Hit by car, paralyzed in 2004 on Christmas Eve, one-time triathlete has rebuilt life


Hit by car, paralyzed in 2004 on Christmas Eve, one-time triathlete has rebuilt life

He can't remember it. It's a blank. But he knows this: "I was in surgery having my head reattached."

His wife, Sally, provides the details.

That Christmas, Don was at St. Mary's Medical Center, his spinal cord severed and his survival uncertain.

The morning before, in pre-dawn darkness, Don jogged out the door of their house in West Palm Beach's south end. He sprinted east to Flagler Drive, then north. An accomplished triathlete, he knew his route well. At 58, he was more fit than most 38-year-olds.

He didn't see the car. A woman driving east on Southern Boulevard didn't see him.

She heard a thump, and her windshield shattered. When she got out of the car to see what happened, Don was on the ground, his headphones next to him.

"I knew where I was, and I knew this wasn't the type of injury where I was just going to rub dirt on it and keep running," Don recalls. He had no identification on him, so he willed himself to stay conscious until paramedics got him to St. Mary's.

He told a trauma nurse who he was and gave her Sally's phone number. He heard another nurse gasp: "Oh, my God."

"I don't remember much after that for quite a few weeks."

The nurses knew Don, as did almost everyone at St. Mary's and many prominent people throughout Palm Beach County. He was then the public-relations spokesman for the hospital, and in the 31 years he had worked there, he had been involved in its growth, including development of the St. Mary's trauma center.

Here he was, in critical condition inside that trauma center, the vertebrae in his neck shattered and his spinal cord severed. Doctors told Sally it was one of the worst spinal injuries they had ever seen.

He would be paralyzed from the chest down -- if he survived the operation to stabilize his neck by drilling metal rods into his skull.

Sally Chester is a registered nurse, an avid community volunteer and an overall can-do person. She is that magical combination of practical and spiritual.

Two days after the accident, she pleaded with God.

"I was driving home from the hospital on Flagler Drive, and I said to myself, 'OK, God, I get it. Now I know why you had me become a nurse. Now I know why I was on the board of The ARC, because the parents of children born with disabilities have to accept a different reality ... and now our reality will be different...

"Now I know why I worked at Hanley (Hanley-Hazelden treatment center) -- because that's where I learned you have to accept what you can't change.

"God, I'm not going to ask you to save his life ... I'm going to ask you to do what's best for him. If he survives, you're going to need to help me reach deep down inside. You're going to need to help me learn what I have to do."

Then Sally began doing.

She went around to their neighbors and told the ones who had not yet read the newspaper what had happened, and she asked them all for one thing she had never asked for before: help.

God was going to help her. She believed it. Would they please help her, too?

One neighbor, Heather Dorsey, organized a dinner routine for Sally -- because Don was going to be away from home for a long time, and they didn't want her to be alone.

Every night, she'd be invited to a friend's house. Sometimes, she'd be invited to dine with a friend she didn't know yet. Their circle of love -- their "Team Chester" -- began to grow.

Sally started getting emails and cards. "One day I got a card from a Lutheran church in North Palm Beach. It said: 'We are a group of men who get together every week and pray ... today, we prayed for your husband."

Sally didn't know them. But she felt their kindness.

"It was so humbling to know that there were people out there praying for us while we were struggling," Sally says.

Once, after she thanked a friend who made her dinner, the friend responded: "No, thank you. You bless us by allowing us to bless you."

All this love coming their way filled Sally with gratitude.

"I want to tell you about our holiday miracle," she wrote to friends in early January.

Don survived, and he was still Don.

"His acerbic, sarcastic self," Sally laughs now. His smart, competitive and driven self.

I was an editor at The Palm Beach Post then and knew Sally and Don. I asked whether a Post reporter and photographer could follow them throughout 2005, as Don navigated his new life:

As he learned to use a motorized wheelchair and relearned how to use his hands ...

As he returned home after six months in rehab -- Sally had the place remodeled and ramped up, with help from builder Dale Hedrick and other friends ...

As he got back to work at St. Mary's ...

As they welcomed Don's first service dog, a dutiful and beautiful golden retriever named Pollyanna ...

