EUGENE, Ore. — Their stories are rooted in mayhem and misfortune.
From motorcycle crashes to disabilities beyond their control to the unthinkable, fate has dealt them challenges most of us will never face.
But that has not stopped them.
As the name of the program — the U Can Gym — implies, they can, and they do.
“You ready for the row?” wellness coach Katy Reardon asks Russell Van Dell, who’s been doing chest presses on a multigym weightlifting apparatus but now turns his wheelchair around to face it to do rowing exercises.
Van Dell, 49, is one of several Eugene Family YMCA members who attend the U Can Gym program, begun 28 years ago at PeaceHealth’s Oregon Rehabilitation Center, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at the Y.
Beaten over the head with a baseball bat, stabbed multiple times with a hunting knife and then set afire by an intoxicated group of mostly teenagers in the early morning hours of Aug. 28, 2001, Van Dell knows he’s lucky to be here 14 years later.
The stab wounds to his spine, committed in an abandoned house in downtown Eugene — over an argument about who would get the last beer after a night of drinking — by a 19-year-old man who also slashed his throat and was later sentenced to 17 ½ years in prison, left Van Dell partially paralyzed.
“I was stabbed 28 times,” says Van Dell, having put on his black leather jacket and wheeled himself out of the Y’s Health and Wellness Center, where members lift weights, use elliptical and stationary bicycle stations, and do other exercises.
His physical therapist suggested Van Dell might get something out of the U Can Gym program.
“I’m lifting weights and getting stronger,” he says. “People are great here. The front desk is awesome. Katy’s awesome.”
Reardon, a member of the Y’s staff for a decade, has been supervising the U Can Gym program for about a year now.
“It’s just a need we feel needs to be met,” Reardon says. “It’s pretty amazing to watch people who maybe feel they haven’t received support at other places, to see them get that here — all the way from the front desk to the gym.”
“It’s inclusive”
The U Can Gym was started in 1987 at the Oregon Rehabilitation Center at PeaceHealth’s Sacred Heart Medical Center, University District campus, by Loren Cushing.
A physical therapist at the rehab center, who’s now retired, Cushing says he felt there was a need for disabled people to exercise upon leaving rehabilitation.
“This kind of environment can be a big help,” says Cushing, 68, of Veneta. “It’s inclusive. And that makes them feel comfortable in their own skin.”
Cushing, who has used a wheelchair since 1979 because of post-polio syndrome (he was diagnosed with the infectious viral disease at age 6, before a vaccine was introduced in 1955), got Sacred Heart to spend about $10,000 on custom-built weight equipment in 1987 to start the U Can Gym in the hospital’s employee fitness center.
The program was moved to the Y in the early 1990s after a hospital remodel, and Cushing continued to supervise it until he retired.
The Y’s multigym weightlifting apparatus is wheelchair-adaptable.
It’s important for those in wheelchairs to maintain their upper-body strength in order to live independently, Cushing says.
Larry Craig, 64, has been part of the U Can Gym program since its inception.
Paralyzed in a 1970 motorcycle crash at East 23rd Avenue and Alder Street when he was 18, Craig used to play with Cushing on Eugene’s Low Riders’ wheelchair basketball team.
“People with disabilities and able-bodied people use it together, and it works out great,” Craig says of the U Can Gym program. “The Y’s one of the most neighborhood-friendly and staff-friendly places I’ve ever been. (Katy) takes her time to work with everybody, to work out individual programs.”
“A good place”
“My damn parents made me,” Tom Mofield says, of why he joined the U Can Gym program 17 years ago. “But once I got here, and I started lifting weights again, after my accident, I was able to change my way of thinking.”
After his 1996 motorcycle crash near North Bend, which happened while he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol and caused paralysis from the mid-chest down, Mofield says he initially felt sorry for himself.
Unwilling to exercise, his weight ballooned to 260 pounds.
Years later, Reardon now considers Mofield her “assistant” for the U Can Gym, helping to train other disabled folks in how to use the multi-gym.
Jason Baker, 40, says Mofield is one of the main reasons he looks forward to participating in the program.
“And it’s good exercise,” says Baker, who is developmentally disabled, as he furiously works a Windjammer rowing machine while caregiver Adam Marquez looks on.
Zeferino Vascuez, 27, heard about the U Can Gym three years ago while undergoing physical therapy at the Oregon Rehabilitation Center.
Paralyzed from the waist down after being hit by a hay baler at work in Junction City in 2010, Vascuez says he is much “stronger than I used to be.”
He’s actually at the Y six days a week, for three or four hours a day.
“I really like doing this,” he says.
Jonathan Yorck, 67, does not use a wheelchair but has a prosthetic left leg because of an amputation following an aneurysm five years ago.
While Y memberships are generally more than $50 a month, Yorck says he pays $24 a month because he is a senior citizen and received some scholarship consideration for his disability.
“It’s things like this that make Eugene real special,” says Yorck, who moved back to the area from Hawaii a few years ago.
As Yorck’s arms spin an upright rowing machine, Ben Blackburn works hard on an elliptical machine.
“This is better than home,” the 44-year-old developmentally disabled man who does not speak says by sign language through his aide, Jen Wehrman.
Blackburn got a Y scholarship six months ago and looks forward to coming three times a week.
“The people are good,” he signs. “It’s a good place. I feel accepted here.”
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