Untitled Document

Paper: Daily News-Record (Harrisonburg, VA)
Title: New Life For Clayton -
Matthews Graduates From JMU, Where He'll Coach
Date: May 8, 2006

A simple smile helped Clayton Matthews shift his perspective.

It was just under two months after a car wreck had left Matthews - the son of James Madison football coach Mickey Matthews - paralyzed from the middle of his chest down. He was in Atlanta being treated at the Shepherd Rehabilitation Center.

Matthews, deeply depressed at the time, shared a room with a Middle Eastern man named Mark, who was paralyzed from the neck down. Matthews said Mark, who was on a respirator and couldn't talk, seldom had visitors. He made a habit of saying hello to Mark whenever he entered the room.

"I remember one day I looked at him and he smiled at me. That was really all he could do, smile at me," Matthews said. "It really didn't even hit me until a month after I left that that guy is in about as bad a situation as you can get in life. He's stuck in a hospital probably for the rest of his life. And still he smiled at me. I wouldn't smile at anybody there. If he could smile at me, maybe I could smile at other people, be more content."

It's now almost three years later. Matthews is 24 years old, 25 pounds lighter than when he played football for his father at JMU, and still in a wheelchair.

He does just about everything on his own now - even drives his own car, a 2005 white Mercedes, with a hand control mounted to the right of the steering wheel.

Saturday, he graduated from James Madison University with a degree in sports management, overcoming not just the August 2003 wreck that broke his back, but also a second car crash in April 2004 that broke his neck.

He's working as a part-time assistant coach for the Dukes, but he chafes at the notion that his tale is a success story.

"Everybody's making a big deal about it, like 'I'm so proud of you' and 'It's such a great accomplishment,'" Matthews said. "It's not a big deal to me. I knew I was going to graduate three years ago.

"Just because I'm in a wheelchair and all that happened to me doesn't mean it was any harder. Once I got used to it, I was back in the flow."

Getting back into the flow wasn't easy, however. Matthews' life to that point had centered around sports and competing. On the wall of his small coach's office at the Plecker Center, among the pictures and paraphernalia celebrating JMU's 2004 NCAA Division I-AA football championship, hangs a picture of the Matthews family on the field after Clayton quarterbacked his Athens, Ga., high school team to a state title in 1999.

After his second wreck, that life seemed a million years away. And enrolling back in school didn't interest the one-time economics major.

"Honestly, after my accident, and especially after my second one, I really didn't care," Matthews said. "School didn't really matter to me. Immediately after my wrecks, I really didn't want to go back to school. I didn't know what I wanted to do."

But by going back to school, Matthews said, he was able to regain a little normalcy in his life. He struggled with his writing at first, and said his professors had to help him. But the hardest adjustment was the social one.

"It definitely was tough at first," Matthews said. "The school work and that part was the easy part. I think the most difficult part was socially. I felt weird in class when I first started. I was nervous. I was different from everybody else."

By returning to the football practice fields with his father and former teammates, Matthews found a place he was comfortable.

As much of a lift as his almost-daily appearances at practices gave the Dukes, they did more for Matthews.

"That's all I've done ever since I was 10 years old," said Matthews, who wears football wide receiver gloves when wheeling his chair, to avoid blisters. "Most kids when they were in elementary, they would go to after-school day care or something. I'd go to football practice and watch my dad yell at the players."

Gradually, he has taken a more active role at practice, in particular working with JMU's kickers. With school behind him, Matthews said he's ready to begin his adult life, just like all the other JMU graduates Saturday. And, predictably, that starts with a coaching job.

"For the past three years, it's only been me getting adjusted to going to school, getting adjusted to life," Matthews said. "Now, there's really no more adjusting. Now, I just have to grow up.

"It's not like I can choose to be in a wheelchair or choose not to be. It's all I can do."

At JMU, he has been a voluntary coach but will take a part-time paid position beginning this summer.

Matthews still goes to Mexico seven to eight times a year for experimental stem cell injections that aren't approved in the United States. He credits them with his regaining feeling down to the middle of his chest after his second accident. Still, he knows the stem cell science has its limits.

"I don't want to say that it's not working, because it is," Matthews. "It's just not a miracle cure. Anybody that thinks they're going to be walking next month is nuts. But it's a step in the right direction."

Matthews hesitates when asked if he believes he'll walk again.

"I have hope that I can," he said. "After my first wreck that's all you want. That's all you think about. 'I want to walk again. I want to walk again.' That was my life goal. Then, after my second wreck, that wasn't that big a deal to me. Just living through a second wreck, I just wanted to function in life. I wanted to live as normal a life as I could."

If there's any part of his story Matthews is proud of, it's his newfound ability to focus on the future.

"I guess you could call it a success story because I don't look back anymore," Matthews said. "A big part of my life now is, I'm done looking back and saying, 'What if?' Now, I'm just looking forward and saying, 'What can I do, what will I do?'"