A Brotherhood of Friendship

Injured Loyola Blakefield Grad Looks to the Future with Help of Friends

By Kate Pipkin
Photography by Denise Barnes Walker

     For Van Brooks of Baltimore, the most important day of his life has yet to come. It’s the day he’ll walk again.
     Two years ago, on September 25, 2004, Brooks was playing varsity tailback for Loyola Blakefield’s football team. One of the high school team’s star players, Brooks was making a tackle when his head collided with the leg of a Georgetown Prep running back. He couldn’t move. He had suffered a severe compressed spinal cord injury. After several hours of surgery to relieve pressure on his spinal cord, the news came that Brooks was partially paralyzed. He couldn’t move his legs or hands.
     While Brooks was undergoing surgery, members of the Loyola Blakefield family had started a prayer circle to pray for their brother.

     For Brooks, now 18, that was just the beginning of the support he has received from students, teachers and parents at Loyola Blakefield. The school produced bracelets that said “Be Strong” with Brooks’ jersey number (25) on them. The bracelets were sold in the cafeteria and proceeds went to the Van Brooks Recovery Fund. In addition, the parent of a Loyola student had baseball caps made with Brooks’ jersey number and the Be Strong logo on them. He is hardly ever seen without the bracelet and the cap.
     “I started at Loyola Blakefield in the sixth grade,” says Brooks on a recent summer day, sitting in his wheelchair at the West Baltimore home where he grew up. “At Loyola, everyone looks out for each other.”
     After the accident, Brooks spent nearly four months in the hospital, much of the time on a ventilator and a feeding tube. On January 18, 2005, he was released from the hospital and finally able to go home. He says he will remember that day like his birthday because he was so happy to be home.
     Brooks has since been undergoing physical therapy twice a week. He has also learned how to drive a specially equipped van, use the computer, and get around effortlessly in a wheelchair.
     That’s not to say that life is easy for this determined young man. His progress has been sure, but slow. His movement increases little by little, and his doctors recently detected movement in his leg muscles. Prognosis is still uncertain, though, and Brooks’ weekly physical therapy sessions are grueling.
     “At times, the mental challenges are the biggest; just dealing with this,” says Brooks, glancing at his motionless legs. “But those moods don’t last too long, and I’m not one to wallow in self pity. My parents won’t let me! My father tells me that a man is not finished when he is defeated. He’s finished when he quits.”
     Quitting is not something Brooks will consider. In fact, he was so determined to graduate with his Loyola Blakefield classmates last spring that he went to school every day last summer to catch up on his studies.
     “It was a very special graduation,” says Brooks, a smile spreading across his handsome face.
     In late August, he began taking classes at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He says he wants to major in business or economics with a minor in communications.
     Two years have passed since his life-changing accident, but Brooks remains inspired and motivated, due in part to all of the support he has continued to receive. He has a roomful of mementos, cards, letters and emails from his pals at Loyola Blakefield, students from Georgetown Prep and young people from all over the state whom he has never even met.
     “I try not to think too far ahead into the future,” says Brooks. “My goal is to get out of this chair.”