JERRY FESENMEYER

JERRY FESENMEYER took his first trip to Quadalajara in 1965. Fesenmeyer was neither a "Cold Warrior" nor someone trying to escape the cold weather, although no stranger to cold weather, having grown up in Iowa. Jerry was a World War II veteran who had been shot during combat in Okinawa in May 1945. "I couldn't tell you what day I was shot, I was out before I hit the ground. They built a hospital, of sorts, over the hole I fell into. It was the second or third week in May. I was later transferred to Corona Naval Hospital. There were forty-two of us with spinal cord injuries on two wards. Nobody knew nothing about nothing." Indeed, most people with spinal cord injuries prior to World War II died within a year or two. Fortunately for Fesenmeyer his paralysis was at L1 (first Lumbar vertebrae), and the medical community was now responding to the growing need for a better understanding of spinal cord injury.
A couple of years of hospitalization left the para from Iowa unprepared for what to expect. "You couldn't go anywhere. You couldn't find a place to live. Hell, nothing was fixed for wheelchairs."
After bounding around different hospitals, from Southern California to Chicago, Fesenmeyer wound up at the Birmingham VA in Van Nuys, CA. Upon his discharge the good shape para managed to survive--and thrive--post SCI. "I was married three times," he confided. "I had a number of jobs, mostly in electronics. I remember being hospitalized in Hawaii before they brought me to Corona. After my third divorce, I figured it would be a good time to quit my job and go lie on the beach!" From page 169 QUADALAJARA --- The Utopia That Once Was www.QuadMexico.com