Praying for miracle

A spaghetti dinner fundraiser is planned next weekend at St. Charles Church.

By DENISE DICK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

MARY THERESE DRISCOLL WAITS, hopes and prays for a miracle nearly two months after a traffic accident left her husband in a coma.

“Every day when I get off the elevator, I think, ‘This could be the day,’” Mary Therese, 47, said.

The day Tom Jr., 52, her husband of 25 years and the father of their 14 children, wakes up and becomes whole again.

She spends several hours daily at her husband’s bedside at St. Elizabeth Health Center’s Boardman Campus. Cards, both homemade and bought, line the walls of Tom’s hospital room. Still others fill a basket on the floor.

Mary Therese spoke recently about the accident, her family and faith — the whir of monitors attached to her husband providing accompaniment.

Tom, a compliance director for Fidelity Investments in Jersey City, N.J., was on his way back to New Jersey from the family’s Greenford home the night of Jan. 25 when tragedy struck.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol reported four vehicles, including Tom’s 1999 Honda Accord, were eastbound on Interstate 80 in Hubbard when a sport utility vehicle lost control and stopped in the middle of the road. The report described the asphalt as ice-covered.

A second car struck the SUV and the car’s trailer jack-knifed. Tom then struck the trailer and the car and spun into the right lane where his car was struck by a fourth vehicle, pushing it into the median.

Mary Therese had spoken to Tom about 20 minutes before the crash. He had stopped to get gas before getting onto I-80 and heading out of town. Usually the two chat by phone on his way, but she didn’t hear from him.

Mary Therese shook off her feeling of unease and lay down with her youngest son, Edward, 4, as he fell asleep.

“I thought that when he gets a least halfway through Pennsylvania, I’m sure he’ll call,” she said.

About 10 p.m., the phone rang.

“It was just like in the movies,” she said.

The voice at the other end asked if she knew Tom Driscoll, then her relationship to him.

“They said, ‘Do you know where St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Youngstown is?’” Mary Therese said. “They said, ‘You need to get here now.’”

She called a friend for a ride and others for support but didn’t want to raise alarms, hoping it wasn’t serious. Then it occurred to her that nearly four hours had passed since the time she spoke to her husband and the time she got the call.

Emotion blurs her memories of the next several hours. She was shuttled into a room; people came and went. The phone rang and her son, James, who lives in New Jersey, told her Tom was in surgery.

Eventually, she learned what had happened. Her husband was undergoing surgery for blood clots on his brain. Swelling and a second surgery followed, and then a third in subsequent weeks.

He opens his eyes, coughs, swallows, but there’s no focus, no outward acknowledgment by the marathon runner.

Several of the children join their parents at the hospital after school.

Thomas III, 24, is finishing his last year of law school at the University of Toledo. Bridgid, 23, is completing her doctorate at St. John’s University in New York and her twin sister, Caitlin, teaches English in Japan.

Erin, 21, is a student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Margaret “Molly,” 19, is a student at St. John’s and James Patrick, 18, is a student at St. Peter’s College, Jersey City. N.J.

Rose, 16, and Mary Grace, 15, are in their junior and sophomore years, respectively, at Cardinal Mooney High School. Maureen, 14, Caroline, 12, Daniel, 10, Claire, 9, and Annie, 7, are in eighth, sixth, fifth, third and first grade, respectively, at St. Charles School.

The youngest, Edward, 4, has been in a kindergarten class at St. Charles since the accident.

“The kids play cards, talk, do homework” at the hospital, Mary Therese said. “It’s like they would do at home.”

Mary Therese believes there are different levels of consciousness. She and the children talk to Tom, reading him the paper each day. A couple of weeks ago, Tom’s heart rate raced through the day. After the children settled into the room, though, the rate slowed to a normal pace.

Friends and supporters plan a spaghetti dinner fundraiser from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. next Sunday at St. Charles Church, Westview Drive. Tickets are available at the door.

An account also has been set up for the family at area First Place Bank branches. Checks should be made payable to the Tom and Mary Therese Driscoll Fund.

She acknowledges the possibility of a complete recovery appears bleak.

“The prognosis is that he will never wake up,” Mary Therese said. “But it’s early. With brain injuries, you never know what the outcome will be. We’re very hopeful. Nothing is impossible with God.”

They’re a family of faith, attending Mass regularly. Mary Therese is president of St. Charles’ Home and School Association and also volunteers at Mooney. Tom is a cross-country coach.

“The kids say that faith is something you have,” she said. “It’s not something that you get because something bad happens to you. They believe it’s all in God’s hands, and that he’s not going to let them down.”

Mary Therese keeps a recording of Tom’s voice on her phone from October. “He says, ‘Hi, it’s just me. I love you,’” she said.

When she wakes in the night and misses him, she draws a small measure of comfort from his voice.

Every evening the family returns home from the hospital in time for dinner prepared and delivered by a friend or supporter. Even though Tom and Mary Therese are originally from the Cleveland area and have no extended family in the Mahoning Valley, she says she’s overwhelmed by the outpouring of support. She especially is grateful for support from the St. Charles and Mooney communities.

At a prayer service shortly after the accident, the church was so full, Mary Therese had to scour the parking lot to find a spot.

Theresa Kelly of Canfield has known the Driscoll family since both families’ daughters, now high school sophomores, were in first grade together at St. Charles. “They are wonderful people,” Kelly said.

Both Tom and Mary Therese always help others and volunteer whenever asked. “People don’t even know everything that they do,” Kelly said.

Mary Therese described her husband as a romantic, a perfect husband and father. He always put his family ahead of himself.

At a party last summer at their home to celebrate Tom’s admittance to the bar, he knelt on one knee and proposed to her again, marking their 25th wedding anniversary. The couple renewed their vows that day.

Since the accident, the Driscolls have witnessed several small miracles: families that haven’t been to church in awhile came to pray for Tom and have remained, Tom survived the first night and all of the children were able to get home after the crash.

They’re holding out, though, for the big one — that their husband and father wakes.

“But miracles aren’t about the kids, they’re not about Tom, not about me,” Mary Therese said. “Miracles are all about God and when and where he decides to show his glory.”

denise_dick@vindy.com