James Johnson:
CLASS OF 1977
Lynbrook High SchoolClass of 1977
Lynbrook, NY
Allegheny CollegeClass of 1981
Meadville, PA
James's Story
Well little did I know the strange path my life was to take after Lynbrook High. Not really knowing what I wanted in a career, it took me two semesters in two different colleges to finally settle down to complete a degree.
I spent one semester at Pace University in Manhattan as a marketing major only to realize I did not want to be marketing major. Then a semester at Parks College of St Louis University (An Aviation school) where I got my pilots license, I love flying. (a fore-shadow of things to come). But alas with my eyesight and my knee (remember I sliced my kneecap in half my junior year)(another foreshadowing of things to come) a career as a pilot was not to be unless I wanted to be a crop duster.
I finally settled down at Allegheny College in Meadville PA (Home of Talon zippers and channelock tools). Allegheny was more of a family tradition than my first choice. My sister Kathy had gone there, and my brother Raymond was still a student there when I arrived.
I soon began taking the required courses of a Liberal Arts school. So many Natural science, social science, and humanity courses. Did not really know which way I wanted to go, but knew what things I enjoyed, so I got very involved in the Theater Dept. Some acting but mostly set design and building.
Then it happened I took a theology course. I did not expect to get much out of it, but you know how it is when you come upon one of those professors who could make anything interesting. Well thank you Charles B ketcham PhD, who went on to be my advisor. Yes I graduated with a BA in Religious Studies. But not in the typical sense that you are thinking of Religious studies. The religious studies department was very small. In fact I was one of only two of us who graduated with that degree in my class. So most of my classes were independent study classes with my advisor.
My focus was on Christian existentialism and its place in modern culture. Pure theology if you will. And no I did not go on to be a minister.
Well after graduating in 81, I moved back home and began working for Dollar Federal Savings and loan in the mortgage dept. I was tasked with identifying low interest loans that bank was still holding and selling them to the Federal Home Loan bank at a discount. All the while getting more and more involved in computers. I was approached by one of the banks customers who offered me a job in Connecticut as client services manager of his mailing list compilation firm.
I took the job and moved to Connecticut, and spent almost three years there. I really enjoyed the work and got more involved with the computer operations of the business. I slowly began to feel I was reaching a dead end on that job as the owner was coming up on retirement and the industry was changing. So I left there and with no prospects moved back home.
Next began what I thought would be the ten year curse. Almost 10 years to the day of my High School pole vaulting accident I found myself in Manhattan stopped at a red light. Not paying any attention to the tractor trailer who pulled up on my left, when the light went green so did he, making a right hand turn across my car. The trailer body crashed into my cars roof pillar and the mass of it beginning to flip my car over. It was as the trailers rear wheels began to crush the back end of my car that bystanders around the corner stepped in the driver¿s path and stopped the truck.
Needless to say it was not a good day. The result being that my L4, L5 spinal discs were crushed and was to face the second big surgery if my life. A spinal fusion of L4/L5.
While recovering I decided to enroll in graduate school at C.W. Post in their management engineering (basically half finance, half computer science) program. I decided rather than try and work fulltime and go to school part time I got a part time job and went to school fulltime. That allowed me to complete my MS in 1-1/2 years.
After graduate school I accepted a financial Analyst position at Computer Associates in their corporate finance department. Long hours and lots of great experiences and even more computer work. I spent almost two years in that department and then transferred to California to do presales for their financial products. Basically I was the technical side of the sales presentation. At first I was in San Francisco, but spent most of my time traveling to LA. Moved down to LA about 9 months later and moved to Manhattan Beach.
Spent almost two years working for Computer Associates in CA and than accepted a similar position for a NJ based company called Computron working in their CA office. By this time I had moved to Santa Monica CA where I still live today. This is when my traveling days began. I was on the road most of the time traveling all around the west coast with many trips to Mexico City, Vancouver, Hawaii, Portland, Seattle, etc. Living the true road warrior life. I was then offered the position of their international technical consultant. Spent most of my time in Europe, with a glorious six month stint in Paris, after they had acquired a consulting firm there.
From there I went to a UK based company called Staffware who was just starting to expand in the US. I was Director of Pre-Sales support for the Americas. I had gotten out of financial software and embarked into the world of Workflow software, better known today as BPM or Business Process Management. Now I had the best of the world if you will. Traveling to Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Mexico, all over Canada as well as the States. And at least twice a year traveling to the UK, and taking advantage of being there to spend my vacation time in Paris.
As December 1995 approached I began to get nervous that I was destined for another accident. But it came and went, with no accident, so I put the curse to rest. Little did I know that it was just on hiatus.
Then I left Staffware and took a position with a company called Silknet which...Expand for more
had CRM or Customer Relationship Management software.
