Man comes back from wreck to find new life
When Harris Pollack walks into a room, one is immediately struck by his flowing white hair and made-for-radio bass voice — both of which mask the fact that he is walking at all is miraculous.
In November 2009, Pollack was into his third month of being laid off from Advanced Steel Technology on Ga. 53 as a result of being a casualty of the Great Recession. He decided to take his beloved 1995 Honda Shadow Spirit on the road to Copperhill, Tennessee, for a solo ride.
The bike was a great source of pride for him.
It was all black and fully dressed out — “It had the back seat, the bags, everything,” said Pollack, his voice colored with the accent of Long Island, New York, where he grew up.
He had made it to Copperhill and had turned around to make his way back home to Rome, where he had been living since the early 1980s.
“That’s when I had my accident,” Pollack said. “And that’s when everything changed — in the blink of an eye, as they say.”
He remembers nothing of the accident. What he was told was that a van was turning around on the road in the median as he was headed in the direction the driver of the van wanted to go. Pollack t-boned the front side of the van and totaled his motorcycle — and a good portion of his body with it.
He spent the next 30 days in a coma while under the care of the medical staff at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
“At some point I opened up my eyes and looked around and I was strapped to a gurney with tubes in me,” Pollack said. “And I realized that something bad had happened.”
The “bad” included all of his ribs being broken, a shattered ankle, a broken shoulder and a broken pelvis, among other injuries.
“They had called in the family,” he said. “They gave me a 20 percent chance of making it. … I believe what saved me is I had no major internal injuries.”
All told, Pollack spent three and a half months in the hospital, much of it in intensive care and in various surgeries. It took him two years longer to recover as much as his body would allow after the injuries.
“I still have a lot of hardware in me from a lot of surgeries,” he said.
Pollack sports a brace on his lower right leg. Though he has very little residual discomfort or pain from his injuries, he suffers some nerve damage. He is prone to leg cramps and he has no feeling in his right foot.
He has taught himself to drive by pushing his leg against the accelerator and the brake, since he cannot bend his ankle against the pedals to apply pressure.
“Rachael (his daughter) said, ‘If you ever buy another motorcycle, I’ll set it on fire.’ That’s when I bought a Jeep — with roll bars and seat belts,” Pollack said with his characteristic wide grin.