Center Will Give Hope To Paralyzed 10th Anniversary Of Buoniconti’s Injury To Feature Ground-Breaking

“One day I was a normal kid - thinking about school, sports and girls. The next thing you know, I’m out there talking to people about paralysis. My goal is to get everyone out of these chairs.”

- Marc Buoniconti

Marc Buoniconti was only 19 when his normal world of school, sports and girls came crashing down. He wound up a quadriplegic, his neck broken.

That terrifying incident was 10 years ago, and Buoniconti faced a long, agonizing recovery, with no hope of walking again.

Now, thanks to the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, there is hope.

On Thursday, the 10th anniversary of Buoniconti’s near-fatal injury, ground will be broken by the Miami Project on the campus of the University of Miami School of Medicine-Jackson Memorial Center for a research facility for spinal cord injuries.

“It’s not a celebration, because you can’t celebrate something like this,” said the 29-year-old son of Nick Buoniconti, the former All-Pro linebacker for the Miami Dolphins and Boston Patriots. “But it will be a commemoration.”

It was Oct. 26, 1985, when Marc Buoniconti, then a robust and healthy 220-pound middle linebacker for the Citadel, went out to play against East Tennessee State.

Unlike actor Christopher Reeve, who remembers nothing of the recent accident that resulted in his paralysis, Buoniconti recalls his vividly.

“It was on an option play, a fake to the fullback, on a third-and-one situation,” he said. “He (the quarterback) pitched it instead, and it was a sweep. The center tried to cut me, but I fought off the block. In retrospect, I wish he had cut me.

“I was coming up to make the tackle. Another linebacker also hit him. It was a simultaneous impact. He was going for the first down and we stopped him as he was in the air.

“His body was flipping around and it hit my head. My body rolled over, and I saw my arm fall to the turf. Had it not been connected to my shoulder, I wouldn’t have known it was my arm.

“I knew immediately I was paralyzed.”

Buoniconti spent a year in a hospital and was on a ventilator for eight months. “I couldn’t breathe without it,” he said.

“One minute I was in the best shape of my life, the next minute I was fighting for it,” Buoniconti said.

He had sustained a broken C-3 vertebra, a severe spinal cord injury that would leave him paralyzed from the shoulders down.

“I’m not bitter,” Buoniconti said. “I love the game, and I still have great respect for the Citadel.”

That respect could have been shattered by the accident. Buoniconti had gone into the East Tennessee State game with a neck injury, suffered about a month earlier.

“It was getting progressively worse,” he said. “I should never have been allowed on the field. But the team doctors gave me medical clearance. So, when you’re 19 and they clear you to play, you go out on the field and you play.”

Afterward, he filed a negligence suit against the school that was settled in court.

Buoniconti, still confined to a wheelchair, is fighting to solve the mystery of spinal cord injuries. He is an ambassador for the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and the founding chairman of the Miami Chapter of the Buoniconti Fund, a group of young professionals dedicated to raising awareness and resources to support the project.

“My family and my friends have been working with the project to keep me motivated,” he said. “I’ve never been a quitter.”

The biggest obstacle in the fight against spinal cord injuries is money, with $30 million needed for the new research facility. Less than half has been raised.

Spokesmen like Buoniconti and Reeve have energized people who believe a cure can be found.

“A long time ago, they thought paralysis was forever,” Buoniconti said. “It had no niche. Now, they are able to regenerate the central nervous system. Once that is reconnected, that’s when we hope to create a cure. We need the bridges to connect the damaged areas. So far, we’ve been having great success, but there’s still a lot of work to do. It’s a continuing problem.

“It’s not a disease. It can happen to anyone. There are no manuals for it. There are about a half-million people in the United States who are paralyzed and millions more throughout the world.”

Last month, Buoniconti visited Reeve, who was paralyzed from the neck down when he was thrown off his horse while trying a simple jump in an equestrian workout in May.

“I wanted to let him know that with hard work with the doctors, he can get off the ventilator,” Buoniconti said. “We talked a lot about the project and about spinal cord injury research.

“His injury is high-level, but with the swelling going down, he can have movement in his shoulders and his neck. Then, he can get off the ventilator and he can breathe better. He’s showing great fortitude and strength.”

Reeve believes he will be able to go home before the end of the year, and Buoniconti said, “It shows the technology advancement is that much better in the past 10 years.”