So in 2000 at age 41 I decided to treat myself for my birthday and get myself a present that I had not had for years. A motorcycle. You see where this is heading. Well after a week of training in Nashua NH I returned home and two weeks later on a lovely Sunday afternoon, June 25th 2000 to be exact, I decided to take a leisurely ride in the hills above Malibu.
I remember everything about that day up to about ½ mile before it happened. After that I have to rely on what the California Highway patrol believes happened. I was traveling on Mulholland Hwy on the stretch just west of Sierra Creek Rd, a very desolate spot, where the road doglegs to the left, traveling at app. 45 mph. When for some reason I veered off the road into the rock embankment. Based on marks at the scene and on the bike, they believe I veered back onto the road, then off and flipped it twice.
The report came in from a cell phone, we will never know from whom as they would not leave their name or number. Perhaps they were traveling to fast coming from the other direction and as they came round the bend were in my lane. Is that the reason that I veered off? Who knows. All I know, is if that is what happened, at least they called, for as the sun was beginning to set and darkness was fast approaching, if they had not, I would have died there.
My second angel that day was a Highway patrol officer who called off the ambulance that was dispatched and insisted on a life flight helicopter. On the trip to UCLA I had to be shocked twice to bring me back. My injuries, I'll give you the short list. 8 fractured ribs, 4 broken ribs, punctured and collapsed left lung, partially collapsed right lung, fractured right hip, separated left shoulder, the expected cuts and bruises, and the worst, I was in a coma as I had suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury to my corpus callosum and was bleeding in my brain. Check my photos if you want to see my coma pictures.
The Story continues ...............
Well I was one of the lucky ones. I was in a coma for 6-1/2 days. No, I never saw any white lights. In fact I have no recollection of it at all. And if you ever see in a movie where a person comes out of a coma and they seem as if they just woke up. Remember it is a movie. For me I was out of the coma for 2-1/2 weeks before I truly became cognitive. Yes, people would talk to me and I would respond, but I have no recollection of any of that.
Now granted I may have been more cognitive, if they did not have me all doped up on morphine. Well it was during this period of time that supposedly they found me one morning combing my hair in the mirror. Now this was a bad thing as my hip fracture was only a slight fracture which they were allowing to heal on its own. That is until I got up that morning. In doing so I forced the ball of my hip deep into the socket spreading it wide open.
Next surgery, a plate and 9 screws to repair my hip.
Needless to say I left the hospital 31 days after I entered. I left a few pounds lighter. When I arrived I weighed 175 lbs and when I left I weighed 144 lbs. A miracle in that when I arrived, they expected me to leave in a body bag.
The next four months I spent recuperating at home, before returning to work. It was during this time that I began to notice a marked change in my hips ability to move and eventually it was impossible to straighten it completely. I had developed HO. Heterotopic Ossification is the abnormal formation of true bone within extraskeletal soft tissues and is seen primarily in persons who are victims of bone fractures who also have brain injuries or severe burns. So in February of 2001 I again had surgery. Had the plate and screws removed and 1-1/2 pounds of bone growth excised. That was followed up with a massive dose of radiation focused on the area of growth to stop future growth.
Now I have not gone into a lot of details about the experience of recovering from a brain injury, so if you are curious, perhaps someone in your family has had one, or is going through one. Please do not hesitate to ask questions; for the more you know about what they are going through the easier it will be for both you and them to move beyond it. It is just that, it is a novel by itself.
If things could not get worse, they did. My company was scaling back and my position was eliminated. Times were not good and there were no prospects on the horizon. It was at this point that I began doing carpentry work and did so for the next few years. I got back to computers only in the summer of 2006. I was doing mostly contract consulting for a BPM company when through a number of network connections I ended up where I am today.
I am principal workflow analyst for Fresenius Medical Care North America. If you have never heard of them, and I hope you never have to. Fresenius Medical Care AG is the world's largest provider of dialysis services and dialysis equipment, with over 5000 dialysis clinics worldwide and over 1500 in the US.
I will add more in a couple of weeks, but it will have to wait until after my next surgery. No I am not kidding. It turns out that as a result of all the damage to my right hips ball and socket, they have been slowly wearing each other down. At this point it is bone rubbing against bone and so next Tuesday the 29th I go in for a Birmingham hip resurfacing.
So check back in a few and I will let you know how it turns out.
So it has been a month since my surgery and for the first time in 8 years I am able to walk completely straight up. Some swelling still, but that will go in time. This whole long trip has taught me patience. It will take another 12 months to be back to 100%, but 12 months is nothing. I am so happy that for the first time in 3 years I can stand and walk without being in pain.
And remember what Kierkegaard says
"Life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards"
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