Fall From Horse Imprisons Active Attorney
He boxed in college, collected Southwest art, played tournamentwinning tennis, painted, drove fancy sports cars and skied in the winter.
Dan McKelvey also loved polo.
A late-afternoon game at the Spokane Polo Club was just beginning last June 13 when McKelvey’s mount, Cieleo, got its bridle tangled with the bridle of another horse.
Cieleo took a step and abruptly turned right with the sudden tension. McKelvey, caught off guard, tumbled left.
His shoulder hit the ground first, followed by his helmeted head which snapped into the turf with the springlike energy of a whip. His elderly parents, who had turned out to watch the match, looked on in horror.
In the split-second flash of a lightning strike, the life of their son - a dashingly handsome, complex and robust attorney - was altered catastrophically.
McKelvey, 50, who eloquently argued many medical malpractice cases on behalf of brain-damaged children and adults, entered a silent world with long odds for even a partial recovery.
“The bottom line is that he will never be what he was,” says Michael Macaulay, McKelvey’s longtime friend and guardian of the lawyer’s affairs.
“This would be a real tragedy even if it were a bum on the street. But if Dan has any awareness, this has to be a painful imprisonment.”
McKelvey’s injury is different although no less devastating than Christopher Reeve’s riding accident, which left the actor paralyzed from the neck down.
Reeve’s fall damaged his spinal column. McKelvey suffered microscopic tearing and bruising to some of the delicate, non-regenerating neural pathways within his brain stem.
The lawyer can move and breathe, says Macaulay, but he can’t yet speak or walk. His level of thinking is uncertain. Only time and much costly rehabilitation will tell how far McKelvey will come back.
“It’s such a balancing act,” adds Macaulay, “You want to have hope, but as his guardian I have to be realistic.”
Macaulay, a financial manager, is stuck with some necessary although unpleasant and emotional tasks.
One of those is to wrangle with insurance adjusters. McKelvey’s medical care is running $30,000 a month.
The 80 cases McKelvey was working on needed to be reassigned to other medical malpractice lawyers.
About two weeks ago, McKelvey was flown to the Center for Neuro-Skills in Bakersfield, Calif., where therapists spend 6-1/2 hours a day working on his recovery.
A horrible fate for a man who eight times won the Spokane Racquet Club’s singles tennis championship.
“I guess the dichotomy, the tragic dichotomy, is that Dan’s private and professional lives were directed by his conscious desire to be as perfect as he could, whether it was how he looked or how he acted,” says attorney Mike Meyers, a good friend who tried malpractice cases both with and against McKelvey. “Even with the best of outcomes, he may well fall short of that.”
McKelvey came to Spokane in 1971 as an Air Force lawyer stationed at Fairchild. It was quite a change of scenery for a young man who grew up near industrial Pittsburgh.
He fell in love with the area and settled down, filling his time with the law, collecting Alfa Romeo sports cars and raising two daughters.
At Macaulay’s urging, McKelvey gave polo a try some years ago. He took to it with typical enthusiasm, eventually owning nine polo ponies and becoming the Spokane Polo Club president in 1995.
A latter-day Renaissance man, McKelvey had many varied interests and abilities. His abrupt departure and the severe nature of his injury shocked his friends and colleagues who considered him a sort of Iron Man.
“I do know one thing,” says Macaulay, wiping a tear. “If they can just get him part way along, his fighting spirit, his competitive nature will get him the rest of the way.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo