As John McConnell stood at the podium at a gala in New York last month, the longtime radio executive shared the story of how a 2005 bicycle accident that left him temporarily paralyzed motivated him to embrace the mission of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.
“Like many others in the room tonight, this cause found me,” McConnell, who moved to Indian River Shores in 2017, told the audience.
He went on to recall, in vivid detail, his journey from lying motionless on a Long Island roadway – with two fractured vertebrae in his neck – to jogging across the finish line of the New York City Marathon exactly one year later.
He then explained how running in that 2006 marathon to raise money for the foundation spawned a lasting bond with the cause promoted by Reeve, an actor best known for playing Superman who was left quadriplegic after an equestrian accident in 1995. Reeve died in 2004.
McConnell, who spent nearly 20 years as the head of programming for ABC Radio in New York before leaving in 2008 to become a partner in the Workhorse Media talent agency, continues to serve as vice chairman of the foundation’s board.
“It’s a wonderful foundation that does amazing things,” said McConnell, 65, who received the foundation’s Arnold H. Snider Visionary Leadership Award at the New York gala. “I really didn’t know anything about it until I read an article about Christopher Reeve while I was recovering from my accident.
“The more I read, the more I wanted to be a part of what they were doing.”
First, McConnell convinced a few friends to join him in walking the New York City Marathon to raise money for the foundation.
“The plan was to walk, but by the time the marathon came around, I was feeling good enough to run it,” he said. “So that’s what we did, all 26.2 miles.”
A bigger opportunity came in 2007, when the foundation’s brass invited him to join the board, where he since has helped raise millions of dollars and contributed to efforts to improve paralysis victims’ quality of life, speed the development of treatments and find cures for spinal-cord injuries.
And it all began on one fateful November morning in 2005, when he slept through his alarm and, hurrying to meet his friends for a “bike ride and run,” had a life-altering accident.
As McConnell tells it . . .
He was out until 4:30 a.m. the night before, because the Country Music Association Awards show was in New York and he was “doing business” with Kix Brooks – of Brooks & Dunn fame – who was to become the host of the “American Country Countdown” radio show.
After his alarm clock failed to wake him at 6:30 a.m., McConnell opened his eyes at 7 and immediately scrambled get ready to meet his friends for their 7:30 excursion.
He quickly donned his biking outfit and grabbed his running shoes, but, unable to find the backpack in which he usually carried them, he tied the laces together and draped them over the crossbar of his bicycle.
About 10 minutes into what was normally a 15-minute ride, he noticed his shoes sliding toward the front fork of his bike and getting dangerously close to the wheel. So he reached down intending to pull them back but inadvertently pushed one of the shoes forward, where it became wedged between the fork and wheel and brought the bicycle to a sudden stop, throwing him over the handlebars.
He flew 15 feet through the air before the top-right side of his head crashed into the road, cracking his helmet.
“I knew immediately that I was in trouble,” McConnell said. “I couldn’t move, and the back of my neck felt like someone had hit it with a sledgehammer. It was terrifying.”
Then it got scarier.
“There I am in the street, lying on my side and unable to move, and I look back to see a car coming right at me,” McConnell said. “All I could think was, ‘This is it. This is how I’m going out.’ Fortunately, the car stopped.”
The driver got out of the car and, at McConnell’s request, called 911 and requested an ambulance, which arrived within minutes.
As the paramedics tended to him, though, McConnell began to drift toward unconsciousness. It was then that he began to think the worst.
“My first thought was: I’m screwed,” McConnell said. “And then all these questions raced through my mind: What if I can never walk again? What if I can never hug my wife and kids again? How am I going to do this? How is my family going to handle this?
“It was at that moment – and for the next couple of hours – that I started to understand what it would be like to be paralyzed.”
His fears only grew at the hospital, where one doctor said he probably had broken his neck and a second told McConnell’s wife, Marie, that her husband might not ever walk again.
The emergency-room doctors ordered an MRI exam to determine the extent of the damage, but, experiencing severe claustrophobia, a frantic McConnell begged them to not put him inside the machine.
At one point, seemingly motivated by fear, McConnell reached out with his hand and grabbed the attendant’s arm.
He wasn’t completely paralyzed.
Dr. Jeff Silber, the orthopedic surgeon on call, took charge of the case, nixed the MRI exam and, instead, opted for a CAT scan, which confirmed that McConnell had fractured his C1 and C2 vertebrae at the top of his neck.
Less than three hours after the accident, McConnell began to notice feeling and movement returning to his extremities, prompting Silber to postpone any thoughts of surgery.
“No doctor I know would make this call, but I’m not going to operate,” Silber told McConnell. “I’m going to let you be for a while. No halo. No surgery. But don’t move.”
Silber punctuated their conversation by saying, “You might be the luckiest patient I’ve ever seen.”
Three days later, McConnell was released from the hospital. He said it was a “miracle” that he was able to do so requiring only a neck brace – and that he was able to resume an active life.
McConnell, who played tennis at Pepperdine University, continues to play here. He also enjoys playing golf and, yes, even riding his bicycle. He travels regularly from his Sea Forest Court neighborhood to New York and Los Angeles on business, and he has no plans to retire anytime soon.
As for the Reeve Foundation, McConnell’s commitment remains strong.
“I was very lucky,” he said. “And if you have an experience like I had and don’t pay it forward, what’s your life about?”
