[Mb-civic] A washingtonpost.com article from: swiggard@comcast.net

[Barbara Siomos]

Of all the articles I have read since Christopher Reeve died this one by
Chip Crews from the Washington Post has to be the most touching. Thanks
for sending it Bill.
peace,
barbara
>Date: Tue, Oct 12, 2004, 7:09am 
>From: swiggard at comcast.net 
>To: mb-civic at islandlists.com 

Christopher Reeve, Another Kind Of Superhero 
  By Chip Crews
 
    The two warring images will be linked forever, each denying
-- and completing -- the other: Christopher Reeve, built and beautiful
in his Superman suit, roaring invincibly into the stratosphere. And
Christopher Reeve, strained and drawn, hooked to a ventilator and living
another motionless day in his wheelchair. The cartoon hero had suffered
a horrible fall and emerged as a real-life hero.
 
  And yet Reeve, who died of heart failure Sunday at 52, always
sounded a little appalled at the thought that people might consider him
heroic. A devastating May 1995 riding injury had left him paralyzed, to
be sure; in some quarters he bore the lurid title of the most famous
quadriplegic in history. But he always pointed out that when the
accident happened, he was a famous, well-off and well-connected movie
actor who had advantages that were unavailable to most. "I haven't had
to sell my house and end up in a nursing home," he said in a 1998
interview marking the publication of his memoir, "Still Me." "So that
sets me apart from the people I regard as heroes. I truly mean that." 

  On that afternoon six years ago he was doing what he could to
stimulate book sales, certainly, but what kept him speaking for 3 1/2
hours was a higher and broader purpose: Reeve was by then the nation's
most visible advocate for paralysis research. (He retained that mantle
for the rest of his life and was a vigilant advocate of stem-cell
research.) It had become nearly a full-time job, and he saw every
interview, every camera setup as an opportunity to promote the cause. 

  "The cure," he said, "is just around the corner." 
  Toward that end he was forever in training -- legs one day, arms
the next, abs the next. "All the scientists who are working on solving
the problem of curing paralysis say that it won't do you any good if you
don't keep your body in shape," he noted. 
  Reeve sat tall in his industrial-strength wheelchair, and his
broad, immobilized musculature was somehow a little daunting. But the
smile was immediate, and his attitude friendly and helpful throughout. 
  "If you need to tape this," he said at the start, "just put the
recorder here on my thigh." 

  In his book but also in person, Reeve was forthright about the
hardships and indignities of paralysis: the getting-up and
getting-to-bed rituals that could run to five hours on a bad day, the
utter lack of spontaneity, the daily manipulation of his bowel. ("I'm
turned on my side, and the aide pushes on my stomach with his fist in
order to force stool down through the intestines. . . . Sometimes it can
take nearly an hour.") 

    But his wheezy, labored speech and a certain reticence
tended to keep his emotions hidden from outsiders. Though at one point
he did calmly murmur, "It saddens me sometimes that just when everything
had come together I went out and ruined it." (His "everything" had much
to do with his 1992 marriage to his wife, Dana, whose devotion to him
has been quite visible through the years.) 

    Still, tearing through the Virginia countryside on horseback
-- he fell during a cross-country race in Culpeper -- was utterly in
character. Though he insisted he was never foolhardy, Reeve's
recreational pursuits were always marked by a touch of daring --
sailplanes, skiing, two solo flights across the Atlantic. The same
streak showed up in his career: He was a solid, somewhat underrated
actor who was not at all afraid to be shown up by the best. 

    "Vanessa Redgrave, Katharine Hepburn, Gene Hackman, Morgan
Freeman, Anthony Hopkins are all people who can easily blow me off the
screen," he said, ticking off a list of his co-stars. "But I'd rather
enjoy the challenge of working with them. . . . You learn more and you
do better." 

    From the start, it appears, Reeve was self-assured and
unflappable, the rather uncommon sort of person who simply decides what
he wants to do and then makes it happen. His parents divorced early in
his life and he grew up in Princeton, N.J., living with his mother. He
was called Tophy in those days, and when his parents remarried, bringing
an assortment of half-brothers and stepbrothers into the picture, he
vowed to maintain his place in the family by being "as perfect as
possible." 

  Certainly he always looked about as perfect as possible, which was
no small help in attracting early attention. At 22, while studying at
Juilliard, he landed the role of a bad boy on the soap opera "Love of
Life," jacking up the show's ratings in the process. A couple of years
later, in 1976, he made his Broadway debut in "A Matter of Gravity," an
inane comedy that rode to success on Hepburn's star coattails. 

  Still, Reeve's chiseled flawlessness was out of sync in Hollywood,
where Hoffman, Pacino, Nicholson and De Niro made up the new ruling
class. But "Superman" (1978) called for a throwback; nobody was thinking
of Dustin Hoffman to play that part. Over the next decade or so, Reeve
sustained a kind of medium-level movie stardom. In the late '80s,
however, the fourth and final "Superman" installment bombed, and
"Switching Channels," with Kathleen Turner and Burt Reynolds, did no
better. It took several years of careful choices -- mostly television,
though "The Remains of the Day" was a much-admired feature -- to set his
course right. 

  You have to be tough to make it as an actor, and Reeve insisted
that his theatrical background was good preparation for his later
catastrophe. Remembering his days of auditioning, he said, "You walk in
to face a disinterested row of faces, knowing they're going to see
someone else five minutes later, and you get one chance to do your
thing. They're certainly not welcoming. If you weren't there, it
wouldn't make any difference. And you have to come in believing, 'I'm
worth something. You should pay attention!' " 

  Reeve, then 45, was brandishing a much-publicized goal the day of
the 1998 interview: to walk again by the time he turned 50 in September
2002. ("I think if everything goes well, we may be ahead of schedule.")
Yes, the man was an actor, but it was impossible to question his
conviction that it would happen. 

    Even then, skeptics would shake their heads and, meaning no
insult, call him delusional. And it is true that although he showed
progress on several fronts in the years to come, he never realized his
dream.
 
  Perhaps that means Christopher Reeve was more Don Quixote than
Superman, but he was a terrific Quixote. His example inspired a lot of
people both here and abroad, and he raised many millions of dollars for
research. And besides, how many people get to play both of those parts
in one lifetime? 
  We celebrate life, we love life, we tell ourselves life is good.
And yet very often when someone dies, we force a smile and whisper,
"You're free." Whatever the person's pain or rage or thwartedness, it's
powerless and gone, never to return. It's a comforting perspective when
you look at Christopher Reeve. And it's even nicer to think that maybe
somewhere he's awakened this morning, frisky as a colt, and gone off for
an aimless run.