Photos by Stephan Reed
Blake Haxton continues to look optimistically toward the future, just as he has since a rare disease nearly ended his life.
Well-educated, well-spoken and obviously in excellent physical condition, the 23-year-old shows no sign of anguish, sorrow or self-pity as he talks about being wheelchair-bound in a world of athletics, academics and a large, tight circle of support by family and friends.
Now in his second year in the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University, Haxton is fresh off success after his first time competing in three top-level rowing contests.
While he was a top-ranked senior member of his Upper Arlington High School crew team, Haxton was stricken, unexpectedly, by necrotizing fasciitis, a virtually incurable disease that suddenly and rapidly destroys flesh and muscles. The source never was determined.
As he neared death, doctors amputated both legs at or near the hip to save his life, leaving the athlete at half his height and relegated to a wheelchair.
Despite this catastrophic life change, Haxton didn’t miss a beat. He graduated in 2009 within two months of being afflicted and, that fall, started his four-year OSU undergraduate career, majoring in finance. He became a volunteer coach for the UA high school team, shouting to rowers from an accompanying motorboat.
Haxton eventually started working out using a rowing machine because, he says “after 18 months, I was all beat to snot.”
Earlier this year, he reached the point where he could compete in a national rowing machine contest. Competitors’ machines are connected to computers that measure their time and distance to track the race. During the race, places are tracked on a large screen.
“As luck would have it, I won,” Haxton says.
Coaches saw his markers and suggested he compete in boats and enter a national arm and shoulder competition at Mercer Lake, New Jersey. With Pat Kington, longtime friend and former assistant rowing coach at UA, as his training coach, he acquired one of the specially equipped boats. The boat didn’t arrive until two days before the meet, but he managed to fit in 12 practices, mostly in a borrowed boat.
“I went into the whole thing blind,” he says. “Right from the start, I almost dumped it. I came off in last place before
I got over nervousness after 10 to 15 strokes.”
As a newcomer, and a virtual unknown, he was coached by his former high school mentor Chris Swartz and won the national championship. This meant winning back an entry fee.
“There was some skin in the game,” he says.
His winnings also included an expenses-paid trip to the international meet in late August in Amsterdam – a two-week trek that was his first overseas trip. The U.S. Olympic Committee kicked in some to cover expenses.
The meet, one of many involving hundreds who competed in various water sports during the week, consisted of 1,000-meter heats until the final field was narrowed to six. In the final, Blake was tied for second for about half the distance but was overtaken by older, more experienced rowers. An Australian won, and second went to Great Britain.
“Third was a Russian,” Haxton says. “That kind of hurt.”
A small entourage had arrived to watch, including parents Steve and Heather; coach Swartz and his wife, Sally; longtime buddy Stephen Barthelmas and two female friends from college, Katie Coons and Julie Dick. Haxton was encouraged to see that they made the surprise trip.
Haxton arrives at a sports bar-restaurant in his specially equipped van for an afternoon interview about his life. He ignores a handicapped parking spot, parks 50 yards away, quickly and easily lifts himself from the driver’s seat to his wheelchair, rolls down the ramp he has opened, and extends a friendly hello. He discusses his life glowingly and optimistically.
The inspiring and personable Haxton will graduate, again, in 2015 and be ready to practice law – perhaps real estate or tax law. But first, there are equally important goals.
He works out two hours a day on a rowing machine, sometimes with weights. While it’s much-needed exercise he doesn’t get otherwise, Haxton says, “My goal is to make the (para) Olympic team in 2016.”
To accomplish his goal, he has to win the arm and shoulder races in the national competition this year and next.
“Second does you no good – it’s all or nothing,” he says, explaining that only winners in the nationals in several classes of races make the Olympic team.
“The older you get, the better you get,” Haxton says. “I was four years younger than all the others in this year’s national competition. I got a taste of it. I can see myself doing this for a long time.”
He can practice when he wants, while he’s in school, without having to travel to practices with a team. He expects to graduate before the Olympics.
He spends time with his
host of friends. After his affliction, Haxton says, he didn’t experience depression or require counseling.
“I had a hundred counselors,” he says, not the least of whom was his older brother, Anderson, a law student at Wake Forest University.
They both chose the profession independently. Haxton says he decided in middle school. Their father, Steve, a CPA who went into sales instead, urged learning a skill regardless of their chosen avocation. Their mother, Heather, a teacher, stressed reading.
“I loved reading,” Haxton says. “I still do.”
Their father also stressed the importance of proper greetings and conversations. This, and hearing speakers – good and bad – in church services, helped him develop flawless diction.
He tells lighthearted anecdotal stories about his experiences with friends. After the illness, he thought, “I don’t know how to (date). I (only) know how to be 18 and 6’3.”
Experience taught him what to expect.
“It goes from ‘the guy with no legs,’ to ‘the guy in the wheelchair,’ to ‘that’s just Blake,’” he says, likely because of his disarmingly straightforward, easy approach to those he meets.
Haxton describes his survival as “lucky” and he keeps the positive mental attitude with which he was born and raised. He says he has deep faith, which he feels helped him cope.
And now, he’s healthy and takes no medication.
“I don’t have a single, ongoing medical concern,” he says. “I’m in above-average health.”
Duane St. Clair is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at sreed@cityscenemediagroup.com.
