16. The Sky Is Not the Limit

Several years ago my friend Sandy said to me, “I’ve heard you talk about your brother Kevin for the past two years, Kate, and I never knew he was a quadriplegic. How can that be?” Well, I guess that’s not what comes to mind when I think of Kevin. It seems like Kevin has spent his life, post-injury, making the rest of us look like slouches, all the while not being able to move anything below his third cervical vertebra. 

Going to law school. Writing three novels. Marrying a brilliant, beautiful woman. Raising a wonderful child whose name, by the way, is Fabrizio Reilly, quite possibly the only Bolivian-American with an Italian-Irish name.

Here’s my dilemma. This can’t be the “look what he’s achieved in spite of his disability” story. I want to honor the gargantuan difficulties in his life, but the truth is that Kevin would have led an extraordinary life regardless of his injury.

Kevin got his undergrad degree in Russian, with a minor in Chinese. He was fluent in Spanish and conversational in Italian and French. The NSA wanted him, but he went to work for IBM as a systems analyst. One of his first purchases after his paychecks began to roll in was a bright, red Harley Davidson.

An accident in Chevy Chase Maryland on East-West Highway, when it was unmarked and partially paved, broke Kevin’s neck. A nurse who lived nearby did CPR until the paramedics got there. Kevin was taken to Suburban Hospital. Reillys filled the waiting room outside the ICU. Friends stopped by day and night, although only family was allowed into the unit. They immediately became Reillys: cousins, uncles, brothers. A priest flew in from Ireland.

After a pulmonologist suggested we stop feeding him, Kevin was moved to George Washington Hospital. I’m certain that doctor thought he was saying the right thing, the most compassionate thing. We did not fully comprehend what lay ahead. But the truth is neither the doctor nor anyone else knew exactly what the future held for Kevin.

Kevin spent seven weeks in the ICU. After a couple of weeks, he was able to eat solid food. I called him that night and asked him what I could bring. “Pizza,” he said, “from that hole-in-the-wall on M Street.” This particular pizza place was open 24 hours, so I arrived at the hospital with one extra large pepperoni at 7:45 the next morning. 

When I walked into the ICU, Dr. Knauss looked at the box I carried and said, “Pizza? Wait a minute; I’ve got something that would go great with that.” He returned a few minutes later with a six-pack of beer. (Yes, he had just finished his shift.)

A couple of weeks later, Kevin was able to sit up without his blood pressure going haywire. They brought him a bright orange wheelchair. When he was safely strapped in, I pushed him down the hall. I asked him where we should go. “I haven’t been outside for a long time,” he said. We got on the elevator and went to the lobby, where we proceeded out the front door and up 23rd Street to Washington Circle. 

It was a beautiful June day with fluffy white clouds sailing around a bright blue sky — not your typical Washington summer day. We made our way through the traffic and onto the circle and sat below the statue of our country’s founding father for a total of five minutes. Across the circle, we watched as a small phalanx of hospital security guards ran toward us. Apparently, the hospital legal team didn’t like patients sunning themselves on the circle.

After rehab, Kevin moved back to our family home on Jocelyn Street. There’s no denying that making the transition from walking to wheels was tremendously difficult. There were more than a few times he wanted to give up. 

But he continued working at IBM and applied to Georgetown Law School. He met with Martha Hoff, the dean, and she didn’t think it would work. There had never been a quadriplegic at the law school. But Kevin convinced her he could do it. While working full-time at IBM and going to law school at night, Kevin had two surgeries for pressure sores and one for sleep apnea. A colleague at IBM told him he had more balls than a platoon of Marines.

After four years Kevin graduated and passed the bar in D.C. For a few years he represented clients as a public defender. A couple of clients also came to him who were trying to get status in the U.S. With his background in languages, Kevin found that immigration law was a good fit, and he has since represented clients from La Paz to Ulaan Baatar. The stories are legend, from an Estonian defector to Mongolian wrestlers and a woman convicted of murdering her husband.

Along the way, Kevin served as acting president of the Spinal Cord Injury Association of America. The Americans with Disabilities Act had just passed, and he knew the time was ripe for letting people know how able “disabled” people can be. He thought jumping out of an airplane might garner some attention for the cause.

Kevin started calling skydiving schools up and down the Mid-Atlantic. Most of them gave him a hasty dismissal. Finally, he called the Skydiving Center in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The owner was intrigued. He thought they could fashion a harness that would work so that Kevin could make a tandem jump with a master skydiver. The hand-built harness held Kevin’s knees at a 40-degree angle to his body with his feet underneath him. The top of the harness held his arms across his chest. When he got to Chambersburg, the crew put the harness on Kevin and loaded him onto a plane. Then, using the harness, they hung him from the wall of the airplane. 

