Adam Scott: A Life of Endurance and the Will to Live

By Gerald Hollingsworth

This book depicts the revelations of a boy with aspirations. However, his young life was met with encounters that would hinder and ultimately prevent any accomplishments from being achieved. Becoming a Miami Dolphin football player or an astronaut could only be a dream. The culprit is a disease called muscular dystrophy. His type was duchenne, which is incurable. Words associated with this disease are muscular weakness, deterioration, and extreme weight loss. Requirements are heavy metal leg braces, custom-made back braces, and wheelchairs.

This book takes you on a journey of Adam’s life as he coped with not only the aforementioned disease but also the daily variety of meds, oxygen treatments, and leg massages. His education consisted of a special education school when it was determined that at a regular high school, he endured too many obstacles, such as impatient teachers and students who abusively made fun of his back brace and twisted body. His final years of schooling would be from his bed at home with a tutor.

During his teen years, girlfriends, attending dances, amusement parks, and participating or being a spectator of sports are all identifiable with those years. Adam had two companions, which weren’t girls. They were a wheelchair and a home hydraulic lift with a seat that would transport him from room to room and to the bathroom.

A main feature of this illness is a contemptible daily pain. When Adam asked his parents if he would be remembered, reading his life story answers that question.

Adam Scott touched the hearts of all who knew him. Your heart will be touched too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781984571557

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Gerald Hollingsworth.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-9845-7156-4

                eBook            978-1-9845-7155-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/10/2019

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Contents

Preface

The Beginning

Arrival of Adam Scott

The Early Years

Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop

Life in Florida

Life in Florida (continued)

The Diagnosis

The Blue Room

Adam’s Companions

Schooling

Mother and Son

Muscular Dystrophy, Parents, and Marriage

Muscular Dystrophy

The Muscular Dystrophy Association

What’s New in Research?

Celebrities

Adam and Jerry Lewis

Who Is Jerry Lewis?

Celebrities

Cape Canaveral (Cape Kennedy)

Summer Camps

A Season of Perfection

A Season of Perfection

The Contest

California, Here We Come

Super Bowl VII

Super Bowl VII Tidbits

An Assignment for Adam: What Is Muscular Dystrophy?

Interview with Adam by Chuck Zinc on November 1980

Epilogue

About The Author

To

Ellie, Lori, Reneé, Jerry Lewis, Chuck Zinc, and the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Preface

Not a day goes by that your mail doesn’t include donation requests for a multitude of charities, whether it be Easter Seals, cancer society, Multiple Sclerosis, Cerebral Palsy, muscular dystrophy, United Fund, Make-A-Wish Foundation, or March of Dimes to name some of them. Telethons take place in order to raise funds for research that are used to find cures. Celebrity spokespersons solicit corporations and the public on a national or local scale. There are special backyard barbecues and parties, sporting events, various kinds of races, and other happenings to get people to support the charities.

Canisters are found at store registers. Individuals and firefighters will cover street corners with cans and boots. All in the name of those children and adults afflicted with or born with some form of disease. Thousands die every day. My focus is on children, in particular, our son, who will never become adults. Americans fit into different categories when it comes to their needs in coping and fighting their disease. These diseases do not distinguish between race, color, religion, age, and gender. It doesn’t exclude foreigners in other countries.

There are people, wherever they reside, who view charities in different ways. There are people who don’t care about giving to charities. They might and might not watch television but ignore fund-raisers. These people have no one in their family or friends who have been afflicted, not even themselves. They see no reason to give.

Then there are people who can’t really afford to give but feel the obligation simply because no one they know of has been unfortunate to contract any disease. They thank God it hasn’t hit home. Another group of individuals give purely out of compassion for the afflicted and want to participate and contribute in finding cures.

