Once He Couldn't Walk; Now He Won't Slow Down

(Dec. 15) -- Logic says Pat Rummerfield shouldn't want to have anything to do with automobiles. A horrific accident in 1974 left him a quadriplegic, numb from the knees down and with only a third of his spinal cord functioning.

Yet here he is -- at age 56 -- preparing for his rookie season on the professional drag racing circuit.

The guy's a winner for just making it to the starting line. But he has eat-my-dust ambitions.

"I think with more seat time I could be very competitive," says Rummerfield, who finished next to last in a trial-run event he entered two months ago.


It's no publicity stunt, says Donnie Richardson, co-owner of Arlington, Texas-based Raptor Performance Motorsports, which recently signed Rummerfield to a driver's contract. "We expect to go out to the track and hold our own," Richardson says.

Rummerfield plans to suit up for the American Drag Racing League's entire 10-race schedule in 2010, which kicks off March 12 in Houston. Richardson still needs to find sponsors to help foot the $1.5-million cost of outfitting a team. In light of Rummerfield's inspirational story -- which includes regaining the ability to run after 17 years of do-it-yourself physical therapy -- he's not expecting that to be a problem. Quite the opposite: "To me, it's like a marketing miracle dropped in my lap."

Drag racing is a four-wheel sprint. Rummerfield will drive the "Pro Extreme" category, where tricked-out stock cars face off in a series of head-to-head eliminations. They explode down straightaways only an eighth of a mile long, covering that abbreviated distance in under five seconds, often exceeding 200 mph.

"These cars are incredibly difficult to handle," says Jeff Fortune, executive vice president of the American Drag Racing League.

No wonder. Some can go from zero to 100 mph in one second.

Rummerfield will spend weekends burning rubber for a cause bigger than himself. He's using the platform to raise research money for the International Center for Spinal Cord Injury at Baltimore's Kennedy Krieger Institute, which is also known as his day job. He's a staff patient liaison, serving as a combination confidant/role model for quadriplegics undergoing therapy at Kennedy Krieger.

Nobody knows better what it's like to travel that kind of rough, lonesome road.

Charles Dickens could have written the life story of Pat Rummerfield.

His given name is Duke Stover. Born in California to abusive parents, he and four siblings were sent to an orphanage and soon scattered among different families, lost to each other.

Young Duke got adopted by a bachelor air-conditioning repairman from Kellogg, Idaho, deep in the heart of silver-mining country. Tom Rummerfield gave Duke a new name and a new lease on life. Pat grew up running the nearby hills and playing high school basketball. After graduation, he did what most young Kellogg men do: follow their buddies and relatives down into the mines.

Everything unraveled on his 21st birthday. He and his best friend boozed it up, then made the mistake of hopping into Rummerfield's Corvette. The police figured they flipped at about 135 mph.

The friend, who was driving, suffered a cracked tooth. Rummerfield resembled road kill. Both knees were hyper extended, one clavicle crushed, and his right eyeball had popped from its socket. That was the good news.

He also fractured his neck in four places. Doctors said he'd never walk again.

After a lengthy hospital stay where his weight plummeted from 205 pounds to 135, Pat rolled home in a manual wheelchair. No follow-up support. Nothing to cling to but hope.

In happier days, Tom Rummerfield used to tell his son that "the will to win means nothing without the will to work."

Instinctively, they went to work.

Tom kneaded and stretched Pat's atrophied muscles. Friends manipulated his limbs. The Rummerfields bought an electric exercise bicycle at a garage sale for $5 and duct taped Pat's feet to the pedals. He'd "ride" for hours on end.

After three years of homemade physical therapy, Rummerfield took a few baby steps.

After six years, he was able to walk.

Two years after that he got married and, incredibly, returned to work in the silver mines.

Tom Rummerfield died in 1990. One year later -- almost two decades since that fateful Corvette crash -- his son fulfilled a dream.

He ran once more.

Not a smooth stride, but effective. In fact, Pat Rummerfield recovered enough strength and endurance to complete the 1992 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon. It took him 16 hours, 18 minutes to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and run a marathon.

Not bad for someone who belongs in a wheelchair.

Thousands of hours of rehabilitation took a toll on his marriage. Rummerfield got divorced. But he also gained a reputation in disabled-athlete circles. In 1996, that led to a job at Washington University Hospital in St. Louis. There, he crossed paths with Dr. John McDonald, a maverick neurologist performing clinical research with spinal-cord patients.

McDonald was an early proponent of "activity based therapy." It's grounded in the notion that repetitive movements done over an extended period of time can revive damaged nerve endings and muscles. In essence, he believes it's possible to rewire parts of a blown central nervous system.

Which is what Pat Rummerfield was unwittingly doing in faraway Idaho.

Coincidentally, a key piece of activity-based-therapy equipment is an $18,000, high-tech bicycle that stimulates inert muscles with pulses of electric current. How about that? A super tricked out version of Rummerfield's garage-sale exercise bike.

In 2006, McDonald -- who helped paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve recover substantial muscle mass before a blood infection took his life -- moved his base of operations to Kennedy Krieger Institute. Rummerfield came along, opting to long-distance commute every few weeks from his home in St. Louis. He's an invaluable asset to McDonald by virtue of having earned a reputation as the world's most fully recovered quadriplegic. Know anybody else in his condition who has run a marathon in Antarctica or set a land speed record (245.5 mph) in an electric car on the Bonneville Salt Flats?

Rummerfield finished the first 27-mile stage of a grueling ultramarathon through China's Gobi desert but then had to drop out because of stress fractures in both ankles. Brittle bones are one of the lingering effects of his spinal injury.

"What is unusual about Pat is there are things that we can't explain," McDonald says. "If I were able to replace your nervous system with Pat's, you wouldn't be able to do those things."

McDonald, for example, can't explain how Rummerfield recovered so much function in his upper body. His reaction times range from normal to above normal. Also, his brain has compensated for losses in tactile sensation and spatial perception in ways McDonald doesn't fully comprehend.

One thing he does know: "The indefatigability of Pat's character is what sets him apart from everyone else."

Now happily remarried, Rummerfield praises his second wife, Barbara, for tolerating his need to continually test himself. "She knows I'm driven," he says.

In fact, his sights are set on a goal beyond drag racing. In August, Pat Rummerfield wants to join an expedition up Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro, all 19,340 feet.

It should be a cinch. He's already climbed higher mountains.