JIMMIE HEUGA

Jimmie Heuga became a national hero forty years ago when he and Billy Kidd became the first Americans to win Olympic medals in alpine skiing. I know that because among the many teenage boys who idolized him back then was a passionate skier named Steve Johnson. Johnson became an excellent ski-racer and an even better neurosurgeon. And eight years ago, he and a spine surgeon named Alec Jones worked together for ten hours to put my neck back together after I fell down a steep flight of stairs in an unfamiliar house and broke it so badly that I seemed almost certain to be a near-complete quadriplegic. I am not, and now Steve, who is not the type, is one of my heroes. It was at his suggestion that I painted Jimmie Heuga with whom I had something in common. For different reasons, he too had wound up in a wheel chair, and he is still there. For a lot of people, certainly including me, Jimmie Heuga is a hero today for the way he has risen to that life-long challenge.

Multiple Sclerosis - which is what put Jimmie in the chair - is a one-way, life-long trip into deepening disability. Jimmie was diagnosed in 1970 and has gone from being an Olympic athlete to living in an assisted living center in Colorado. He has fought the disability like a lion the whole way. He created The Heuga Center which provides support for MS victims. It is a great success and, for many today, it defines Jimmie Heuga as much as that Olympic medal forty years ago. In his own life, he has worked hard to stay connected with his body by doing as much exercise as possible, for as long as possible. Then falling back to the next level and starting again. He is a model to thousands with the disease.

I painted Jimmie in that assisted living community and watched his daily routine with deep admiration. He's up by 5, dressed, showered and shaved, choosing to be attended to by the night staff rather than an already overburdened morning shift. Then he goes about his exercise and other routines. I would get there around ten and he would sit for three of four hours. In those long sessions, his energy, his crackling enthusiasm and his lovely sense of humor never waned, never faltered. His handsome French/Basque looks and all that life in his face made him a joy to paint.

Steve Johnson regularly joined us for supper and Jimmie enjoyed the in-depth conversation about downhill racing and the minutiae of what went on forty years ago. But he does not want to live in the past. He prefers to talk about his three wonderful boys - the lights of his life - and his own occasional turn on a sit-down bi-ski. His body is slowly caving in but his spirit has not given an inch. It is a joy to be around him. He learned to be a hero all those years ago, and he is still hard at it.