After Rocky Clark broke his neck during a high school football game in September 2000, he had many visitors.
The former running back’s family was there, of course, and so were his teammates from the football squad at Eisenhower High School in Blue Island.
But other players came as well: young men who did not know Clark personally but were familiar with such a devastating injury.
“I wanted him to know that there was somebody else who knew what he was going through,” said Rob Komosa, 22, a former high school football player paralyzed a year before Clark after he ran into an unpadded metal pole during a football practice. “I wanted him to know that we supported him.”
On Thursday, the men who had been at Clark’s side soon after his injury were there again to ask for donations to help build him a home specially designed for his needs.
Clark, 21, a quadriplegic, lives in the same Robbins home where he grew up. Although it has been fitted with a wheelchair ramp and other features, his family said the one-bathroom house is not suitable as a place for him to live long-term.
Clark’s mother, Annette, described the daily hassles of trying to care for her son in the cramped, south suburban home.
Getting Clark out of his bed can be a “tight squeeze,” she said, and often means “knocking paint off the walls.”
To make room for the medical bed crowding Clark’s room, his mother has turned her own bedroom into storage space.
What the family desperately wants is a new home specially designed for Clark, who is studying business administration at South Suburban College in South Holland.
They want a place where he can live in comfort and with dignity.
“Rocky was part of the football family, and he is still part of that family,” Kenneth Jennings, 34, a fellow quadriplegic paralyzed in 1988, told a crowd of family and supporters. “I’m especially calling on that football family–from high school to the pros–to step up and help out.”
The event, held at a restaurant in the city’s Old Town neighborhood, was sponsored by Dreams for Kids, a Chicago-based charity that works to improve the quality of life of children with disabilities.
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With guests like Secretary of State Jesse White and Bears defensive back R.W. McQuarters standing by, Clark thanked those who had stood by him through his convalescence and years adjusting to life after his injury.
Clark particularly thanked Dreams for Kids President Tom Tuohy, whom he met right after his injury.
“Tom told me `From this point on, I’ll never leave you.'” Clark remembered. “Five years in, Tom’s still here.”
Also on hand was J.J. O’Connor, paralyzed playing high school hockey in 1995. Rolling Meadows High School football coach Doug Millsaps presented the Clark family with a $1,000 check–money that the high school team raised to help give for Clark a new home.
Millsaps was Rob Komosa’s football coach in the fall of 1999–the football season when Komosa last walked.
The two men have remained friends through the years, and Komosa is still a small part of his former team: His No. 26 jersey has been retired and players wear that number on their helmets.
Recently, Komosa won a $12.5 million settlement in a lawsuit against the Rolling Meadows school district.
“My community was there for me when I was hurt,” Komosa said Thursday, remarking on the “Make Room for Rob” campaign that raised more than $300,000 and allowed the family to build a specially equipped house in Mt. Prospect soon after he was hurt.
“I hope they can do the same for Rocky.”