COMING TO TEACHER’S AID
Students set up fundraiser for mentor hit by MRSA, stroke
A fundraising drive for a beloved Boston teacher who was paralyzed from the waist down last week after he was afflicted with MRSA has raised nearly $14,000 in two days.
By 7:30 last night, 247 people had donated a total of $13,895 on the “With-Wiley” GoFundMe page for Jeremiah E. Burke High School math teacher Christopher Wiley, who was diagnosed last week with a Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection — resistant to many of the antibiotics used to treat ordinary staph infections.
“It makes me want to cry,” Wiley said yesterday of the financial outpouring after he was transferred from Boston Medical Center to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown to begin the long road ahead to, he hopes, walk again. “It makes me feel loved.”
Wiley, 29, said his neck was “throbbing” last Monday when he showed up for school, where Principal Lindsa McIntyre promptly sent him to the doctor when she saw the color had drained from his face.
After two surgeries at Boston Medical Center, he realized he couldn’t feel anything below his waist. He later learned he had suffered a stroke. When he asked when he would be able to use his legs again, the doctor told him everyone heals differently.
“I was crushed because what he told me sounded like generic information,” Wiley said, “and I felt like I was never going to walk again.”
Texts from his students poured in. Frat brothers he mentored at Delta Tau Delta, where he is an alumni member at Northeastern University, started the GoFundMe page.
“We’re going to be behind him every step of the way,” said Joe Liddy, a fourth-year student. “Fraternities tend to have a poor reputation, but Chris always inspired us to change that.”
With his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, Wiley initially worked for General Dynamics in Alabama. But after three years, he returned to Northeastern to become academic program coordinator in the College of Engineering and earn a master’s degree in counseling.
“He realized he really wanted to be more involved in mentoring young people, even though there’s a much different pay scale,” said Richard Harris, Northeastern’s assistant dean for academic scholarship, mentoring and outreach. “He understood that as a nation, we aren’t developing inner-city talent to go into science, technology, engineering and math . ... Now the question is, what can we do as a community to help him get back to a place where he feels complete and whole and able to make a difference in the lives of others again?”