Todd Gladfelter and his wife Cindy Ross celebrate Cindy's birthday at Encompass Rehab on December 19. PHOTOS COURTESY OF CINDY ROSS
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on December 26, 2021.
READING - When Cindy Ross and I meet outside of Encompass Rehab in Reading, the first thing she does is give me a reminder. Be grateful you can stand up and walk, she says, because it can all disappear in a second. The word “gratitude” glides off her lips as effortlessly as the birds of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary soar in the air. Hawk Mountain has long been a “sacred place” for Ross, an author and blogger, and her husband Todd Gladfelter, an artist who carves wooden sculptures with his chainsaw. Ever since he fell from the roof at he and Ross’ New Ringgold cabin on Black Friday and paralyzed the right side of his body, Gladfelter has watched birds from the window of his room in Encompass.
“I basically live outside most of my day,” Gladfelter said, raising his chair so he faced the sun. He still smelled like the woods. On Christmas, he and Ross picnicked here with their family.
“To be in a hospital for most of the day, just being able to see the sky and the trees is important,” he said. “I get to go outside every day.”
The cold, fresh air is vital for Gladfelter’s partially paralyzed diaphragm. The massive outpouring of support, even from complete strangers, has been, tool.
“It’s just unbelievable,” he said. “If there’s that many people supporting us with prayers, energy, thoughts, money, I can’t just sit here. I gotta give it my best.”
Ross described it as “You don’t know me, but I want you to know that you matter to me.”
“That’s just completely overwhelming. That your person, and spirit and soul matters to someone you don’t even know. It’s such an unbelievable connection to humanity.”
Ross’ niece Ashley Mikulsky set up a GoFundMe page for Gladfelter that as of December 23 has raised over $115,000 of its $150,000 goal.
“My first reactions were heartbreak for my family and an overwhelming sense of how unfair it was that this could happen to such a strong, indomitable man with a passion for work and the outdoors.” Mikulsky said. “For this to happen to a man who truly cherished what his body could do and constantly pushed it to the limits, seemed particularly cruel.”
The money will be used to buy him a $17,000 wheelchair that allows him to stand up, and treatments at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Hospital in Allentown. Their facility has a suspended “exoskeleton” that will teach Gladfelter how to walk again.
“I’ll take him there until my money runs out,” Ross said, “but that’s what I’m gonna do.”
Ross’ poetic Facebook posts detailing her husband’s treatment have helped raise awareness.
“Please help my husband’s beautiful hands and arms work,” one post reads.
She gets 25 cards per day from well-wishers.
“We’ve already had hundreds of people reach out and say they made a choice to live differently,” Ross said. “Not just be more careful when they put their Christmas lights up, but live with more intent and gratitude because it can happen to anybody.”
Todd and Stanley Bauman of Bauman General Contractors immediately got to work building ramps at the cabin. Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, of which Todd is stewardship director, paid for the materials. Hawk Mountain recently unveiled a new amphitheater, featuring elaborate carvings by Gladfelter of local wildlife.
“I have known Todd and Cindy for approximately 30 years,” Todd said. “I have always admired their passion for living among the natural world and both of their artistic talents on many levels. Great folks!”
“We’ve been close to Todd for 30 years,” Ross said, “but his brother rising to the occasion was so touching.”
At 6 p.m. on December 6, hundreds of people around the world prayed for Gladfelter in “Pray for Todd,” an event organized by Ross’ friend Arlene Previn. Some would light a candle for Gladfelter every day at 6 p.m. thereafter.
“We have friends all over the world that we met,” Ross said, “and it was kind of like a vigil for him.”
“I just thought about all these people, thinkin’ and prayin’ and sendin’ positive energy,” Gladfelter said. “Well I was just filled with gratitude that there was so many people focusing and puttin’ their thoughts on me. I’m used to pretty much taking care of my own. Doing everything for myself.”
On November 26, Gladfelter was removing leaves from the roof of the blacksmith shop on he and Ross’ property, when he twisted his foot and fell.
