By Scott Brinton
The cloud blew past his car, coating the tunnel in ash. Strezenec and his friend's wife were OK. They abandoned the car and began a three-mile walk to safety in Brooklyn.
Strezenec told his pregnant companion to leave him. She walked faster than he could. "Just go," he said, insisting that he'd be all right. Reluctantly, she forged on without him.
Strezenec has only one leg, and he struggled on crutches amid the panicky crowd that was racing from Manhattan to Brooklyn that terrible day. The hike took its toll on him. He blew out his left knee and ripped his shoulder blade -- injuries that required surgery.
Strezenec met up with his friend's wife at an ambulance parked on the road in Brooklyn. Together, they returned by train to Long Island. She gave birth that night. Strezenec's friend survived his cancer and moved with his family to Colorado.
Strezenec feels a strong need to help friends and family stricken by cancer. He lost his right leg and hip bone to the disease in 1987, at age 22. A year before his diagnosis, he was a New York City police officer assigned to the Transit Bureau. While rushing to an emergency call in Brooklyn, Strezenec fell down a flight of stairs and hyper-extended his leg. He suffered soft-tissue damage, which led to arthritis. Unknown to him or his doctor, a cancerous tumor had begun to grow in his leg before his nearly yearlong treatment for his injury. Despite X-rays of his leg every two weeks, his doctor missed the tumor, which ballooned to 24 pounds.
When the tumor was discovered, it was too late. Strezenec's leg had to be amputated to save his life. The surgery lasted nine hours, during which he nearly bled to death. An average body holds 10 pints of blood. Strezenec lost 14.
Also around that time, his 19-year-old sister died of a brain tumor. She had been given six months to live, but held on for five years. Strezenec was distraught over her death at the same time that he was wondering whether he would live. He needed years to recover from his physical and mental anguish. For two years he lived with his mother in Richmond Hill, Queens, before he moved to Merrick.
Strezenec emerged from his personal tragedy all the stronger for it. He now savors every moment with his family. And so Sept. 11, when thousands of New Yorkers faced death but found renewed purpose in their lives, serves as a fitting metaphor for his.
Strezenec married a claims adjuster for an insurance company. He and Ester now have four children: Christina, 12; Jonathan, 10; Lauren Anne, 8; and Nicholas, 6. He is a stay-at-home dad who is deeply involved in his children's lives. He volunteers for the Chatterton Elementary School lunch program, helping the PTA to serve meals. He assists with Chatterton drama productions at The Stage theater. He coaches his kids' youth sports teams, including baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, lacrosse, softball, volleyball and golf.
Strezenec also plays wheelchair basketball, hockey and softball. He's a star on the Nassau County Kings, a professional wheelchair basketball team. The squad, which draws members from across the county, conducts educational programs at several South Shore schools, including Chatterton Elementary.
On March 10, the Kings will take on a local team in what has become a tradition, the Merrick Special Education PTA's annual wheelchair basketball game. The event attracts hundreds of spectators and more than two dozen participants to the community team, which comprises Merrick School District administrators, teachers, parents, elected officials and other local leaders.
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Strezenec, who played a number of sports as a youth, believes his involvement in athletics benefits his children. "I don't ever want the kids to think they can't do something because I'm disabled. I'm not disabled," Strezenec said in his deep, raspy voice. "I don't let them see me as that. By doing sports, they have a different view of me."
Strezenec is a gregarious, casual kind of guy with a keen ability to convince and an almost religious devotion to wheelchair sports. He is constantly looking to sign up the wheelchair-bound for one athletic league or another.
During a recent interview at the Merrick Starbucks, he noted a healthy-looking young man in a wheelchair at the counter. Strezenec asked the man why he hadn't seen him at Nassau Community College, where the Kings hold basketball practices. The man admitted that he had played with the team years before, but stopped for no good reason. After five minutes of prodding and cajoling, Strezenec convinced him to at least consider playing with the Kings again.
Strezenec can be a fierce competitor. As a youth coach, though, he plays down the importance of winning. It's nice, he tells the kids, but having fun is what counts most. "Trophies collect dust. Memories last a lifetime," he said.
Strezenec has also become something of a political activist. He is lobbying hard against tort-reform legislation, which President Bush has touted for some time. If passed into law, the measure would limit pain-and-suffering claims against doctors to $250,000.
Strezenec had sued his doctor because he missed the cancerous tumor that nearly killed him, and cost him his leg. After eight years of legal wrangling, Strezenec won an out-of-court settlement the day before his case was to go to trial. He believes $250,000 is too little for a patient who has suffered irreparable damage because of a doctor's mistake. He said such injuries often severely limit a person's ability to enjoy life, as was the case with him.
"You can't even get an abandoned house for $250,000" on Long Island, noted Strezenec, who recently spent three days at the Capitol in Washington, lobbying against tort reform. Though he is a conservative Republican, he met with representatives of Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Charles Schumer, both Democrats. The lawmakers, Strezenec said, pledged to oppose the legislation.
Despite the hardship he has endured, Strezenec is an eternal optimist. He has days when he is overcome by pain. "If I'm having a bad day, I can't do a lot," he said. But he carries on. "What else can you do?" he said. "Get depressed and give up?"
Not Eric Strezenec.
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