For vet, his new duty is quest to stay active
Navy veteran Harold Summers survived three wars. Now he keeps up the good fight against total paralysis.
By KAREN DAVISON
Published May 30, 2005
TAMPA - Harold Summers is a member of an exclusive club on Memorial Day - a survivor of three wars.
In World War II, he saw his first combat on Omaha Beach at age 19. His feet got frostbitten in Korea. He was wounded twice in Vietnam.
Fifteen years ago, long retired from the military, he woke up paralyzed. But once again, he's a survivor. These days the 80-year-old maneuvers his wheelchair out of the James A. Haley VA Medical Center's nursing home in north Tampa and down sidewalks to visit his wife's apartment nearby.
"I had a choice of just laying down and dying," he said. His determination and a wife who has always been there for him pulled him through.
* * *
That Sunday in August 1990, when Summers woke at 4 a.m. and couldn't move his arms or legs, he could think and talk. He just couldn't get up.
What could this be? Another heart attack? A stroke?
His wife lay beside him, sleeping, in their home in Deltona. How was he going to tell her? He let her sleep.
When she woke she tried to help him up, but 200 pounds proved too heavy. She called an ambulance to take him to the hospital, and followed in her car.
* * *
It wasn't the first time Patria Summers followed Harold. When they met in 1945, he was a 21-year-old Navy corpsman stationed in Puerto Rico, already a veteran of World War II; she was 22 and sassy. She scolded him for being out of uniform. Then she went home and told her sisters she was going to marry him.
Harold Summers was transferred often in his years of service. Though they were poor, Patria managed to save a few dollars until the end of the month. She shared them with other wives who needed money.
"Everybody was broke," she said. "What we had was love for the Navy."
* * *
At the hospital in Deltona, his wife stayed by his side, trying to make sense of his condition. Their three sons visited from New Jersey and Maine.
He developed super-sensitive hearing and could hear nurses talking at their desk about how he wouldn't be around in the morning.
At the end of two months, he sported a painful bedsore, had lost weight and couldn't shake pneumonia. If anything, the paralysis had worsened, and he breathed only with the help of a ventilator.
The doctors diagnosed Guillain-Barre syndrome, an inflammatory disorder of the peripheral nerves, those outside the brain and spinal cord. The syndrome is the most common cause of rapidly acquired paralysis in the United States today.
Summers was shipped by ambulance across the state to a chronic care facility in Tampa. He remembers the trip on Interstate 4 seemed to take all day. He didn't know what to expect.
* * *
Forty-six years earlier, on another trip, Summers didn't know what to expect either. He was headed for Omaha Beach on D-Day.
The landing ship carrying him and his fellow soldiers pulled onto shore as planned. Then it backed up. The back end blew off, taking the engine room and crew's compartment with it. Some of the men around Summers were killed. He waded 150 feet to shore.
D-Day was the first combat Summers had ever seen. He was 19.
"At first you're so scared you don't know if you should run and hide. I was scared to death," he said. "I've always had the ability to not panic until it's over. I didn't get scared enough to panic - just scared enough to keep my head down."
As a corpsman, the Navy equivalent of a medic, Summers helped care for the wounded for four or five days until he was assigned to a ship carrying casualties back to England. They arranged litters three-high, bunk-bed style.
"You'd think how lucky you were," he said, "not how bad it was."
* * *
After Summers' ambulance trip across Florida to the chronic care center in Tampa, he didn't feel so lucky.
At least once a day and twice a night, he heard the alarm on his ventilator go off. He knew what that meant: the machine that breathed for him had stopped working. His vision would get fuzzy and fade to black.
Then, after the staff fixed the ventilator - bang! He'd regain consciousness with intense sensations of a big noise and a flash of light.
He kept losing weight. His bedsore grew to the size of a 50-cent piece, but "felt like the size of a bushel basket." Once, Patria found him covered in ants.
He still couldn't talk because of a tracheotomy he received in Deltona. At one point, an administrator brought in a lip reader who translated what he said word for word.
"Honey, get me the hell out of here. They're going to kill me," he said.
Patria did everything she could to get him transferred to the Haley VA hospital. But Operation Desert Shield was on, so it was tough getting admitted. Finally, a VA physician was able to help.
* * *
In Korea, Summers was assigned as a corpsman to the 1st Marine Division, which meant working at the front lines. He lived in a tent in freezing weather. Wet mud kept his feet damp.
He sprayed or dusted prisoners and incoming Marines with DDT to kill fleas and lice. He remembers the metallic flavor of the white powder.
He moved the wounded on buses. One day, he picked up the wounded from a battalion at the Chosin Reservoir and headed for Seoul. Later that day, North Korean soldiers overran the battalion. His guardian angel had looked out for him again.
* * *
Once Summers was at the VA hospital, doctors weaned him from the ventilator, cured his bedsore and eventually conquered his pneumonia.
Summers believes the VA and bullheadedness saved his life.
"I wouldn't have lived another month," he said. After about seven months, he moved next door to the VA nursing home.
The VA doctors agreed with the Guillain-Barre diagnosis, which Summers disputes. He thinks his paralysis is related to chemicals, such as DDT and Agent Orange. Over the years, he and his wife have written to experts and questioned doctors. They have given up asking for a new diagnosis.
* * *
Summers hadn't planned on going to Vietnam.
Still, corpsmen were valuable commodities, and because he was in the fleet reserve, the government requested his services. He joined the 3rd Marine Division for a 14-month tour in the north of South Vietnam.
Was he at the front lines?
"You didn't know where the front lines were," he said. "You were never safe. Even in the half-mile from the base to the PX, kids (Marines) were killed."
He worked with doctors and nurses to triage and stabilize the wounded who came in soaked in Agent Orange. Summers often took on the job of burning the uniforms. He wore gloves but breathed in the smoke.
They shipped out wounded on C-130 transport planes. Summers was wounded twice, both times on a runway. The first time a mortar exploded. The second time, shrapnel ripped into his right shoulder.
* * *
Summers, now 80, begins his days at 4 a.m. The staff at the VA nursing home uses a lift to move him from his bed to his electric wheelchair.
He patrols the corridors and the outside perimeter of the 180-bed home. He knows the location of every tree limb he can use to scratch his face.
About 10 a.m., he's off to see Patria, now 81. She lives in a modest apartment on N 22nd Street. Sticking mostly to sidewalks, he covers the eight-tenths of a mile in about 15 minutes.
They help each other. "He is my support," she said.
He reminds her of things she's forgotten and motors to Wal-Mart or University Mall to shop for her. She gets up from her chair "about 50 times" when he's at her apartment to act as his arms.
After lunch, he motors back to the VA for therapy to keep his joints limber. Twice a week in therapy, using braces to keep his knees stiff and initiating the movement from his hips, he walks.
"You can't allow yourself to get too deep in thought," he said. "I am better off than 99 percent over there (in the nursing home). I can think. I'm free to roam."
He's lifted into bed before 4 p.m. A black "WWII-Korea-Vietnam Veteran" ballcap his wife bought him hangs on the bed frame. After supper, television.
He's asleep by 10 p.m. under a sheet that reads "Department of Veterans Affairs Property - Not for Sale."