Help Christopher Move Home w/Family
Dear friends of Christopher: Our courageous friend passed away on March 9, 2016. His battered body just gave out, after withstanding three decades of trauma since his spinal cord was first broken. He is not in pain any longer, and for this we can be glad.
Please see the "update" to learn more. At present there are no plans for a memorial, but if that changes we'll update here.
His closest friends and family are very grateful to you for all you've done to help, and for caring so much about Christopher--both his old friends and those who were just moved by his courage and example.
We will use the donations remaining to cover the costs of his final rest and to partly compensate the caregiver who had devotedly stayed with him these last few months even after Christopher lost governmental financial support for home assistance.
May the memory of his bright youthful smile, along with his phenomenal bravery and fierce humor, continue to light our paths.
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The original campaign story:
“I can't walk, I'm cool with that,” says Christopher. “I can handle being a quad[riplegic]. The wheels are 'me.' But I had no idea that the severity of the complications from my bone problems and the medications would screw up my teeth. The inability to grin is crushing me. I cannot wander around with a broken face anymore. And at this stage of my life, I need to to be closer to family and friends. I love the West, but the Northeast is home. It's time to come home."
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Thirty years ago, Christopher was a highly skilled professional certified ski instructor and all-around athletic, life-embracing young man from central New York State. After attending the Holderness School in Plymouth, NH, he began his (lengthy) college career at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in the Finger Lakes, where he played on the varsity soccer team.
He also worked hard to earn PSIA certification as a professional ski instructor, and taught skiing at Greek Peak Ski Resort in Virgil, NY.
On the Fourth of July 1985, Christopher's life took a one-in-five-million drastic turn when, diving into a lake, he hit the water at the precisely wrong angle. He spent his 23rd birthday in the ICU with a broken neck and severed spinal cord. When he got out, he had to learn a whole new way of living — without the use of his legs and with only partial use of his arms.
Darned If He Would Be a Second-Class Anything
This was before the Americans with Disabilities Act, which wouldn’t pass until 1990. Christopher wanted to get his college degree locally, but Tompkins-Cortland Community College (TC3) was not very accessible. He couldn’t get into the bookstore. Or the auditorium. Or some classrooms. Or the bathroom.
But that wouldn’t stop our friend. He never gives up. He “got all that (inaccessibility) fixed” and went on to earn his AA in liberal arts. And ever since, he has been a one-man human rights champion in every place he’s lived and worked. 
The upstate New York winters were hard on him, so Christopher decided to move to a warmer clime, with fewer hills.
He earned his bachelor’s degree cum laude in political science as a "Lobo" at the University of New Mexico, where he was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi honor society.
In 1996 Christopher trained at the World Trade Center in New York City for his Series 7 licensure with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. He worked in the financial sector for a time before moving to Portland, Oregon, in 2001 to seek new opportunities. There he was an editor of the Green Party's newspaper, The Greenzine, as part of his commitment to his new community. Things were good.
But then Christopher was hit with a series of excruciating setbacks.
Long and Painful Road
In 2007 his right hip was broken in a freak accident. The following year his left hip was broken.
To fix them, doctors hammered titanium rods into his bones. But they caused infections deep within his bones. So doctors pumped some powerful antibiotics through a line into his heart -- which caused a near-death reaction.
Doctors gave Christopher all sorts of new antibiotics and pain medications. These caused deep rotting in his bones. The damage was so hidden from view that for a long time his medical practitioners couldn't detect it.
In subsequent painful operations, the rods were removed — first one, then the other.
After this, Christopher went through long years of difficult, solitary recovery from the surgeries and interminable complications from skin breakdowns.
Yet he finds a good side: “I’ve had a couple of great assistants and a fine group of home visitation nurses patching me up.”
But 23 hours a day he has lived alone, healed alone, and survived alone (except for his cat, Stanley, now 18 years old). 
Finding Art and Reconnecting
Recently Christopher started making art — whimsical, clever, often funny greeting cards that he has been sending to old friends in the Northeast, to our delight.
Now he needs to come back east himself. "I just want to come fight my fight on home turf, craft my art, and be near my friends and family," he says. 
Christopher doesn’t talk about it much, but he has been a one-man “activist/bureaucracy-smasher” on countless projects to fix sidewalks, streets, stairs, steps, schools, corporations, mom-and-pop stores, historic sites, theaters, bus systems, apartment buildings, groceries, airlines, bars, restaurants . . . and bathroom doors.
“I'm charming like that,” he says. “And mean as a snake.” And grins.
But he quickly shuts his mouth. 
Because Christopher is feeling awful about his smile. Pain and other medications have destroyed his teeth, and now he needs thousands of dollars of dental work to enable him to again dazzle us with his pearly whites.
This dental work will require multiple extractions, crowns, and bridges, and more pain. But he's willing to endure it to regain that smile and feel good about conversing in person with people.
We’re hoping to raise the $10,000 or so his dentist will bill, as well as cover the costs of moving him and the furnishings of his small apartment Northeast and paying the deposit and first couple months rent on an accessible apartment near friends and family.
Moving back home won’t be a panacea, as Christopher is well aware. Even post-ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), "the whole Northeast is inaccessible,” he points out. “It seems every cripple fled the place like me. So then . . . I'll come back and fix it," he declares, "just like every city I've lived in, for almost 30 years!”
With his nephew, Cody, visiting from Buffalo
We estimate the move and dental work together will total $20,000. We would sure love to finish up this campaign and get Christopher settled in before the cold weather comes.
Won’t you please chip in to help our valiant friend get his smile back, and return home?
