around the country.

During the first year after his injury Tim suffered two bedsores serious enough to require skin grafts. But he has not had a bed sore since. Mental anguish was also an issue in the early years, and at times, he recalled, “I was so depressed that I wanted to burn down the house with me in it.”

But the will to live was strong. “It’s not just that Tim survived and didn’t get bed sores,” his brother said. “He used his creative genes to keep his mind occupied. I don’t want the message of Tim’s life to go untold. In this era of self-help, there are lessons to be learned. I’ve certainly used them as a source of strength when feeling sorry for myself.”

Today, after many years of good health, Tim knows that he has begun to experience a gradual decline. He suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes, and periodic kidney infections. In the fall of 2004 he spent four weeks on a respirator.

“I was at peace with myself,” Tim said. “There were two instances in the last year that I thought I would buy the farm. But I can say in all honesty that I wasn’t scared the least little bit.”

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