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Monday, July 3, 2006
Daughter will run road race to honor Dad
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Doctors say Chris Smith had the heart of a 30-year-old.
He ran three miles a day, six days a week. He lifted weights several times a week.
He’d been a miracle child. Two brothers died at the age of 21, victims of muscular dystrophy. It’s a genetic disorder that birth mothers can pass on to their sons.
Somehow Smith, 43, didn’t contract it.
So it’s hard for Kathy Smith to make sense of what happened to her husband on May 25, 2005. Chris had just finished a three-mile run. The Secret Service agent hopped on an office elevator and headed up to the 30th floor to shower. He apologized to riders for being sweaty and rank, then eased to the rear. He squatted. Riders thought he was stretching.
When the elevator reached Smith’s floor and he didn’t exit, a rider tapped him on the shoulder. Smith fell over.
He’d suffered a massive heart attack.
In a span of minutes, Smith became another Terri Schiavo. Doctors and experts told his wife as much. Let him go, they told her. Pull his feeding tubes. She told them to go to hell. She didn’t give him his first breath of life. She didn’t intend to take away his last. She saw only one option, and that was to bring her man home, where he belonged.
Smith has remained comatose, with little awareness of his surroundings. He’s sensitive to touch and startles easily. It’s unclear whether he can see. Kathy says he can hear, though, because he perks up at the sound of her voice or when Caitlin, their 14-year-old daughter, plays the violin.
Kathy had to remodel part of their Lawrenceville home to accommodate Chris. Hardwood floors replaced carpet. An overhead lift was installed in the first-floor master bedroom. He has a shower trolley to bathe in and a tilt table to stand him upright two hours a day. An LPN is on hand 24/7.
Chris spent 17 years with the Secret Service. The family draws a majority of his salary, as well as workers compensation. Don’t think it was handed over on a silver platter, though.
“You don’t want to go there, honey,” Kathy told me. “That’s another story in itself.”
Kathy could have removed Chris’ feeding tubes. She refused. More understandably, she could have placed him in a hospice equipped and staffed to provide care for invalids like him. Neither option suited her. She chose love, honor and dignity over self. His is a life that matters.
“If you had the most wonderful man in the world, would you put him in a nursing home?” she told me. “I love him, and I will never stop loving him. I will honor him until he draws his last breath. My love for him has not changed.”
Had life not changed for Chris, he’d be running in today’s Peachtree Road Race. He had plans to participate last year before the heart attack. Instead, Caitlin used his number and ran the race in his honor. She was accompanied by three law enforcement officers.
“Last year, I ran more than walked,” said Caitlin, a rising sophomore at Brookwood High.
This year, she plans to run more. She even has her own race number — 42625.
But like last year, she’s still running with a purpose — to honor Dad.
