Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 27, 1993 TAG: 9309270046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BARRY BEARAK LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: HURDSFIELD, N.D. LENGTH: Long
This is the ghastly way a North Dakota farm boy became an American hero: While loading barley into a machine, he slipped on some ice. He tottered against a metal bar that was spinning in a blur parallel to the ground. For a few seconds, his body was a human propeller, twirling head-over-heels. The force pried off his arms just below the shoulders and pitched the rest of him 20 feet away.
With his limbs suddenly gone, John Wayne Thompson staggered 100 yards to his house, turning the doorknob with his mouth. He phoned for help, punching in the numbers with a pen clenched between his teeth. Worrying what his mom might say about all the blood that was spotting the carpet, he crouched in the bathtub as he waited.
The ambulance crew found the missing arms. In a five-hour relay, 18-year-old Thompson and his appendages were taken by road and air from the farm here in Hurdsfield to a hospital in Minneapolis. Microsurgeons sorted among his severed parts, matching up the nerves and blood vessels and sewing them up with needles thinner than a human hair.
When the story hit the news last year, his reassembled body seemed to become a living monument to the true grit of the Plains farmer. The soul's appetite for heroes is enormous, and this was one spunky, can-do kid. His survival instincts were equated with valor, his common sense elevated to ingenuity. Thousands wrote him. Donations topped $700,000, much of it the well-wishing yield of church bake sales and children's milk money.
A year and a half has passed since fate plucked Thompson from the Dakota grain fields. After 15 operations, he has made a remarkable recovery, impossible though it is to completely repair what a machine has torn asunder.
Therapy has been an apprenticeship in substitute ways to eat and dress and otherwise conquer the mundane. But oddly enough, he has found it easier to cope with the frustrations of his handicaps than with the peculiarity of his fame.
What was it the magazines called him? "Too tough to die . . . the comeback kid . . . astonishingly brave." Well, maybe he is an all-American boy, but he considers himself the beer-swigging, smart-aleck, pedal-to-metal variety and nobody who ought to be held up as an inspiration to a million families.
The fuss has had him playing against type. "Until maybe a month ago, I was trying to be the perfect kid, not drinking anymore or smoking or swearing," he said. "I felt like it was expected of me, with everyone watching every move I made. You wouldn't believe it. TV camera crews followed me around at my prom. . . . My graduation was a circus with all the satellite trucks.
"Well, I want to go back to the way I used to be. . . . I like to have fun, be rude to people, be a hell-raiser. Of course, around here if you spin your tires on Main Street, they think you're a hell-raiser."
Hurdsfield has 72 people and five churches. Most everyone is somehow related to everyone else within 50 miles. John drives the priciest pickup around and, as always, scoffs at the speed limits. He has let his hair grow long and sports an earring. In Bismarck, where he attends college, he finds himself a popular ladies' man, with the women knowing who he is and all. That's the good side of celebrity.
The bad part is all the gossip and jealousy. "People think I'm living the great life, that I'll never have to work. They'd love to be John Thompson because I have a lot of money and nice vehicles and I'm famous and have girlfriends. Well, if people had to spend one week going through what I go through, with all the stress, they wouldn't talk so much."
He has never entirely understood what the big deal was. The only life he saved was his own and, given the choices, what was so special about that?
"What was I supposed to do, just lie there?" he asked. "C'mon, I mean, what would you do?"
Thompson's ordeal got a big ride, coast to coast and beyond. Heavens to Betsy, the kid opened the door with his mouth! Most teen-agers are too lazy to haul out the trash, but this one was worried he'd bleed on his mom's carpet!
Admiration gushed John's way. Emilio Estevez dropped by. Bette Midler and Bo Jackson called. Gifts arrived from Whitney Houston and John Mellencamp. Victoria Principal had some ideas about a movie. A member from his favorite rock group, Guns N' Roses, left some tapes and T-shirts.
Hospital volunteers had to be recruited to handle all the mail. So many pastors came by, John wondered if he was dying and no one had summoned the guts to tell him. His sister Kim couldn't get through to him on the phone; lots of callers were identifying themselves as John's sister.
John's parent, Larry and Karen, were stunned by the commotion and the publicity. Karen knew how much John loved her, but she kept reading that stuff about John's not wanting to bleed on her raggedy old carpeting. "Each time, it was like someone stuck a 10-inch blade in me," she said.
For weeks, the attention built. People began to make all sorts of bizarre requests. A mother asked if her troubled son could stay with the Thompsons and get himself straightened out. Another woman simply wanted to touch John, whose blessed flesh might cure her cancer.
"Most people were nice," Karen said, "but so many of them I had to tell, `John is not Jesus Christ; he cannot cure your wounds; he is not a miracle person.' He had been built up into such a superman."
The media's hot lights had magnified John much as the surgical microscope had. "It helped him get through some very tough times at first," said Lori Clemenson, his favorite nurse. "You know, it's exciting to have studios ask you to cut a demo record and be treated like a big attraction.
"But all that kept him from doing the grieving and healing he needed to do. He wasn't absorbing what had happened. Too many people thought he had a cape on his back, but he was just your typical 18-year-old from North Dakota."
Reporters might have observed him failing time and again to put on a T-shirt. Or standing at a bathroom sink, wondering if the water was too hot.
He was ready to be serious about occupational therapy now. His first term at the University of Mary was fast approaching. How was he going to get in and out of the dorm room, make himself a meal, shampoo his hair?
"There are things I can do, but I'd only do them when I'm alone," he said. "If my socks get stuck in the dryer, I can climb in or take my shoes off and grab them with my feet. But I wouldn't want anybody to see that."
He has never been a great student. Once, his dream was to be a flight attendant, or maybe even a pilot. Now, his long-shot chance at a singing career is all he has in mind. Failing that, he has investments. Insurance paid most of his doctor bills, leaving him about $500,000 from the donations, he said.
His peculiar fame lingers, though it is already fading into memory, like a game-winning touchdown people cheered one fine autumn. He still gets invitations to sing, but not as many as before. People find his face familiar but can't quite place him. Talk about a movie has stayed just talk.
He embraces the attention and despises it at the same time, wishing he could choose only the parts he wants. It would be nicer if it was something he could control.
"I wish it was the way it used to be, you know, back then, before."
by CNB