“Mate, I was born a sailor in 1958,” Price Baum laughed as he told me the story of his birth. We were enjoying his favorite ale at First Pier in Oxford. “Mind you, my dear mother was in her ninth month when she joined dad on a sail,” he continued, shaking his head. “Apparently they were unaware the tail end of a hurricane was sweeping up Chesapeake Bay.”
Tossed and buffeted violently, his parents managed to motor into a cove, but winds shifted, swamping their boat. His dad rowed a dingy to shore and the two of them trudged through thick brush to a farm house. Many hours later they made it to Wilmington, Delaware where Price was born.
Price and I had met at First Pier to discuss raising funds to purchase a new wheelchair lift van for Price’s friend and colleague, Chrissie Jones-Young, an employee of Eastern Shore Center for Independent Living where she assists ersons with disabilities so they can stay in their homes. Her old van was falling apart. Helping Chrissie was as natural to Price as breathing. In the decade I was privileged to know him, he was always engaged in projects to help others.
Price died in his sleep in October, 2006. He’d been running a high fever every night for a week and was under a doctor’s care, but his sudden death at age 48 hit his family and friends like an unexpected punch in the stomach.
Price’s family quickly decided to give his van to Chrissie.
Price was 22, celebrating with friends at Royal Oak; a handsome, free spirit, strong and agile when he dove into shallow water and broke his neck. An expert sailor who had served in the Merchant Marine, he’d planned to fly to Bermuda the following morning to sail a friend’s boat back to Annapolis. Instead, he awoke at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, “More scared than I’d ever been in my life.”
Three weeks later, Dr. David McDonald quietly told him he would never walk again. He was a quadriplegic. When his parents and brothers came to see him, stretched out on a Striker Frame, he apologized for the sadness he had brought to their lives. He was moved from rehabilitation in Baltimore to the famed Howard Rusk Clinic near New York University in the Big Apple.
“Doctors Howard Rusk and Henry Betts worked me full-time so I could return to Towson State University,” Price said. He’d been an outstanding lacrosse player at Blair Academy in New Jersey, and later at Towson, where he graduated with a degree in Mass Communications, crossing the stage in his wheelchair to receive his diploma. He joined the Human Resources Department at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in the nation’s capital where he recruited staff and testified before congressional committees on disability issues. “It was a fun time to be disabled in Washington,” he said with a wicked grin.
The year 2001 was a rough year for all Americans, and especially for Price whose mother and father died within three days of each other that October. “Both were powerful influences on my life, and I miss them a lot,” he said, his customary smile fading as he gazed out on the Tred Avon River.
Despite his sunny outlook on life, his devotion to helping others and his indefatigable spirit, it seemed a dark cloud followed Price around. On Memorial Day 1987, crossing over the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in his hand-controlled van with girlfriend Maggie Leedy, a car cut him off and he crashed through a barrier, falling 30 feet and landing upside down on the Parkway, miraculously missing other vehicles. When paramedics climbed in the back of the van, he sought help for Maggie, who was unconscious, unaware of his own critical injuries until, as he told me, “I began to barf blood all over our rescuers.”
Maggie suffered a concussion and returned home in two days. Price was in intensive care ten days and received 45 units of blood. Multiple surgeries were required, hospitalizing him for almost a year and forcing his resignation from the National Rehabilitation Hospital. His beefy lacrosse legs never atrophied, and retained sensory feeling, although he had no motor control. Alone at home, boiling water for tea, he spilled the steaming pot on his bare legs. He felt the excruciating pain, but could not move fast enough to escape. It took 300 staples to hold his burned flesh together as he healed. Later, a lift van operator in Washington, D.C. accidentally pitched him forward on the sidewalk. He suffered a concussion and 20 stitches.
Through it all he became one of the nation’s foremost experts on the Americans With Disabilities Act and spoke often to business groups about ways they could apply its rules in their best interests, and the interests of their employees with disabilities. He and Maggie conducted seminars in which they asked participants to select a disability they would prefer to have from a list of sobering choices: cerebral palsy, blindness, deafness, quadriplegia, and others. They sought empathy, yes, and respect and support, but not sympathy, always emphasizing the talents and skills persons with disabilities could contribute to every industry and profession. He applauded the disAbility Coalition of Talbot County for spelling its name with a small d and capital A to emphasize abilities. “We’ve got to raise public awareness and reduce stigma,” he said over and over. Price was a champion for persons with disabilities, extolling their work ethic, dependability and loyalty to chambers of commerce and employer groups.
Three days before he died, we were to lunch with Ernie Holthausen and Bill Griffin, key players in raising money for Chrissie’s van. Price showed up late to tell us he was on his way to see his doctor and couldn’t stay. It was the last time I saw him.
Price was 33 years my junior, but no man taught me more about loving one’s neighbor, going the extra mile for a friend, or facing challenges courageously than this remarkable man in a wheelchair who always greeted me with a broad smile and a cheery, “Hi, mate.”
I wrote a play about his life, “Hi, Mate, I’m FPB” (Fearless Price Baum) directed by Lynn Sanchez and performed by local actors, including Lynn’s husband Rob, at the Avalon Theatre in 2007. Price’s friends filled the historic theatre, and his brothers flew in from Paris and Bermuda for the show. I hope the Hugh Gregory Gallagher Motivational Theatre, Inc. might perform the play this year, on the fifth anniversary of Price’s untimely passing. Price knew and admired Hugh Gallagher, and they testified together in support of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The disability community continues to miss Price’s leadership. He was their champion. His friends still miss him deeply. He was their inspiration.
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Carlton E. Spitzer
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