It didn’t hurt, not at the time.
What James Phillips went through will make you wince. The 26-year-old Marysville man insists that when a javelin hit his head, its rubber-tipped point penetrating more than an inch into his brain, he felt just a thud and some tingling.
That was my first question: Did it hurt?
My second one, about how it happened, stirred memories of that May day in 1999.
“I really don’t quite know what happened,” said Phillips, who was critically injured as he warmed up for competition in the state track meet in Lincoln Bowl at Tacoma’s Lincoln High School. He was 17, a junior at Marysville-Pilchuck High School.
“I had thrown, and was going to retrieve my javelin,” said Phillips. That’s when the javelin thrown by a Cascade High School senior struck the right side of the Marysville teen’s head.
With his hair cut short, it’s not hard to see the long, curved scar that starts above his right ear.
Beth Campbell noticed it four years ago when Phillips came to work at CG Engineering in Edmonds. Campbell is the firm’s office manager. After Phillips had been there a few weeks, Campbell felt comfortable enough to ask him what had happened.
After he told her about the javelin, Campbell said, “I told him it was amazing he didn’t have any after-effects.” Only then did Phillips tell her he has limited use of his left hand. She had never noticed any disability.
“He doesn’t let it get in the way of anything,” Campbell said. At company ballgames, she said she’s seen Phillips batting one-handed.
“I’m stubborn,” Phillips said. “I don’t ask for help. I don’t want it to limit me. It may take four times longer to do something, but I’ll get it.”
Phillips has a happy, busy life that’s about to get busier and happier. He and his wife — in 2005 he married his high school sweetheart, Angela Gurney — are expecting their first child.
He makes it all look easy, but recovery was long and arduous. “Right after the accident, he wasn’t able to walk. He had minimal motor skills. He’s a bound and determined young man,” said James’ father, Jim Phillips, an Everett police officer.
Surviving that day was his first hurdle. After being hit, he reached up, saw blood, then passed out. He was taken to nearby Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis. His father and stepmother were just arriving at the track meet to see him compete when James was hurt. At the hospital, they were told he might not live.
The next day, he was moved to Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. After several days, he went to Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, where he stayed three weeks. After that came months of therapy at Providence Everett Medical Center.
Phillips suffered excruciating migraine headaches and underwent surgeries to treat an abscess. While the injury left permanent physical conditions, it didn’t affect his cognitive abilities.
He lost much of the rotation of his left wrist, his left hand’s fine dexterity and strength in his left arm. He can’t drive a car with a manual transmission, and he no longer ties fly-fishing flies.
In 2003, a lawsuit filed earlier by the Phillips family ended in a $2.1 million out-of-court settlement. The four defendants included the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, the Everett and Marysville school districts, and the family of the other teen athlete, whose insurance company paid $1 million of the settlement.
At the time of the settlement, Everett attorney Don Carter told The Herald the money would help pay expenses from three surgeries, help Phillips financially and prevent similar accidents in the future. The WIAA paid $900,000 of the settlement. Attorneys alleged that lack of supervision and little emphasis on safety rules contributed to the injury.
From right after he was hit until now, Phillips has approached life as anything but a victim.
He graduated on time from Marysville-Pilchuck High School in 2000. In his senior year, he went back to throwing the javelin and swimming. At Lake Washington Technical College in Kirkland, he completed a two-year degree in architectural drafting.
Seeing his son with a career, a wife and home, and about to have a family, Jim Phillips said “it’s huge.”
Campbell and Phillips commute to work together on the Sounder train. When they get off the train in Edmonds, they walk to the office.
“If his shoe comes untied, that’s a hassle. He gets it done, and we continue on,” she said. “James is some kind of miracle.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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