Immobilized ALS victim tells students his spirit will not die.
By: Gwen Runkle
Chris Pendergast found out he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 1993. He was 44, a husband and a teacher active in the community with two children a daughter in eighth grade and a son in third.
Today, Mr. Pendergast is immobilized. He cannot walk and can no longer lift his arms. But despite his condition, Mr. Pendergast has not given up.
"ALS may take my body, but it will not take my spirit or my will," he said.
Mr. Pendergast recently shared his optimistic message and difficult life experiences with seventh-grade students at the Thomas R. Grover Middle School in West Windsor.
He was invited to speak as a conclusion to science projects by team 7A teacher Shirley Allen’s class. Each student had to research a disease and one student, Ali Rice, chose ALS, since her father works with someone with the disease.
Her father, Tom Rice, works for Credit Suisse First Boston in New York City. He is also on the board of "Wings over Wall Street," a nonprofit organization that funds ALS research and has raised $2.3 million, half going to Johns Hopkins University Hospital and half to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, both which have top-notch ALS research facilities.
Mr. Rice invited Mr. Pendergast and co-worker Michael Beier to speak, but Mr. Beier, diagnosed two years ago with ALS, was in the final stages of the disease and was too ill to attend. Mr. Beier died Sunday.
Mr. Pendergast, a teacher at Dickenson Avenue Elementary School in Long Island for the past 33 years, began his talk describing Lou Gehrig’s final address in front of 62,000 fans in Yankee Stadium July 4, 1939.
He painted a vivid picture of the legendary first baseman’s grace and skill as a player and what it meant for him to bow out of the sport he loved, with the words, "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
Lou Gehrig died 22 months after his farewell at the age of 37.
Mr. Pendergast then gave the seventh-graders a chilling description of ALS, formerly called "creeping paralysis."
"It is a nasty death," he said.
Legs and arms become immobile. "Slowly you can’t swallow, chew or eat and still it gets worse," he said.
Vocal chords are paralyzed and speech "becomes babbling that no one can understand and still it gets worse," he continued. "Ultimately the muscles that control breathing become paralyzed. I will suffocate."
Mr. Pendergast found out he had ALS after going to a doctor in the fall of 1993 with strange cramps in his neck and back. He was distraught after the diagnosis.
"I was a good person and thought, ‘How did this happen to me?’" he said.
He became depressed and was unable to face his friends, "who infuriated me as they were healthy and I was not."
But then he thought of what Lou Gehrig said in his farewell address.
"He was a lucky man," Mr. Pendergast said. "And I thought, too, of the phrase, ‘You can curse the darkness or light a candle.’ If everyone would light just one candle, we could make that darkness go away.
"I was not going to stay down and would ask everyone with me to light a candle," he continued.
As a result, he has dedicated the remaining years of his life to bringing about a cure for ALS.
"I rode my wheelchair everywhere to raise funds," he said. "In 1998, I rode from the center of Yankee Stadium through New Jersey, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Delaware, across Maryland to Washington D.C. 350 miles at 3 miles per hour. It took me 15 days."
He met the president, governors, senators, all the while explaining his disease. Two years ago, he went on another wheelchair ride, this time beginning at the end of Long Island and rode into Manhattan and on to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
Overall, he has made five wheelchair trips, raising $500,000 for ALS research.
"I will ride until we are successful in finding a treatment or cure for ALS," he said. "Or I will ride and die trying."
His next ride will again be from Long Island to Yankee Stadium, from May 10 to 18.
Ms. Allen’s seventh-grade class is sponsoring a bowl-a-thon at Brunswick Lanes in Manalapan on May 23 as a fund-raiser for Mr. Pendergast’s "Ride for Life" charity.
"The assembly inspired students as well as faculty," Ms. Allen, the team 7A teacher, said. "Eyes and minds were opened to the devastation of ALS, but moreover, to the power of the human spirit."

