shooting victim to graduate college
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Shooting victim to graduate college
Former football player, now in wheelchair, on verge of engineering degree
By Nick Madigan , The Baltimore Sun
6:30 PM EDT, May 19, 2011
William Thomas doesn't want anyone to pity him, and he doesn't want to spend his life feelingsorry for himself.
Paralyzed from the waist down by a bullet seven years ago in the mayhem of a shooting atRandallstown High School, Thomas will never have the football career he so ardently desired,
but he has found another cause: making sure others don't end up like him.
Far from conceding defeat to his physical limitations, the 24-year-old former wide receiver willgraduate Friday from Morgan State University with a degree in electrical engineering, a field of endeavor far removed from the gridiron. Thomas — known as "Tipper" to his family and friends
— appears eager to move on from the horrific event by which he became known, and to provethat he can succeed even from a wheelchair.
"To society, this may be considered a reduced way of life, but it can still be a good quality of life," he said a few days ago at a restaurant in Northeast Baltimore, to which he had drivenhimself. "Just because 98 percent isn't 100 percent doesn't mean it's not a good percentage. Inorder to get over anything, you have to accept it, come to terms with it. That's the only way youcan move forward."
And that's just what he is doing, banking on his graduation from college — like millions of other students — as a springboard to a bright future. "I look forward to the adulthood of my life," hesaid, his optimism clear. But Thomas was not always quite so positive, especially given hisarduous path to recovery, which involved years of operations, physical therapy andrehabilitation.
By any measure, the events of May 7, 2004, were far from just another random, easily dismissedact of violence. Sparked by a dispute, apparently, between two teenagers — neither of themThomas — the shooting erupted as a charity basketball game was letting out. Four students werewounded, Thomas the most grievously. One of the two shooters was given a 100-year prisonsentence, with lesser terms for two other men.
For Thomas, the goal was to come to terms not only with his paralysis but with those who causedit. "For me, personally, the decision to keep going was immediate," he said. "The forgivenesstook a while longer."
Thomas focused as much as he could on getting through college, although he berated himself for taking longer to do so than is considered normal. He was three weeks' shy of his senior promwhen he was shot, and he entered college in the fall of 2005, his entry delayed a year by his
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medical care.
Since then, he has become a vocal advocate for nonviolence, and speaks at schools, colleges andother venues to what he calls "problem children and juvenile delinquents" about the perils of
being a miscreant. He illustrates his presentations with a documentary about his experience that
has been shown on the Discovery Health Channel.
"I make them get it," he said. "I show the video of my first night in the hospital, me lying out onthe stretcher, tubes going in and out everywhere, the crime scene with the placards on theground. They get the message."
Thomas also founded the TIPPER Foundation (the acronym stands for Traumatic InpatientParent Provider Emergency Reserve), a human-services organization that provides help tovictims of traumatic injuries and their families, including financial support, counseling andspiritual comfort. He is a member of the Trauma Survivors Network, and spends time everymonth with severely injured patients — some of them also paralyzed — at Maryland Shock
Trauma Center, where he was hospitalized for weeks after being shot."I talk to them and try to show them that there is life on the other side," he said. "I'll help anyone.With my experience in life, I'm pretty well-rounded."
Thomas, who in addition to being struck by three bullets lost a lung to infection, has earnedcommendations and awards for his outreach efforts, among them citations from the MarylandGeneral Assembly and the Baltimore City Council. He lives alone in what his mother, PeggieHenderson, calls an "immaculate" apartment in Towson that he cleans himself. He also does hisown shopping and errand-running, she said.
His friends are not reserved in expressing their respect for him. "His positives definitelyoutweigh all the negatives he's gone through," said Judah Green, 24, who was with Thomas atRandallstown when he was shot and has remained a classmate and ally in the electricalengineering program at Morgan State and in the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.
Getting through college is a "major accomplishment" for Thomas, Green said. "A lot of people probably didn't imagine he'd get that far. He's inspiring to me. He's created a foundation so hecan help others, and he's raising money for that and having dinners for it. It's an annual thingnow."
Asked how Thomas had dealt with the emotional fallout of paralysis, Green said his friend'sfeelings had ebbed and flowed through the years. "Originally, when he was first going throughrehab, and realizing that he may have the possibility of not walking again, it may have beendepressing. But overall, with him having a positive support group, he always has someone whohe can call on."
Green, who said his most important role in his friendship with Thomas is "making sure that at alltimes his spirits are high," testified as a witness in the trials of the gunmen. Green recalleddescribing how, when the bullets began flying, Thomas pushed a girl out of the way "and acted
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as a shield so that she would be protected."
Thomas does not jump at the chance to talk about that moment. "People call it being a hero," hesaid after a long pause. "I just call it doing what I would want done to me."
He does, however, want it known that he had never been in trouble before he was shot. "I think alot of people may have initially thought that, especially being a youth in Baltimore, that I didsomething, or lived a lifestyle, to warrant something like that happening to me. Whereas it's theexact opposite. I've never been arrested, never smoked, always had honorable grades, I wasinvolved in athletics."
Over the past seven years of his life, Thomas said, he has realized that he must "cherish thethings I have, versus the things I don't have." Although he has lost real mobility, he said he has"learned to give back more than what was given to me."
When he speaks to people about how he has managed the aftermath of the shooting, he explains
that there is more to life than recrimination in the wake of tragedy. "I've tried to handle it to the best of my ability, with class and dignity," he said. "It has been my hope to set that kind of example."
His mother said he had wanted to emulate his father, William Thomas II, who used to playfootball for Morgan State — and got two master's degrees there — and who died two years after the shooting at Randallstown. Henderson herself was badly injured in an accident in 1986 whileworking in the General Motors plant in Baltimore, and received a settlement from the autocompany.
She still becomes upset when recalling what she says were the failings of school staff and policeofficers, who knew that "there was trouble brewing" that day in 2004 and had instructed the boyat the center of the dispute to stay away.
"My son didn't have anything to do with this," she said of the shooting. "He was leaving theschool to go pick up his tux for the prom." It was then, she said, that "some Park Heights guys,thugs with guns," showed up and began firing. She shook her head at the memory.
Still, Henderson said, she often tells her son that he is "a king on a throne," and is proud that hewent to his first job interview Monday. Thomas himself, who worked in a movie theater as ateenager, won't say what job he is applying for, except that it's in electrical engineering.
He then acknowledged that, despite appearances, he is having a harder time living in awheelchair than he lets on.
"It's not easy at all," he said. "I just make it look easy."
Copyright © 2011, The Baltimore Sun