Sunday, June 20, 2010
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
YOUNGSTOWN
In an instant, he became a quadriplegic.
It was an idyllic afternoon on May 29, 2008, in Mill Creek Park when Dr. Fred Dunlea was struck by a vehicle while training on the bike path for a 100-mile bicycle event.
He suffered a cervical spinal injury, the same injury sustained by the late actor Christopher Reeve while horseback riding, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.
The father of 10 could no longer do all the physical things that had defined his life — camping and canoe trips with his wife, the former Rita Klein, and children, woodworking, gourmet cooking, gardening and creating a weekly newsletter that kept the widespread family members informed about one another.
The man who used to walk three miles a day now speaks with the aid of a tracheal device and gets around his home in a sipper-puffer wheelchair: Puff or sip a certain way, and the wheelchair goes forward or backward or turns, as Dr. Dunlea demonstrated.
“No wheelies,” he said.
Sad and tragic, yes. Life- altering for Dr. Dunlea and his wife and children, shatteringly so.
But his MENSA-quality mind, warm smile and sense of humor remain, as does his status as an admired and revered husband and father.
“He still yells at me and gives me advice. He is still a confidant and definitely a resource,” said son No. 5, Tim, of Dublin, Ohio.
Dr. Dunlea was a general-practice physician, with his office in Cornersburg, who delivered 2,000 babies. He was one of the first to advocate fathers’ being in the delivery room, his wife said.
“They all thought the husbands would pass out. At first, they put them in wheelchairs,” he said.
When asked if any of his patient’s fathers fainted, he said, “Nah.”
He was still making house calls when he retired after 50 years, his daughter, Karen McClurkin of Girard, said.
Dr. Dunlea graduated from Ursuline High School in 1948, as did his wife, in 1949, and all 10 of his children. The children also all graduated from college.
The doctor did his undergraduate work and went to medical school at Georgetown University, graduating in 1956.
He called Rita his high-school sweetheart, but they broke up after high school and didn’t see each other for three years. Then he wrote her a letter inviting her to a dance at Georgetown.
They were married May 14, 1955, and Rita, a registered nurse and graduate of the St. Elizabeth School of Nursing, became his first office nurse. “An office call was $5,” she recalled.
Dr. Dunlea said he went into general practice, today referred to as family practice, for the variety of cases he would handle. “I didn’t know if I wanted to look up somebody’s nose all day long,” he explained.
One example of the variety was the case of a little girl brought in with sand in her eye. He cleaned out her eye, but when the little girl came back again with the same problem, his prescription, Rita said, was to get rid of the sandbox.
“I enjoyed my work. But I would take a month off to do things with my kids because they were growing up, and I didn’t know them,” he said.
“He’d take the kids to the hospital for rounds on Sundays and other places so he’d have one-to-one time with them,” Rita said.
“I enjoyed raising 10. They are all good kids,” Dr. Dunlea said.
When asked what was his secret for raising all those children, he paused and thought for a moment before saying: “Gee, I don’t know. I told them to listen to your mother.”
Several of the monthlong family trips were to canoe country along the U.S.-Canada border.
“He loved it because there were no phones or televisions,” Rita said.
“It was quiet. Jets weren’t allowed to fly over it. I loved the loons [birds],” Dr. Dunlea said.
Of his injury, Dr. Dunlea said: “I can’t reverse anything, so I just take it from there. I’ve got good help, and all the kids come around. But, I don’t think I could tolerate another accident like this.
“I’m ready to go when God calls me. If he has some plans, he hasn’t told me what they are. Maybe I’m here so they [his nurses] can all have a job,” Dr. Dunlea said with a smile.
For his recent 80th birthday, he received hundreds of cards and letters from friends, former patients and colleagues around the country and world, his wife said.
One was from his No. 3 son, John, of Salt Lake City, who used the word admire in his birthday card to describe his father: advice; dedication, MENSA, intellectual, respect and ethics.