Community

Battle off the field

As a coach, Lori Jorgensen inspired her students, pushing them to achieve. Now the students are there for her.

By KELLIE DIXON, Times Staff Writer
Published October 30, 2007

Lori Jorgensen, shown here with her husband, Joachim Gensecke, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor this summer. A former middle school coach, she retired from Bayonet Point Middle School before the start of the school year.
	[Kellie Dixon | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT Jorgensen coached track, soccer and volleyball, then became a reading teacher.

Lori Jorgensen sat with her husband in the bleachers, watching the middle school football game. She wore her pink collared Bayonet Point Middle School shirt, a souvenir from her teaching days - the same one the school had made to support Jorgensen and the other teachers battling cancer.

She was there to be honored; the football team was dedicating its Oct. 23 game to her by wearing pink stickers with her initials on its helmets. The gesture was touching to both Jorgensen and her husband. But sitting there, she felt frustrated watching former co-workers, students and parents pass by.

"I see people I know but I can't have a conversation with them," Jorgensen said. "It's very frustrating."

Her brain tumor makes it hard for her to pay attention to long conversations. And frustrating is how she chooses to describe the situation.

She was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in June and in August was given six months to live.

Frustrating hardly seems appropriate.

But that just gives you a better understanding of Jorgensen.

She's the type of person who would rather focus on a solution than dwell on the problem. In the case of her tumor, she hopes to enroll in clinical trials if this latest round of chemotherapy doesn't work.

But while her heart is still the same, her body has started betraying her. Her muscles have atrophied along with her ability to express herself.

"Here's a girl that has a master's and a law degree and can't remember what happened five minutes ago," said her husband, Joachim Gensecke, who served with her in the Army. "Our life has changed drastically. We just play it one day at a time. That's all we can say."

She leans on her husband of 19 years to help her stay active. That is important to Jorgensen, a former distance runner who competed in marathons in Germany and triathlons in Florida.

The 46-year-old Staten Island native was always moving, always reading, always learning. After earning degrees from Florida State, she decided to teach middle school. When she started in the Pasco school district 11 years ago, she was drawn to physical education.

She also coached soccer, track and volleyball. She made learning fun, whether it was in the classroom or on the playing field.

Gensecke used to help Jorgensen with the track and field meets.

"The kids really responded to her," Gensecke said. "She was strict, but she was always compassionate. ... She wanted you to be as good as you could be, regardless of what you do."

That was the expectation she had for Jared Velez, whom Jorgensen and Gensecke sponsored through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. Velez is in his second year of law school.

She had the same expectations for her students when she became a reading teacher in 2005. She worked most nights until 10. She had binders and binders full of information she couldn't wait to implement.

Reading coach Karin Johnson, who worked with Jorgensen for three years, said she saw a lot of Jorgensen's coaching talents when she taught reading.

"You give the kids strategies that will help them, just like on the ballfield in PE," Johnson said. "There are similarities. Her class was not boring."

Jorgensen got her mostly sixth-grade students to act out their reading material as if they were performing a play. Once, she brought in a popular Thanksgiving karaoke song.

A couple of weeks before her diagnosis, Jorgensen treated Johnson to a birthday lunch. But the laughter turned into prayers a couple of weeks later when Jorgensen disclosed her illness.

It started with bad headaches. An MRI scan and biopsy disclosed the danger.

The tumor hit hard and fast. Jorgensen resigned from her position at Bayonet Point Middle School. Gensecke has watched his wife weaken, although she still makes it a point to swim five days a week at the YMCA in Spring Hill.

The highlight of her week, though, is when people visit. Mondays are the best, Gensecke said. That's when her former co-workers bring over meals.

The effort was started by Johnson, who lost her father to lung cancer. She watched people shy away from her family then, and she didn't want Jorgensen to go through the same thing.

"We're just trying to do anything we can to help out," Johnson said. "We have a real good family."

Kellie Dixon can be reached at kdixon@sptimes.com or 352 544-9480.

[Last modified October 29, 2007, 19:24:51]