Fighting Back One Year After The Accident, Frier Remains Positive

Mike Frier’s face lights up when he talks about his 2-1/2-year-old daughter, Mik’kel.

She’s his biggest inspiration. When he gets down, he thinks of her. When he gets tired, she’s on his mind, pushing him.

“I just want to stand up for my daughter and play with her like I used to,” said Frier, sitting in his wheelchair at his home in Bellevue. “You know, pick her up, throw her around, body slam on the bed - play hide-and-go-seek. I can’t hide from her in a wheelchair.”

It has been one year since Frier’s career as a Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman came to an end. One year since the last time he could stand on his feet without assistance. One year since he could chase his daughter around the house, grab on to her and squeeze real tight.

That kind of life for Frier skidded to a sudden halt on the evening of Dec. 1, 1994, when the car he was riding in slammed into a utility pole on a rainy night in Kirkland, breaking his neck and shattering his outlook.

Frier dislocated his neck between the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae when a car driven by Seahawks teammate Lamar Smith struck a utility pole near Seahawks headquarters, causing an electrical transformer to explode and send sparks raining down on the car. Smith and Chris Warren, a passenger in the vehicle, escaped the wreckage without serious injuries, but Frier wasn’t as fortunate.

Smith has pleaded innocent to a charge of vehicular assault and is to go on trial in King County Superior Court on Jan. 8.

The accident left Frier fighting for his life on an operating table, paralyzed from the neck down except for slight muscular function in his biceps. Doctors expected he’d be able to regain some use of his arms but didn’t expect him to walk again, giving him no more than a 10 percent chance. For a year now, Frier has been fighting to beat those odds. And he’d like to think he’s gaining some ground.

There’s guarded optimism around the therapy unit at the University of Washington Medical Center, where Frier has undergone physical and occupational therapy for 11 months and made some major gains.

The same guy who lay motionless a year ago can now, without help, brush his teeth, comb his hair, put on a shirt, feed himself and deftly operate his electronic wheelchair.

He also has muscle control in both legs, though it’s “very, very minimal” in his right leg, according to Dr. Diana Cardenas, a professor at the UW’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine.

With these developments, Frier is no longer considered a quadriplegic, which is defined as total paralysis to all four extremities. He now falls under quadriparetic, a term for partial paralysis involving all four limbs. He lacks fine motor control of his hands but is able to sign his name and type on a computer.

Frier says he has feeling throughout his body.

“Just my butt gets numb because I sit on it so much,” Frier said, breaking into a laugh.

What the accident didn’t do to Frier was rob him of his sense of humor. Frier’s friendly personality and hard work habits have made him an inspiration and a pleasure to be around at the UW during his physical therapy visits.

“He’s really one of the nicest, most polite persons I’ve ever met,” said Bill Kelly, a physical therapist who works with Frier three days a week. “He’s very considerate of other people. He seems to be very understanding and compassionate of their disabilities. He’s a very enjoyable man.”

And an incredibly hard worker who fights through the pain of rehabilitation.

“It seems to be enjoyable to him,” Kelly said. “That’s what makes it fun for all of us.”

Frier can handle the pain, if that’s what it takes.

“I want to walk to the airport and get out of Seattle,” he said, dreaming of warmer weather. “I need a vacation, man.”

Will he ever walk again?

“My standard answer is time will tell,” Cardenas said. “If his progress slows down, (his outlook) will not be as optimistic.

“He certainly doesn’t give up. He works really hard at physical therapy.”

Kelly said the most significant development of Frier’s rehabilitation in recent months has been his ability to take steps while holding a special walker. Frier, with a therapist on each side helping to stabilize him and his right leg in a brace, has managed to travel as far as 15 feet, Kelly said. But this can only occur when therapists heavily assist the movement of his right leg.

Frier, 26, is unmarried. He lives with his father, Ulysses Frier, 60, at their four-bedroom home in Bellevue. The elder Frier has been at his adopted son’s side since two days after the accident, moving from Jacksonville, N.C. Ulysses Frier’s wife died in 1992.

Frier’s daughter, Mik’kel, lives with her mother, Kelly Butler, in Federal Way. Frier sees his daughter on weekends.

“She’s big like her daddy,” Frier said.

Nicknamed “Super-Size Fry,” during his college days at Appalachian State, Frier is currently 6-foot-5, 270 pounds - 30 pounds shy of his playing weight with the Seahawks. He had dropped to about 200 pounds a year ago after battling pneumonia during his hospitalization, but he put the pounds on quickly once he started eating “Pop’s cooking.”

“I didn’t get this way through genes,” Frier said, smiling. “Maybe through greens.”

Frier, who signed with the Seahawks a month before the accident after three unhappy seasons in Cincinnati, says he spends most of his time on a computer communicating with others, including Seahawks defensive end Michael McCrary, through the Internet. He plays SEGA, works out on his own conditioning equipment and listens to loud music on his stereo.

It can be painful watching football on television for Frier.

“If I see somebody, like, messing up, I’m like, ‘Damn, if only I could be out there,”’ Frier said.

He doesn’t have much contact with his former teammates. And he hasn’t attended a Seahawks game or a practice since the accident.

“I just don’t want to go,” he said.

He likes to watch the team play on TV, but can’t see home games on TV because they’ve all been blacked out.

“They need some support,” Frier said.

The NFL has provided a $1 million insurance policy for medical care, Frier’s attorney, Richard Bardi, said. But in excess of $600,000 has already been spent to cover Frier’s medical costs. Bardi said a lawsuit is forthcoming.

Frier also receives an annual lifetime disability benefit from the National Football League Players Association. He will get $100,000 in 1995 and ‘96 and $120,000 in 1997.

Frier said the anniversary of the accident doesn’t mean anything to him.

“I don’t give a damn about it,” he said. “It’s in the past.”

All Frier wants to do is concentrate on the future.

“I think he’s going to walk,” Ulysses Frier said of his son. “It’s whenever the good Lord gets ready for him. We still have faith and ask the Lord to guide him. There’s no way he can’t walk. I really believe that. I might not live to see it, but I hope I do. But I do believe he will walk again. It takes faith and belief. When you get that, you turn it over to the Lord. That’s the best doctor you can ever get.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: ON THE NET Michael Frier’s e-mail address is fry320@aol.com.