The incredible true story of Jeff, the one-legged drummer

The first thing I noticed about Jeff when I spotted him in ed psych class wasn't his fake leg; it was his kind face. He had big, deep eyes and an easy smile that made you want to earn his friendship. Which is exactly what I set out to do.

Jeff and I were classmates in the education program at Lewis and Clark College in the fall of 1983. I was working toward a secondary English teaching certificate; Jeff was in the deaf education program. One day after ed psych, I approached Jeff and introduced myself. He stuck out his hand, told me his name, and invited me to join him for coffee at the student lounge across campus.

We were soon friends, and after a few meetings outside of class we learned that we had something else in common besides the ed program: we were both drummers. When I asked Jeff if having a fake left leg made drumming difficult, he said it wasn't really a problem because it was just his hi-hat foot, and operating the hi-hat pedal wasn't that difficult.

Eventually I felt we were good enough friends that I could ask him how he'd lost his leg. His answer was the stuff of nightmares.

One spring evening, Jeff told me, when he was an eighth grader at Western View Middle School in Corvallis, Oregon, he and some friends found a ladder propped up against an outside wall of the school and decided to climb up on the flat roof. Once on the roof, they thought it'd be fun to do something they'd heard was popular with college kids and adults: streaking. Taking off all one's clothes and running a short distance, preferably without getting caught.

So Jeff and his friends took off all their clothes and streaked across the roof of Western View Middle School.

Unfortunately, the not getting caught part didn't turn out so well. Unbeknownst to the streakers, a teacher was working in his classroom late that evening and heard the commotion on the roof. The teacher went outside and started circling the building to see if he could find the source of the noise. When he spotted the streakers, he yelled at them, "Hey you kids, come down from there!"

Rather than heading back toward the ladder to climb down and turn themselves in, Jeff and his friends decided to run toward a side of the roof where they thought they could jump off and run away. Jeff was the first to jump off.

He was also the last to jump off.

As he was falling toward the ground, some twist of physics or fate conspired against him and threw him backwards, toward the side of the building. And there, unfortunately, on that particular side of the building, was a big plate-glass window.

Jeff fell backwards through the window, shattering the glass—and slicing his left leg almost completely off.

"Your shock and pain must've been horrific," I said to Jeff.

"Almost as bad as my embarrassment," he replied. "Remember, I was naked."

Oh, yeah. Naked. And bleeding to death.

Jeff and his mostly severed leg were rushed to the hospital, where surgeons determined that the leg was too damaged to reattach. He would need a prosthetic.

Ten years later, Jeff was enrolled in the education program, aiming to become a teacher of the deaf. I, on the other hand, was looking toward a new career (following my three-year stint as production manager for Claymation film producer Will Vinton) as a secondary English teacher.

After we finished our respective programs, I landed a position teaching English and U.S. history at Highland View Middle School in Corvallis—the home of Western View Middle School, where Jeff had lost his leg. Jeff, meanwhile, found a job in Portland. When I informed him I was now living in his hometown, he said he'd come see me next time he was in Corvallis to visit his parents.

A few months later, when Jeff came to see me at my new home, I finally got a chance to see how he was able to play the drums. He was pretty good, and it appeared to me that his fake leg didn't hinder his hi-hat prowess one iota. In fact, after seeing him play with that leg, I decided to practice a bit more so as not to be outplayed by a monoplegic.

Jeff and I got together one or two more times after that, and then we lost touch with each other, likely because of our respective jobs, relationships, and the physical distance between Corvallis and Portland.

A few years later, I was one of several teachers chaperoning a weeklong trip to Washington D.C., with 64 Corvallis eighth-graders. One of the other teachers, Chuck Wenstrom, happened to teach history at Western View Middle School. I told him I knew a guy who, when he was an eighth-grader at Western View, went streaking with some friends on the school roof one night and lost a leg when he jumped off and fell backward through a window.

I was completely unprepared for Wenstrom's reply. "I was the one who told Jeff and his friends to come down off the roof," he said. "But I didn't mean for them to jump off. They were supposed to climb back down the ladder they used to get up there. You can't imagine how badly I felt about Jeff losing that leg."

He was right: I couldn't imagine. And neither of us could imagine how Jeff felt.

I'll never forget Jeff's kind face and easy smile, and I'll always wonder whether they were, at least in part, a product of the pain he had to endure and the obstacles he had to overcome as a result of his accident. If so, it was perhaps the best possible outcome of one of the worst imaginable tragedies.

Jeff, wherever you are and whatever you're doing, I wish you happy trails. On safe ground. With your clothes on.

That time I fell off a ski lift

Ever wonder how it would feel to fall off a ski lift?

I used to—until it happened to me.

I was 18 and a freshman in college. In fulfillment of my "Physical Education" requirement, I had enrolled in a downhill skiing course, which consisted of eight weekly lessons, every Saturday, on the slopes near Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood.

At over six feet tall and with unusually long legs and a short torso—in other words, a high center of gravity—I'm not well built for skiing. But for the first five weeks of class, I held my own and managed to keep from falling or doing anything terribly embarrassing. I usually skied with my dorm RA (resident assistant), Ron Starker, a nice guy with a good sense of humor and a great laugh. We were friends then and still are today. (You'll soon understand why I felt it important to establish that up front.)

On the sixth Saturday, Ron and I were riding the ski lift together, as usual, and looking forward to skiing on our own for a change, without the instructor. The instructor had told us she thought we were good enough to take on one of the more challenging slopes by ourselves, and we were determined to prove her right.

As the ski lift approached the jump-off point, Ron and I got ready to exit our chair and set off on our adventure. But then something happened. As Ron stood up and dismounted the chair, the chair bounced back up and smacked me in the butt, causing me to lose my balance just as I was trying to dismount. I remember seeing Ron ski off to safety as I was tumbling backward and down, down, down into the snow-lined depression around the base of the massive steel turnaround pylon.

I landed on my back in the snow—just enough snow, apparently, to break my fall and not my back. I wasn't sure if I was dead or alive, but my eyes were open and I could feel my limbs, so I figured there was a good chance I had survived the fall, although I wasn't sure how.

The ski lift stopped, and frantic faces started appearing all around the rim of the pylon hole, peering downward at me. One of them asked if I was OK, and I said "I think so." I really wasn't sure, because I had, after all, FALLEN OFF A SKI LIFT. Do people survive such things?

Within what seemed like seconds, the Ski Patrol showed up. (Ironically, just two years earlier my rock band had played a Ski Patrol benefit dance at Timberline Lodge. Maybe these guys were among the attendees—and beneficiaries?) Within a few more seconds, they somehow managed to send a couple of guys down into the hole with a stretcher, strap me onto it, and hoist me up to the surface. I told them I felt fine, but they wanted to make sure I hadn't broken anything or suffered a concussion or internal injuries. So I waited patiently (what else could I do?) while they checked me over...and over...and over, with two dozen faces—including Ron's—peering anxiously down at me.

And with the ski lift motionless above me, full of people wanting to get started skiing.

It was excruciatingly embarrassing.

Finally deemed intact, I was released from the stretcher and got back on my feet. I think there was some applause, but I'm fuzzy on the details after this point because I was 100% focused on just getting the hell out of there. I strapped on my skis, nodded to Ron that I was ready to go, and off we went toward the slopes.

The easy slopes.

A Timberline Lodge skier who probably didn't fall off the ski lift.
(Photo: tripadvisor.co.uk)