Adam Taliaferro has a football game at Rowan University on Wednesday night.
It’s the Adam Taliaferro Foundation SJFCA All-Star Classic, featuring recently-graduated high schoolers from throughout South Jersey.
He’s not playing, of course. It’s been 5,756 days since Taliaferro last played football, on that fateful Sept. 23, 2000, date in Columbus, Ohio.
But he still has plenty to root for.
Not just for the players. But for the cause. His cause:
It’s his eponymous foundation, which assists individuals with spinal cord injuries and their families. And thanks in large part to its partnership with the all-star game in Glassboro, N.J., and a golf tournament, as well as some generous donations from scores of Penn Staters years ago, the foundation has raised over $1 million.
And counting.
“We don’t have any paid employees, so 100% of the funds go to helping people with spinal cord injuries,” he said over the weekend from his home in New Jersey. “It’s a labor of love for all of us and something I am proud to be part of.
“I look back at when I had my injury and I was blessed with so much great support. That’s how the foundation was created. When I had my injury, people were donating money, but everything was covered. I recovered, so I didn’t need those funds. The foundation was born from the idea that not everyone has the luxury I had of a great school like Penn State behind him.
“Thank God I had a good recovery and was able to get to live a normal life. But I never want to forget what happened. If we can provide some emotional and financial support to people, it will go a long way.”
The game and the foundation – to donate, go to www.taliaferrofoundation.org — are just a few of the many blessings Taliaferro counts today.
HIS STORY
You likely know the story: As a freshman cornerback, Taliaferro was paralyzed in 2000 while making a tackle against Ohio State at The Horseshoe in Columbus, Ohio. He burst a vertebra and bruised his spine to the degree that doctors originally gave him just a 3% chance to ever walk again.
But valiantly and somewhat miraculously, he recovered to the point where less than a year later, on Sept. 1, 2001, he jogged out onto the field in front of a roaring crowd in Beaver Stadium.
Now 34, Taliaferro turned that injury into a motivating force that has seen him become not only a Penn State alumnus, but a law school grad, attorney, member of the Penn State Board of Trustees, Bristol-Myers Squibb executive, New Jersey assemblyman for the Third Legislative District, husband to Erin and father of 13-month-old Cruz. Not to mention a bona fide inspiration.
His family aside, Taliaferro’s role with the foundation touches him the most.
“A lot of my time is spent talking to families and individuals who have had these injuries,” he said. “And I tell them, ‘I know what you’re going through. I know what I went through. But hey, there are positive outcomes. You’re going to hear a lot of negative news, but at the end of the day there is hope.’
“Just having someone to talk to, to have them hear about the pain I was feeling and the different sensations I was feeling throughout my body, can help. A lot of the time it’s a matter of me just listening and answering questions. It always makes me remember what I went through.”
Taliaferro is referring, of course, to the challenges of learning to walk again. But to hear him talk, it also can refer to his stint on Penn State’s Board of Trustees. In some ways, it was as painful as what he went through after laying motionless on the football field after tackling Ohio State’s Jerry Westbrook.
And those are Taliaferro’s words, not mine. Like so many other Penn Staters, the scandal, sanctions and ensuing acrimony hurt him that much.
ON THE BOARD
“My time on the Board of Trustees was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever gotten involved with,” he said. “That was probably my toughest time. Going through the injury was tough, but I got through it.
“On the Board, some people thought I should have been more vocal. But that’s not the person who I am. I tried to unite people and bring them together behind the scenes. I got some very nasty emails from some people. I felt like people didn’t know where my heart was. They thought they knew me, but they didn’t understand me and how engaged I was and how hard this process was for everyone involved. I look back at it and it was an honor to serve on the Board. But it was the toughest time I had as a Penn Stater because it was such a passionate issue for everyone.
“Serving on the Board was something I believed would give me the platform to effect change. When I got on the Board, my goal was to be someone who could help unify it serving as an alumni trustee and also getting to know the members who were there before we got there, and really trying to understand their point of view and trying to help them see our point of view. Sometimes, I felt like I got caught in the middle of a lot of different things. It was truly a tough situation. The disappointment I had with it was that I was never really able to effectively bridge that gap.”
Then, as now, Taliaferro felt an allegiance to his university – the one that supported him in truly his own personal darkest hour. But he also felt the same way about his football coach.
