Hope Takes The Chill Off Injury Paralyzed Boston U. Hockey Player Confident He Will Be Back On His Skates

On Travis Roy’s desk are a hockey puck with the word “Hope” pasted on it and a photo of his girlfriend.

They symbolize his dreams - to rise from his wheelchair and skate again, and to enjoy a bright future with the woman who has stood by his side from the moment he was paralyzed.

The public knew little of Roy when as a Boston University freshman he first stepped on the ice for the season opener a year ago Sunday. Just 11 seconds into his first shift, he crashed headfirst into the boards, ending his hockey career and changing his life forever.

Roy says he never wondered: Why me?

“It’s a waste of time to start asking that,” he says. “It happened and you deal with it.”

From the beginning, the tragedy of the small-town boy from a tight-knit family touched people throughout the country. With his hopes for a collegiate hockey career snuffed out in an instant, his courage and class in the aftermath drew admiration.

He still has no feeling beneath the level of his armpits, yet he is convinced that medical research will find a cure that will allow him to glide on the ice again.

“You can say, ‘Trav, you’re fooling yourself,”’ he says, his voice soft but steady. “I know I most likely won’t function the same way I did before and my body won’t be as strong.

“I’ll take what I can get and I’ll make the best of it, but I’ll have enough to skate again.”

His girlfriend, Maija Langeland, thinks that will happen. But if it doesn’t, she’ll still be with him.

“Yeah,” she says without hesitation, “forever.”

She rushed to his side as he lay on the ice on Oct. 20, 1995. She wiped tears from his cheek at a news conference in March. She danced with him last April at his sister’s wedding - “he was spinning around, it was terrific.”

They met as high school juniors. Now a sophomore at Holy Cross, she makes the 1-hour trip from Worcester at least once a week to be with Roy.

“We have a blast together. We laugh even more than we did before,” Langeland says. “If I had known when the accident happened that things were going to be this good, I would have been a lot happier then.”

The blond, boy-next-door from Yarmouth, Maine, is back in school, a 21-year-old BU freshman. After a hectic year of hospitals, travel, public appearances and fundraisers, he wants the normal life of a college kid.

“One of the reasons why this story struck so many people is because I was just an everyday, common boy,” he says. “I’m this celebrity now, which stinks.”

Yet he appreciates the concern shown by both famous and common people. Wayne Gretzky and Vice President Al Gore visited him in the hospital, and there have been fund-raisers from Maine to North Carolina to Dallas to Los Angeles.

Roy, who can move his right bicep, flicks the small white lever with his right hand to maneuver his motorized wheelchair so it faces his second-floor dormitory window.

“I have one of the better views,” he says, looking at the Charles River beneath a bright sun. There are sailboats on the water, a reminder of one of his favorite activities.

On his desk is a voice-activated laptop computer he uses for his two courses, English Composition and Introduction to Psychology.

He’s figuring out new ways to study. With a weekly regimen of three days of classes and three days of therapy, he’s trying to settle into a routine. He’s finding which places are accessible to wheelchairs. He’s getting to know the aides who are with him around the clock.

He is secure in his decision to return to school rather than pursue opportunities in the field of paralysis or hockey, although he has talked with other paralysis victims, offering encouragement.

“I want to help out, but I still want to be in college and not talking hockey and spinal cords all day,” he says. “I want to be around kids my age, just get the college experience. I’m certainly happier to be doing homework than lying in hospital beds.”

Roy still has low times, the moments when he’s in bed with the lights out and the dark thoughts racing through his mind, although he says those are getting fewer. One of the hardest things is wondering how good a hockey player he could have become.

“There will always be down times,” Roy says. “I don’t even want to get away from them. I need those times. I know it’s healthy. I love to cry.”

The opening-night home game in which Roy was hurt was televised and, because BU was raising its national championship banner, it drew extra media coverage.

With his parents, his sister and Langeland watching from the stands, Roy raced to the corner to check a North Dakota player. But the player moved to avoid contact, and Roy brushed against him and crashed into the boards, cracking his fourth cervical vertebra.

He said he is comfortable among his ex-teammates and plans to attend practices in the same rink where he was hurt. How will he react when he glances into that corner where he crashed?

“I’m very numb when I watch hockey now. There aren’t any emotions,” he says. But he doesn’t blame anyone for the play that robbed him of his dream.

“I was doing the best thing I could possibly be doing. Playing hockey was the best, and I don’t know what I did wrong. I just stumbled. I don’t blame the other kid. It was all me.”

He tries to remain upbeat as he looks ahead.

“I don’t even think twice about it,” he says. “I just know I’ll skate again.”

And Langeland is still by his side.

“Travis isn’t going to sit around and be miserable the rest of his life,” she says. “There’s too much to live for.”