It turns out the media was interested. Chris Gordon at Channel 9 went to Chambersburg to cover the jump. Rich Lochman, the master skydiver who jumped with Kevin, was a salvage diver for his day job. Not satisfied with walking upon this earth, he preferred to be flying above it or diving to the bottom of the ocean. Rich was happy to help Kevin experience the former. 

To say that Kevin enjoyed the dive is a massive understatement. If you watch the news story, it’s clear just how much fun he had. So much so, that he went back again to jump with one of the guys who worked for him…and then, again, when a friend wanted to jump with him. For the fourth jump, the wind was up. They missed their landing spot. “We landed in a graveyard,” Kevin said. “I thought that might be an omen that I should stop skydiving.”

In 1993, Kevin was looking for some assistance in his law practice. He wanted someone who spoke Spanish to help with his Spanish-speaking clients. Nina Bracamonte came to Kevin’s office to interview for the job and was hired. Soon their work expanded to include listening to music and making dinner together. They fell in love. Kevin’s siblings were a little wary of anyone who wanted to marry Kevin — being overly-protective was in our DNA. Maybe this beautiful Bolivian wanted a green card, and she would break his heart. 

One day my sister Missy called me. “Our worries are for naught,” she said. “I just drove up Connecticut Avenue and saw Kevin and Nina on a stroll. She was pushing his wheelchair up the street with her arms wrapped around his neck in a sweet embrace. Cheek to cheek.” Now she may be our favorite Reilly. She is beautiful, smart. and kind.

Not too long after they married, Kevin and Nena welcomed a baby boy into their family. A happy little boy who loved to watch movies with his mom and dad, Fabrizio was known for quoting Austin Powers and Clint Eastwood. He has grown into a kind-hearted man who, with his mom, has given the most diligent care to Kevin, not just in the last year, but in the last three decades. For the past three months, Nena and Fabrizio have been at the hospital day and night, making sure Kevin was comfortable and properly cared for.

In the last few weeks of Kevin’s life, people from all aspects of his life stopped by the hospital: a childhood friend who said that Kevin could get their neighborhood crew to do anything. They scrounged up scrap wood from all over the neighborhood and built Ft. Reilly in the side yard at Jocelyn Street. This was no lean-to. It was two stories with a basement. Kevin, who was the commanding officer, had the first floor office which boasted a bench and a desk with a globe on it. As I kid, I thought he was planning military maneuvers, but now I realize he foresaw the people he would meet and the places he’d visit. My brother Brian and Tommy Gormley shared the upstairs office. I was asked to be the guard, probably because I cut such an imposing figure.

Several people stopped by Kevin’s hospital room who had worked as his personal aides: Ivar talked about meeting Kevin just after he defected from Moscow. Elaine talked about strapping Kevin into the front seat of her friend’s car with a bed sheet and driving to the beach. Nena told the story of Kevin meeting Olga while she sold hot dogs from a truck. He recognized her accent and needed someone to help with his Russian clients. She said, “I have no experience.” Kevin said, “You’ll learn.” All these people said that knowing Kevin had changed their lives.

I was blessed with six brothers and sisters. To me they are all extraordinary. But the things Kevin learned after his injury made him a truly exceptional human being. It gave him a degree of compassion most people are not given. He forgave us our faults and moved on, and he brought us together. As I said earlier, he made us look like slouches. But he also set the bar a little higher and inspired us to be better. For that I am grateful.

During the pandemic, Nina’s mother and niece were visiting from Bolivia. With Nina’s brother-in-law Javier, they helped with Kevin’s care to minimize his possible exposure to Covid-19. Fabrizio, who had already had Covid, was also in the house. But everyone else — Nina, her mom, Javier, and Brenda — all came down with Covid. Kevin never got sick. Who knows why he didn’t? When I asked Fabrizio that question, he laughed, “Of course not,” he said. “My dad’s impervious to viral infection. He’s a superhero.” And, like a superhero, he is now soaring above us, routing out evil and defending good. Stay with us, Kevin. We need you.

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About ten years after Kevin’s Chambersburg adventures, he called the skydiving center and asked for Rich Lochman. He was told that Rich had been killed in a car accident with a drunk driver the day before. Rich had made all four jumps with Kevin.