by Gina Vergel
‘His spirits are amazing’
Paralyzed but full of energy, Taylor Price is an inspiration to family and friends
On a beautiful July day at West Hampton Beach, the life of Ridgewood resident Taylor Price changed forever. As the then-18-year-old dove under an oncoming wave – something he said he has done “about 10,000 times” in his life – his chin hit a sandbar on the ocean floor and just like that, he was paralyzed from the chest down.
Price, who will return to Ridgewood next Friday from the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Ga. would probably frown if you cried as you read his story. He would rather you sit back and smile, learn, find inspiration in it and wish him well, giving him strength. As his friends and family say, ‘That’s Taylor’ – that’s who he has always been.
Taylor, a 2004 graduate of Delbarton School in Morristown, was to begin his freshman year at Georgetown University this September. He has deferred entry until next fall and remains enormously positive about his future.
Bruce Shatel, head coach of Delbarton’s varsity hockey team, which Taylor managed, recalled driving home on that summer night when he got the call about the accident. “I was devastated; I had to pull over,” he said.
Shatel described Taylor as a “selfless, enthusiastic, optimistic young man” who is always upbeat. “As a coach you hear a lot of cliches, but one that definitely holds true for Taylor is that you learn a lot about a person when they are faced with adversity. What he’s displayed over the last four months with this accident is just heroic,” said Shatel.
On that July day, Taylor’s mother, Marnie, was home in Ridgewood because her daughter Ellie, 16, was to play in a lacrosse tournament the following day. While running errands, she received a call from her husband, William, and by the tone of his voice, she knew something was wrong. “He said, ‘Taylor’s had an accident on the beach. Meet me at the house immediately.’ I nearly fell through the floor. I didn’t know what was going on,” she said.
Price left his Wall Street office, met his wife and jumped in the car to head to the Hamptons. During a grueling two hour bumper-to-bumper ride a doctor called, informing the couple that their son had been flown by helicopter to Stonybrook University Hospital in serious condition and that he needed surgery for a spinal cord injury right away. All the Prices could do was continue trudging towards the Hamptons.
It wouldn’t be summer for the Price family if they weren’t at West Hampton Beach. “I have probably gone in the ocean five to ten times a day on that same beach since I could swim,” recalled Taylor. After the split second accident, he added, he never lost consciousness.
“He just prayed that Chris, the lifeguard, would see him,” his mother said. “Chris went [after Taylor] within seconds because he had a feeling of what it was – it had happened to a friend of his, another lifeguard, before.”
Taylor said he didn’t know he had damaged his spinal cord, instead he thought it was his pelvis. “How bad is it?” he asked. He remembers the paramedics talking to the medivac operators about where they would land.
Finally, Marnie and Bill Price made it to Stonybrook, where they met up with friends of the family. “I told Taylor that his friends were there and he asked to see them,” his mother said, adding that he was working as a camp counselor like he did every summer. “He said, ‘Alright, guys, listen. I won’t be at camp tomorrow, sorry. Doctors, let’s go.’”
During a three-and-a-half-hour surgery, a titanium plate was positioned to support Taylor’s C5 vertebrae, which was fractured, causing a contusion to his spinal cord at the C6 level. On July 19, Taylor was flown to the Shepherd Center, an Atlanta-based catastrophic care hospital. On Oct. 7, he and his parents moved into the center’s transitional housing where they have learned to be independent of 24-hour care.
Currently Taylor has some sensory feelings below his chest, but no motor capabilities. For a young person to deal with such a trauma the summer before he was to enter Georgetown University as a freshman may boggle the mind of others, but how does he handle life after the injury?
“His spirits are amazing. Sure he gets frustrated and he’s exhausted, but he’s just taking this as it’s a temporary situation and it may not be…” his mother says, her voice trailing off. “Just last week (mid-October), his pinky toe wiggled oh so slightly, which was great but we’re very guarded.”
Coach Shatel said that there isn’t a day when he is not awed by the attitude and goals of his former team manager. “If all of my players had his work ethic, outlook on life and courage I wouldn’t have to coach – they’d go out and win every game,” he said.
Taylor admits that being idle is the only thing that gets his goat because he prefers to do as much as possible while at physical therapy. “I’m here to work, not here to mess around,” he says, not leaving any room for, “Why me?’
“Really, what’s the point of being that way?” he asks. “I know what I have to do, I do it and that’s it right now. There are [patients] here that are depressed and they don’t go to therapy. How does that help them? I can’t tell you what I’ve seen down here,” he says of the sadness of other patients.
Taylor’s uplifting attitude so impresses the staff at Shepherd, his mother said, that the therapists ask him to go into the rooms of those that could use some cheering up. “He had his 19th birthday in the hospital so I had all of his new buddies over for a pizza party,” Marnie said. “One of his buddies, Marlo, who is about 65, said, ‘Mrs. Price, I want you to know that because of Taylor, I can get through every day of my rehab.’ He and his wife had tears rolling down their eyes as he told me that.”
Taylor even serves as an inspiration to his parents. “I’ve broken down,” his mother said. “There are times when he has said, ‘I’m the one who can’t walk.’ In essence, he’s saying, ‘pull yourselves together, mom and dad.’” Adds his father: “It’s not easy. As a parent, your children are your dreams. Our lives changed in the blink of an eye,” he said. “It’s been a journey, not a destination. We just have to keep on praying,” Price said.
On Friday Nov. 12, the Price’s will return to their home in Ridgewood,
reuniting as a family, since daughter Ellie has been staying with her best friend’s family in New Vernon. With the help of friends, Marnie said, the house is ready and “Taylor” made, with widened doorways, a custom bathroom and chair lifts.
“I call all of our dear friends our angels. They just came to the rescue,” Marnie said. “Michele Walker, who is a decorator and a dear friend, oversaw the entire construction, which was done by Bill Braunius builders and Dave Ulrich’s company. They put projects on hold to get this done!
“Friends gathered around to help us buy a new van [to be used for Taylor's transport]. It’s amazing; it’s beyond words. There are just too many dear friends that we are thankful for to name,” Marnie said.
Editor’s note: Look for more on Taylor Price, his Ridgewood homecoming and his plans for the future in next week’s Ridgewood News.
Gina Vergel’s e-mail address is vergel@northjersey.com