As they lived in "what is," not "what if."

"Knowing that The Post was there documenting our journey motivated me," Don says now. "I was determined they wouldn't see me running my wheelchair into a wall."

More on Don's journey From the Archives | The year of quiet strength

He channeled his energy into training -- the triathlete in him looked forward to his physical therapy and also his sessions with his psychotherapist.

"I don't feel sorry for myself," he says. "I focus on what I can do, and I accept the things that I'm not going to do."

On Dec. 28, 2005, The Post published the Chesters' story across five pages with the headline: "The year of quiet strength."

Reporter Rachel Sauer wrote of their love and devotion.

"Don was a lifeguard at a New York beach and remembers seeing Sally occasionally," Sauer wrote of their meeting in the 1970s. "At the end of summer, he asked her out ... and it just seemed, Sally said, like she and Don were meant to be."

Together, in sickness and in health.

"Every night before Sally left his St. Mary's room," Sauer wrote, "she kissed his forehead and whispered: 'I love you so much. Do you know you're the best thing that's ever happened to me?'"

Don reads that story every year. It's a reminder of how far they've come, and how wonderful the people in this community are.

It's a reminder of the slogan on a poster Don got after a triathlon: "There is no finish line."

Life requires us to keep going. Life is "90 percent" a mental race.

"Focus on your small victories," Don says. "That's what I learned, and I've told that to thousands of people."

One of them was Dr. Robert Borrego, the head of St. Mary's trauma center and Don's good friend. Borrego had multiple surgeries for back and leg pain in 2017, and he asked Don: "How do you do it?"

"Don told me, 'I concentrate on the things I can do, and I leave out the things I can't do,'" Borrego recalls. "I thought about that every day. And seeing him do it -- that gave me inspiration."

If you need a pep talk, Don Chester will give you one.

Ten years ago, it was his platinum-maned sidekick who stole the spotlight.

In 2014, The Post published an update about Don and his service dog, Pollyanna, that went around the globe, as far as Kuala Lumpur.

Pollyanna retired when she was 13 and spent her last months at home with Don and Sally. Her replacement, the lovable and shaggy golden retriever Iggy, is now 10.

"Iggy is so good-looking, people think he's a girl," Don says. "He has very good hair."

Iggy loves attention -- which he gets lots of while he helps Don maneuver the halls of St. Mary's. Don has worked at the hospital since 1973, as spokesman and as an administrator. At 78, he still works part time.

He is almost as beloved as Iggy, who is the ultimate pick-up artist: he picks up everything Don drops -- from glasses to cell phone to pens -- and he picks up everybody's spirits.

There's only one down side to Iggy and his eager, ebullient love: "He gets hair all over the place," Don says. "Lint roller, top right-hand side of desk."

Christmas Day, 2024: It will be the day Don and Sally Chester celebrate the birth of Jesus -- and the 20 anniversary of the day Don's life was saved.

"I figured early on, God has asked us to join this very exclusive club," Sally says. "I have no idea why He asked us to join it ... We won't know until we see His face. Our job is to continue to be the best community citizens that we can be with this hand that we've been dealt."

And so they have.

They spent their 53rd anniversary on Nov. 5 serving dinner to families staying at the Quantum House, a residence on the St. Mary's campus for families who have a child being treated there.

Don advocates for quadriplegics as a member of Florida's Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Council.

Sally just joined the board of Clinics Can Help, a group that collects used medical equipment and rehabs it for people who need it.

And they launched the Sally and Don Chester Family Fund through the Community Foundation -- to keep serving, even after they are gone.

This Christmas, after breakfast, Don, Sally and Iggy will head to St. Mary's, where they go every year.

"Hospitals are happy places on Christmas," Don says. Believe it or not, hospitals are filled with love and gratitude and families on Christmas. And smiles -- because Iggy has a way of gifting happiness.

They'll visit children in the pediatric wing and grown-ups, too, and they'll make a special stop at the trauma center.

"I thank the nurses and doctors for working on Christmas," Don says. "I tell them: 'I was a guest here a couple years ago. The care I got here is the reason I am alive.'"

Jan Tuckwood was associate editor of The Post for 30 years. She now writes for the AARP and other publications.

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