Last Wednesday night in Pittsburgh, we witnessed a public "thank you" by the SCAF for saving a pretty special guy, Maxwell King.....a good friend of mine. Many SCA survivors can say..."been there, done that" but seldom are what the original survivors called "champions" hailed publically. As Martha Stewart would say "This is a good thing!"
I am new to the SCAF blog world. I am one of the 42 original survivors picked by UPMC NCED's Survivor Network assembled in Washington, D.C. in 2003. I had my SCA on September 21, 1999 in the parking lot behind the courthouse. A county commissioner, I was 52-years old, healthy and when I dropped clinically and biologically dead for 14 minutes. They say I had no heart or brain damage. I had a lot of issues and was very frustrated about my feelings and inability to discuss it with anyone else when the Survivor Network knocked on my door. The 2003 conference in D.C. was magical to say the least with all 42 bonding instantly to each other. We are all still alive 5 years later and most are doing well. In the intervening years new directions have been taken with the formation of the SCAF and the SCAA. What remains constant is the special bond survivors have and the willingness to bring new survivors into our world. We have found that for the most part ordinary people have a hard time relating to us "dead people" and we just have to continue to show them what we are all about!!!!
Max King is a good example. I got to meet Max early in his stay in Pittsburgh heading up a pressure-packed organization called the Heinz Endowments. As you know, Max was with the Philadelphia Inquirer for years, and newspaper editors are a notorious breed unto themselves. What we found was a gentle giant of a man who made the transition effortlessly. At the time, I was heavily involved with regionalism in many dissimilar groups and Max and I had wonderful discussions and viewpoints of the same. After my SCA, Max was curious about what happened to me but we never really got into the nuts and bolts of it.
When I heard Max had a SCA two years ago, I was just glad that someone I knew survived. I waited for awhile but did call him to see if he wanted to talk about it (not at that time). In my view, it takes a various amount of time for a SCA survivor to achieve their "sea legs" on the emotional roller coaster we all ride and live to tell about it. Some of us never talk about it.......and that is not good in the end.
I was so happy I could make the SCAF event last week. I was proud of Max, proud of his champions who were honored and proud of Mary, Lorraine and others who have taken this path least followed. It was really great because I finally got to meet Max's wife Peg. Funny, we serve on boards, attend conferences and spend countless hours trying to better our larger community and seldom do so.
Good luck, Max and I will be telling you how to plan your 5-year rebirthday in two years!!!!
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