“He only took one step,” Ross said. “That was it.” She grimaces at the fact that a single step caused this much suffering.
The next day, Gladfelter was in the Reading Hospital, recovering from a surgery that inserted a rod and 9 screws into his body. After Ross rubbed his right foot, his right side “woke up” a little bit. This awakening was short-lived.
“One day a thriving, strong, successful, agile chainsaw carving artist,” Ross wrote in a November 29 Facebook post, “the next day someone has to feed him and wipe his chin. He is so very very sad. I have never seen him cry so much. He is grieving the death of his former life.”
He told his wife that he “was done,” and that he wished the fall had killed him. The worst part of the injury is its ambiguity. His spinal cord was not completely severed, preventing a definite prognosis.
“I could get everything back or I could get nothing back,” Gladfelter said. “Usually it’s something in between.”
On December 2, he regained the ability to eat mashed potatoes and foods of similar consistency. The next day was his 38th wedding anniversary. Gladfelter and Ross looked at a scrapbook of photos from that day, and listened to his favorite Irish Christmas music.
The music made him say, “I don’t know if we can dance ever again.”
“You can’t dance right now,” Ross told him, “but who knows where you’ll be later on?”
“Here we are,” Todd told me outside Encompass Rehab, “a major traumatic event just happened, and we’re together, and we still have each other.”
“Whatever state he ends up in is enough for me,” Ross told me. “It doesn’t matter what the first 38 years were like, we’re going forward. I don’t spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself and what might be lost, what we could do with our bodies before, but what we can do now that we haven’t done before.”
At 5:30 a.m. December 4, Ross got an emergency call from Reading Hospital. Gladfelter had stayed up all night worrying about his future. His worry restricted his diaphragm, making him feel like he was suffocating. On December 7, Gladfelter regained the ability to eat a grilled cheese sandwich. He also managed to grab his two personal breathing apparatuses and put them back on the table, over and over again. This took him one hour. He told Ross that in the animal kingdom, a creature like him would have been put out of its misery. Ross told him to be grateful he wasn’t a bull elk or wildebeest. That same day, he was put in a standing frame that allowed him to feel weight on his feet for the first time.
December 9 was his first day in Encompass. He got a Christmas tree, sent from Taiwan by his daughter Sierra and her husband Eben Yonnetti.
“I wake up feeling great,” he told Ross at the time, “clear-headed, feeling good, excited to start my day and work and get things done, then I try to move and I’m paralyzed.”
He told her that when he looked in the mirror, he didn’t recognize who he saw. In less than two weeks, he lost 20 pounds.
“My husband was disappearing before my eyes,” Ross wrote in a Facebook post.
On December 19, her birthday, Ross walked at Hawk Mountain and prayed for her husband. In her latest book, “Walking Toward Peace: Veterans Healing on America’s Trails,” Ross told the stories of veterans who treated their physical and psychological wounds by hiking in places like Hawk Mountain. She and Gladfelter organize nature activities for veterans through their nonprofit, River House PA.
“I understand mostly what they went through and how far they were able to come,” she said. “Hearing their stories and writing about them over the years, gives us great hope.”
The veterans admired Gladfelter’s quiet demeanor, which Ross called that of “a man who knows what makes him happy in life.” He grew his own food, built his own house and lived off the land. In a civilian life that seemed devoid of structure, he was the exemplar of a man with purpose. Now, they are unsure of how to respond to a tragedy that reminds them of their own trauma.
“They loved him to death,” Ross said. “One guy came over who doesn’t really show emotion, and he cried. You know, he never cries! They don’t know how to handle their grief over this, and they don’t want to put it on us.”
Ross was especially inspired by one veteran who survived an explosion. His physical therapist told him he would never walk again. He lay on the floor for nine months and pulled his leg back and forth with a rope for nine hours a day, until he felt a muscle twitch. That was the beginning of him learning how to walk again. One day, Gladfelter was supposed to be in therapy for 30 minutes, but he stayed for an hour and a half, until he was the last one there.
“A lot of it has to do with deciding you’re not gonna quit,” Ross said.
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