Memory Loss Won’t Catch Terry Evanshen Napping
17/04/2009 19:52
Lists, routines and old-fashioned grit keep Terry Evanshen's life humming along.
The former CFL football star, whose memories and past life were literally erased following an auto accident in 1988 at age 44, continues to deal with short-term memory loss. The events of one day are forgotten the next, unless he commits them to paper.
"If I have things to do tomorrow, I mark them down," said Evanshen, who is the guest speaker Saturday at the Saskatchewan Brain Injury Association's Hawaiian Oyster Odyssey in Saskatoon.
"I don't put any time constraints on them; I just know I have to start it and finish it. I mark down what I have to do and where I have to go; it's the five Ws. As long as I have the five Ws under control, I know what I'm doing."
That kind of organization came naturally to Evanshen during his stint from 1965 to 1978 as a glue-fingered CFL receiver and seven-time all-star. His survival then depended on outmanouevring and out-plotting bigger opponents.
The accident, in which a car ran a red light and crashed into his Jeep, erased his memory and stripped clean his entire emotional base. He had no recollection of his family or his football past; he reverted, in many ways, from adult to toddler. Early on, one of his daughters threw him a football; he had no idea what to do with it.
His family took it upon themselves to reteach him the game that once defined him; they taught him to catch a football, just like he taught them when they were children and he was the indestructable father/football star.
"I was a nobody, I was a somebody, I was a nobody, then I had to be totally retrained again -- how to speak and eat properly," said Evanshen, who was the subject of June Callwood's book The Man Who Lost Himself.
"The first five years (after the accident) was a nightmare.
"You're starting all over again. You have no experience; you never worked; you never did this, you never did that. I was always in the never stage. It was 'Who's this? What's that?' You're walking around befuddled. It took me a long time to learn to cross the street. The light turning red and turning green, getting caught in the middle and not moving; it was silliness. But the brain was all scrambled up."
Even today, two decades after the accident, Evanshen has absolutely no memory of his other life. Everything he knows about his football career comes from old newspaper clippings, film, and the recollections of family, friends and former teammates.
He's resigned himself to the complete erasure of that history within his memory bank; to the fact there will never be any sweet twinkling of recollection.
More from the Edmonton Journal.
SWIVEL HIPS SAYS:
Terry Evanshen’s story is truly heart-wrenching. I remember him as an all-star Canadian CFL receiver with both the Calgary Stampeders and the Montreal Alouettes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. What’s most impressive about Evanshen’s story is the grit and determination he has shown in adapting to the hand he has been dealt in life.