Of course, there are the wealthy, some of them provide large philanthropic funds to a variety of charities, whether as a write-off or because they were fortunate financially and want to share their wealth to the needy. The other type of wealthy individuals are only concerned with the yachts, real estate, stocks, and bonds they possess and increasing their net worth. They are scrooges when it comes to charities unless someone close to them has been stricken. Fortunately, the latter is in the minority. Most Americans, despite their financial situations, are compassionate, and they contribute by participating or by giving from the sidelines. Research and future cures cannot become a reality unless there are more givers than takers.

This story is about Adam, our son, who was a boy with dreams, aspirations, and ideas as any normal and intelligent boy would anticipate in their lives. However, something dreadful, despicable, and evil deprived him of attaining any of these expectations.

So many children and adults, boy or girl, man or woman, fall into and are victimized by what is called neuromuscular diseases. There are over forty types. Some are well-known, some rare. In many cases, the ultimate result is an incurable and devastating shortened life. There have been tests on mice and gene therapy in order to find the bad genes that are responsible for the diseases, but no cures as yet.

One of the most infamous of these neuromuscular diseases struck the iron man of baseball, Lou Gehrig. Who would ever think that a man who played in 2,130 consecutive games would be stricken with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It is known as ALS. It would end the career of one of the greatest baseball players and ultimately his life at a young age.

Adam was unfortunate to become afflicted with the worst type of muscular dystrophy; Duchenne muscular dystrophy is the most devastating to the body. This book will depict what this disease did to Adam, his family, the obstacles he encountered, his fight, and his determination to participate in life’s activities only to be physically deprived of a young boy’s normality leading to a terminated existence.

A chapter will also be devoted to the implications, explanation of muscular dystrophy, and the vital importance and role of the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

The Beginning

In 1959, at the age of twenty-two, I met Ellie through my mother. Both had been working in the same department of a Philadelphia department store. Mom gave me her number telling her I would call, which took three weeks for several reasons. As a teen, I was quite shy with girls. All that mattered was stickball, baseball, and hanging on the corner with the guys. I dated a girl prior to Ellie, but that relationship ended on a sour and devastating note. I was reluctant to date and made it the furthest thing on my mind at that time.

When I finally called Ellie, it was arranged for me to pick her up at her home at 8:00 p.m. Being unfamiliar with the area and her neighborhood, I found it difficult to find. The houses were huge, separated by lawns big enough to put another house. Shrubbery, small address lettering, long walkways to the house, and extremely dark streets made it virtually impossible to find. There was no one around to ask.

After driving around up and down the streets with no idea of the time, I miraculously found it out of sheer luck. In walking the long pathway to Ellie’s front door, I was greeted by two large concrete lion heads at the entrance. In ringing the doorbell, Ellie answered. As we stood opposite each other, it was as if fireworks went off. I had that feeling in my stomach that one feels when love suddenly hits them. Later, I would learn that Ellie felt the same.

Unfortunately, the evening ended before it began. Ellie’s mom came to the doorway, and despite explaining my plight in finding the house, she reminded me that it was eleven o’clock and that there would be no date that night. We were to arrange another night. It was quite a letdown, but I looked forward to that first date.

The date transpired the following week with a movie and snack thereafter. We not only clicked but also couldn’t wait to see each other again.

As we were dating, Ellie’s parents learned that I was from a very poor family and wanted her to date other boys, in particular, boys from well-to-do parents who lived in the area. However, it didn’t work. Ellie was unhappy dating others. Ellie found different methods in order to see me on a steady basis. Telling her parents she was going to visit friends and whatever she could think of in deception, there was no stopping her to be with me. She would take a bus to my house as one means. She loved my parents and considered them her own. They felt likewise about her.

We dated for two years and were inseparable, except for my stints in the U.S. Army Reserves. Basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and six months of active duty at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, writing to each other was a poor substitute to actually being with each other. The six months seemed like an eternity. On November 23, 1961, which was on Thanksgiving Day, Ellie and I were married.

The first year of our marriage was not what we wanted or had in mind; we spent some months with my parents and the rest with Ellie’s parents. My inability to afford renting our own place with my meager salary forced us to extend our stay with her parents. It felt like ten years.