“It was no secret how I felt about coach Paterno and everything he did for me throughout my time at Penn State,” he said. “I will love the Paternos forever. I wanted to make sure that everything coach Paterno did for the university was recognized. I still think that should happen as soon as possible.”
These days, though he is no longer on the Board, Taliaferro still feels a connection with the Nittany Lion football coach. Only now it’s James Franklin, whom he first met shortly after the coach was hired in January 2014. The two text and email and occasionally chat by phone. Taliaferro is a big fan.
Franklin invited Taliaferro to talk to the entire squad last summer, and since then he has kept in contact with many of the players. He tries to get to every game. And he likes the direction in which the program is headed.
“Coach Franklin is a down-to-earth guy that I’m pulling for and rooting for,” Taliaferro said. “I think he’s going to continue to do great things at Penn State.”
A BRUISED HEART
In some ways, Taliaferro likens his spinal cord injuries and subsequent recovery to the NCAA sanctions levied against Penn State and the overall shadow cast across the university. In his mind, a bruised spine can equate with a bruised heart.
“I always look at any life experience I go through and compare it to what I went through with my injury and all the things I learning by going through that injury,” he says. “I certainly wasn’t given a lot of hope. There were a lot of people in the Penn State community behind me, but a lot of folks didn’t think I was ever going to recover.
“And that happened with the sanctions. People said that Penn State was done, that it was never going to be the Penn State of old. And I think Penn State has already proven a lot of people wrong. I couldn’t have done it on my own; it was a group of people – my family, my doctors, my therapist, and so many people who supported me and prayed for me.
“That’s true with Penn State – there’s no one person who helped Penn State get back to where it is today. Certainly the football team played a big role in it, but it was the entire university that really stuck together in our lowest times and said, ‘Hey, we’re not going anywhere. We are Penn State and we’re going to get right back to where we were.’ Penn State is one of the strongest, close-knit group of passionate people you will ever meet. You can’t hold a community like that down. They’re going to come back. It’s amazing to see in this short amount of time where Penn State is and where we are going.”
Taliaferro’s own journey has been a long one.
“It’s hard for me to think it was 16 years ago,” he said. “People come up to me who think it was five or 10 years ago. I say, ‘Hey, it was 16 years. I got injured when I was 18 and now here I am 34.’”
He hasn’t made it alone. In 40 minutes of conversation he peppers his statements with a liberal does of “thanks” and “blessings.” For Tom Iacovone, the president of his foundation. For his employer, which supports his role in the New Jersey legislature. For the Penn State community, through these many years of lows and highs and lows. For his wife Erin, his parents and his brother.
It’s genuine, too. Taliaferro is calm and collected. But his passion is clear. Not only in what he says, but what he does. And how he gives of himself.
Erin, as much as anyone short of his parents Addie and Andre, knows what Adam has been through. The two met at Penn State in the fall of 2001, when she came to Penn State as a swimmer and he re-enrolled in classes as a freshman. They had a BBH class together and became friends. She won a Big Ten swimming title, in the 400 IM, as a freshman, then had to quit the sport the next year after a knee injury. These days, she is a vice president and assistant controller for Tierney Communications, an advertising firm in Philadelphia.
STRENGTH AND FLEXIBILITY
As she runs the household in the mornings, her husband heads to the basement for a 90-minute exercise regimen – an hour on the elliptical and a half-hour of stretching that is critical to his continued good health.
“Because of my injury, I can’t run any more. I try to work out every day,” he said. “Flexibility is important to me because of that injury. As I get older, my muscles get tighter because of the nerve damage. The doctors have told me that if I don’t continue to exercise, if I don’t continue to stretch, I could revert and lose things I’ve gained through the years.
“My right side is still a little weaker than my left side, and I still have a little limp from the injury. But outside of that I’m really thankful that I have a great quality of life considering the injury that happened back in 2000. When I don’t work out I walk around like a zombie, my muscles get tight and it’s difficult to walk.”
Discipline, purpose, strength, flexibility. They are hallmarks of Taliaferro in all walks of his life.
“Things I’m passionate about – my family, the foundation, my work at Bristol-Myers and the legislature – keep me going each and every day,” he said. “Every day, I want to become a better person. Sometimes, we become complacent and we’re comfortable when things are going well.
“But I always say, ‘Life can change in an instant.’ And my life did change on September 23rd of 2000. Things change quickly. I still keep that mindset where tomorrow can be so very different from today. I try to enjoy each and every day to the fullest so that every day is a blessing.”
