SKI LIFT SPARC
Event helps disabled Air Force colonel
In the early 2000s Shawn “Norm” Pederson was the lead pilot for the Thunderbirds, the spectacular precision flying team of the United States Air Force. Armed with three master’s degrees and advanced military education, he became an Air Force colonel and by April 2013 was the Pentagon-based assistant deputy director for strategic stability, helping advise the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Having grown up in Colorado with summer stays in Iowa, Pederson and his older brother Gary were expert skiers on snow and water. Now residents of Cleveland, Tenn., they were back on the slopes last week — at Beech Mountain in North Carolina — but this time was different.
It was Shawn’s first ski trip since a ruptured aneurysm in his brain in September 2014 nearly killed him and left him severely disabled, and he was on an adaptive ski guided by an instructor. But the noises of glee he made as he glided across the snow left no doubt that he was thrilled to be back.
“I was standing there, and I heard him yelling as he came down the hill — not in fear, just having a good time,” his mother, Karen Pederson, said this week. “I understand it’s recorded on a video we will receive. He was really happy. He even got his arms out from his body. He looked like he was flying a plane.”
The event was the annual Adaptive Learn to Ski/Board clinic that includes the local Disabled Sports USA chapter — Sports, Arts & Recreation of Chattanooga — in collaboration with the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center program in Knoxville, the Fort Sanders Foundation, several Carolinas organizations and businesses and others. More than $85,000 worth of adaptive equipment is brought to the Beech Mountain Resort, and this year the clinic served 85 disabled participants and welcomed more than 230 people in all, counting volunteers and family members.
“It’s a wonderful program. It gives them a feeling that I can do it, I can do something,” Karen said.
The DSUSA motto, in fact, is “If I can do this, I can do anything.”
The Pedersons skied Tuesday and part of Wednesday before coming home, about six or seven times in all — Shawn on a bi-ski guided by Adaptive Adventures’ Chris Werhane. The family contingent included mother Karen; Gary’s son Brendin; his daughter and sonin-law, Brittani and Hunter Munck; and Gary’s girlfriend, Angie Wilson.
“It was absolutely outstanding. It was a lot of fun,” Gary said. “I hadn’t skied in 34 years, but it was like getting back on a bicycle. I didn’t fall once.
“I was amazed what Chris could do, pushing a 168-pound man on a heavy apparatus, and he’s a good-sized man himself. He had to control himself going back and forth as well as Shawn, but it was like second nature.”
Gary said Shawn’s instincts kicked in as the skiing continued, and he was able to help Werhane by leaning into the turns.
Shawn, 49, always has been an amazing achiever, and in a variety of ways. In addition to excelling as a pilot and strategic analyst — including topics such as nuclear arms and weapons of mass destruction — he sang tenor in the National Philharmonic Chorale and during college played the title roles in Air Force Academy productions of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and “Jesus Christ Superstar.” He also sang the national anthem before a NASCAR race in Las Vegas.
Shawn still can sing, by the way, although he can’t verbalize thoughts.
“The part of his brain that controls singing didn’t receive as much damage from the hemorrhage as the part that controls speech,” his mother explained.
He also can’t do “anything meaningful” with his legs, as she put it, but treatment at Siskin Hospital for Physical Rehabilitation in Chattanooga has them hopeful of more progress. And Shawn has his own workout room at home in Cleveland, where a functional electrical stimulation bike manipulates his arms and legs. He also stands with support for an hour or two at a time while watching television.
“There is huge progress,” Karen said. “He was in a coma for eight months, and even after that he was not alert. But there has been gradual improvement, and now he’s pretty alert. He’s been even more alert since the ski trip.”
Now aware of SPARC’s annual water sports day in July, the Pedersons already are planning to take part in that, too.
“Stimulation, stimulation, stimulation — that’s the fundamental principle of this,” said Gary, who shared a story that a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital pointed to his comatose sibling tubes and said, in effect, “This is what you’ll have.”
“I told him, ‘You don’t know my brother.’”
Plagued by severe headaches, Shawn was examined and told about the aneurysm. Surgery was planned. He retired from the Air Force on Sept. 1, 2014, and went to work for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but 17 days later the aneurysm burst — four days before the scheduled surgery.
Karen and her husband, Shawn’s father, gave up their retirement home in Missouri to be with him in stays at Johns Hopkins and Walter Reed Hospital and another medical center in Richmond, Va. — then his move to the Winning Wheels foundation in Prophetstown, Ill., which works specifically with victims of brain trauma. While there, he got medical treatment 90 miles away in Iowa City.
Shawn’s father, an Army Air Force veteran of World War II, went into declining health and wound up staying in the room across from Shawn for the last month of his life. The family takes comfort that Shawn was holding his dad’s hand at the time of his death.
Gary, who traveled with his kids to see Shawn as much as possible, then decided to bring his brother and mother to southeastern Tennessee, where he had moved after retiring from a 20-year Motorola career in Texas. His then-wife had family in the area and he liked it, and he bought B&B Marina in Charleston, Tenn.
Gary operated the marina for 12 years before selling it to be able to take care of his new responsibilities, and his daughter, a real estate agent, found the perfect house — already with fully disabled-accessible living quarters downstairs. It seemed to have been waiting just for them, said Karen, who says God’s hand has been at work throughout the family’s ordeals.
That Siskin is a “state-of-theart” rehabilitation facility made the move all the more ideal under the circumstances, Gary noted. And the Siskin help goes beyond its treatment.
Siskin CEO Carol Sim introduced Karen to SPARC’s Debbie Hightower at a Possibilities Luncheon two years ago, and Lisa Morgan from the Chattanooga Area Brain Injury Association in November recommended the ski clinic.
“It was one of the most relaxed weeks I have seen Shawn have,” said Gary, who admitted being skeptical about the trip until he saw all the “creative” equipment. “It was obvious their focus is what you can do, not what you can’t do.”
“I can’t wait to get him out water skiing,” said Jerry Hightower, Debbie’s husband and the SPARC president.
“He’s got a new path. We’re just now finding it,” Karen Pederson said.
Contact Ron Bush at rbush@timesfreepress.com or 423-7576291.
“I was standing there, and I heard him yelling as he came down the hill — not in fear, just having a good time. I understand it’s recorded on a video we will receive. He was really happy. He even got his arms out from his body. He looked like he was flying a plane.” – KAREN PEDERSON, SHAWN PEDERSON’S MOTHER