The miracle of jean and brooke ellison

by Rita Beamish

When Brooke Ellison arrived at Har­vard University, she was like many campus newcomers — accompanied by parents who helped her move in. But unlike the other students, Brooke had a mother who never left. Four years later, when Brooke received her Harvard degree in cognitive neuroscience, Jean Ellison was still there with her. Mother and daughter were inseparable. It was Jean who turned the pages when Brooke studied. It was Jean who brushed Brooke's long, chestnut hair and fed her meals in the dining hall. When Brooke’s head itched, her mom scratched it. When she got depressed, Jean dried her tears. And in those terrifying moments when the breathing apparatus that kept Brooke alive unhooked itself, Jean was there to reconnect it. In 2000, Brooke Ellison became the first quadriplegic to graduate from Harvard. She did it magna cum laude. When she was chosen to deliver a Class Day speech, her mother was at her side.

The story of Brooke and Jean Elli­son at Harvard was like the rest of their lives — a partnership of incomparable achievement, a never-give-up triumph over the physical limitations that Brooke suffered after an automobile accident at age 11.

"I look at them and I marvel at what they're able to accomplish together," said Ed Ellison, who is the chief support system for his wife and daughter, and also father to Brooke's brother, Reed, and sister, Kysten.

The accident left Brooke with no feeling below her neck — an injury similar to that of actor Christopher Reeve. It transformed her physically active life into one of acute mental discipline. The child who lived for ballet, tap, and jazz classes dances today only inside her mind. But Brooke vowed even as a child that she would do what no one expected of her. She returned to school in a cumber­some motorized wheelchair, accompanied by her mother. She emerged with top grades, then graduated from Ward Melville High School with honors and poetry awards, and ultimately won a scholarship to Har­vard.

At 23, she has published a poignant memoir with her mother, Miracles Happen, and embarked on moti­vational speaking. Next on her agenda is a master's degree in public policy from Har­vard's Kennedy School of Government, where she will begin studying this fall, her mother again at her side. Brooke also is on the board of the National Organization on Disability, seeking to educate others about the disabled. There is even talk of a movie about her life.

"Very few people have survived injuries at that level," said Mike Deland, chairman of the National Organization on Disability. "Not only has she survived, but her accom­plishments have been absolutely extraordi­nary—disability aside—when you factor in that she hasn't taken a breath since age 11 other than on a respirator."

For Brooke Ellison, achievement has al­ways been a part of life. "The nature of my situation has only served to strengthen my resolve to continue with my life and excel in anyway that I could," she explains, her firm words offset by a quiet warmth. "I know that I still have my cognitive abilities and I'm not going to squander that. And that's really what's kept me very driven."

Propped into her 600-pound black wheelchair in her fam­ily's Stony Brook, New York, home, she speaks in a quiet, raspy voice, her respirator protruding over a pink sweater and direct­ing breaths onto her vocal cords so she can talk. Her mother, at 50, a youthful, smiling woman with thick dark hair pulled up in a clip, is within earshot, popping into the sun­ny family room to hold a water bottle to Brooke's mouth.

Brooke wheels to her adjacent bedroom. She uses an electronic keypad in the palate of her mouth to move her wheelchair, and also to operate her computer mouse. Har­vard mementos adorn her walls, along with a collection of Snow White figures, pictures of her friends — mostly handsome young men — and a photo of herself with President Clinton after her speech commemorating the Americans with Disabilities Act. At her computer with its New York Mets screen­saver — she has season tickets — Brooke prints out a school speech she recently de­livered.

"No one has the ability to change the way we feel about ourselves," she told the youngsters. "No one can crush the dreams that we have and no one can keep us from reaching them. With a little bit of de­termination and confidence we can all be much more powerful and achieve much more than others may expect."

Brooke was born on October 20, 1978. Her father worked as a Social Security Administration field supervisor while Jean rode herd on a weekly schedule of dance lessons, karate, and sports for the three Ellison offspring. "My mother would have breakfast the night before if she thought it would save her time in the morning," Brooke laughs.

As a child Brooke doted on her little broth­er, and her Barbies and Cabbage Patch dolls. "She was always very affectionate, always ready to give a hug, ready to receive a hug," her father recalled. She sang in a church choir and played baseball, soccer, and cello. Dance was her passion. The sound of music sent her sailing about the house.

Everything changed on her first day at junior high, located near a tree-lined road where 60-mile-an-hour traffic betrays the suburban calm. On that day, Brooke inex­plicably passed up her school bus ride to walk home with friends. They raced across the road's four lanes of furious traffic. A car smashed into Brooke. Her spinal injury was so severe that it seemed doubtful she would live. She pulled through, but during months of rehabilitation wept silently through long nights, terrified at her new helplessness.

Life turned upside down for the Ellisons. The community rallied to help Ed renovate their house and buy a wheelchair-access van. But the school board refused to hire a nurse for Brooke. So Jean jumped into the role, even though it meant giving up her own bud­ding teaching career. Later on it was also tough moving to Harvard, away from Ed, her high-school sweetheart, and their other two children. But Jean shrugs off questions about sacrifice. "Taking care of my children was a natural thing. It didn't seem out of the ordinary that I would be caring for her when she needed me most." She still gets misty watching a tape of Brooke's Class Day speech, "one of the best days of my life."

Despite time-consuming logistical chal­lenges at Harvard, Brooke and Jean "man­aged a remarkable degree of normalcy," surrounded by friends, said Barbara Graham, who with her husband William was housemaster in the Harvard residence hall where the Ellisons lived. Of Jean, Graham said, "We were all really touched by her level of devotion. She seemed to be able to make herself almost invisible so that Brooke could carry on conversations and friend­ships." At the same time, the mother-daughter relationship matured. "She had become my closest companion and my dearest friend," Brooke wrote in her mem­oir. "I thought about all the joys and the sor­rows we had been through together and I realized that the two of us were really just one."

Amid the intense whirl of academics and late-night Scrabble and socializing at Har­vard, Brooke would catch herself thinking, "This is really great. People are not just see­ing me on the outside but are seeing me for who I am on the inside."

One high point was her date with the class Adonis to a formal dance. She smiles broadly at the memory. She longs for a boyfriend and marriage, and sometimes gets morose about it. "I don't want to paint myself as anything more than human," she says. But she retains hope. "I understand it would take a really exception­al person, a real insightful person who can see beyond the physical circumstances and I know that there are people like that out there." Hope, after all, was the topic of her Harvard senior thesis.

In the meantime, she says, "It's a matter of changing my focus to what I know that I do have, and I have so much, and I'm thank­ful." She wants to educate others about the disabled and believes perhaps there was a purpose to her accident. "If that's not the case, I'll do my best to make it the case, to make a life for myself that is meaningful and purposeful and can have an impact on oth­er people's lives."

7. Work in small groups. Discuss the article. What do you think of the student in question? What do you think it took her teachers to do their job effectively?

8. Work in pairs. Share what you know about Harvard University, its history and its place in American education. Why is winning a scholarship to Harvard not only very prestigious but also next to impossible?

9. Work in small groups. There are some socio-cultural phenomena mentioned in the article. Find out what they mean and who the people are. How does this knowledge facilitate your general understanding of the article?

• Scrabble

• a senior thesis

• Barbie dolls

• New York Mets

• Christopher Reeve

• Har­vard University

• Har­vard mementos

• Class Day speech

• magna cum laude

• class Adonis

10. In your group, discuss the big question below. Give various interpretations of your understanding of the question.