Roy Campanella - Automobile Accident

Automobile Accident

Campanella lived in Glen Cove, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island, while operating a liquor store in Harlem between regular-season games and during the off-season. On January 28, 1958, after closing the store for the night, he began his drive to his home in Glen Cove. En route, traveling at about 30 mph (48 km/h), his car (a rented 1957 Chevrolet sedan) hit a patch of ice at an S-curve on Dosoris Lane near Apple Tree Lane, skidded into a telephone pole and overturned, breaking Campanella's neck. He fractured the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae and compressed the spinal cord. The accident left Campanella paralyzed from the shoulders down. Through physical therapy, he eventually was able to regain substantial use of his arms and hands. He was able to feed himself, shake hands, and gesture while speaking, but he would require a wheelchair for mobility for the remainder of his life.

Read more about this topic:  Roy Campanella

Famous quotes containing the words automobile and/or accident:

    The highway presents an interesting study of American roadside advertising. There are signs that turn like windmills; startling signs that resemble crashed airplanes; signs with glass lettering which blaze forth at night when automobile headlight beams strike them; flashing neon signs; signs painted with professional touch; signs crudely lettered and misspelled.... They extol the virtues of ice creams, shoe creams, cold creams;...
    —For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, a weather-vane, a wind-mill, a winnowing flail, the dust in the barn door; a moment,—and the thing has vanished, because it was pure effect; but it leaves a relish behind it, a longing that the accident may happen again.
    Walter Pater (1839–1894)