This is John Brewer's story, and anything to do with John Brewer means we have to keep talking and moving, so try to keep up. You'd better read fast. Hang on . . .
Not even a wheelchair slows Brewer down. Are you kidding? He drives. He lifts weights. He rolls 20-milers on the road. He teaches school. He races. He paints. He draws. He grades papers. "He usually has two or three things going at one time — and the TV and radio are on," says his wife, Annie. There's just no sitting still — pardon the expression. Or what would you call his completion of 123 marathons? That's 3,222.6 miles — enough to cross the continent and then some, never mind his training mileage. If we could bottle whatever energy source it is that powers the 50-year-old Brewer, America wouldn't have to tap its oil reserves.
Brewer's wheelchair racing will take him to Australia next month, although he'll probably use a plane to get there first. Brewer is going to Sydney to represent the United States in the marathon at the Paralympics.
We caught up with Brewer during a weightlifting session when he was so buzzed on endorphins that he almost levitated from his chair. "I just feel so good," he said. "I have so much positive energy."
The great, sad irony of Brewer's life is that he was born with so much energy and zest for life, not to mention a bad case of hyperactivity, that he could barely sit in a chair for more than a few minutes as a boy (a chronic source of trouble in school) — and then he wound up confined to a chair for life.
The other irony: He always wanted to go to Australia to surf the famed Gold Coast, and now, after all these years, he's finally going there — in a chair. Surfing was and is his great passion. Even after 27 years in a chair, he still subscribes to surfing magazines, in which occasionally he will read about the exploits of his old surfing partners. Surfing saved Brewer as a youth growing up in Santa Monica, Calif. For a boy diagnosed as dyslexic and hyperactive, he found escape, freedom, beauty and much more in surfing, and then fate and a car met him at an intersection, and he was banished to land and a chair with wheels.
"That's the only thing I miss," says Brewer. "Surfing is such a beautiful combination of the aesthetic and the athletic. It's a huge expression of nature. It's like sitting on a redwood and feeling the branches grow under you. The textures, the smells, the sounds, it's all very sensuous. Then to stand and do a water dance. It gave me a creative outlet for all that energy."
Brewer is the sum of an athlete, artist and cosmic Californian. It took him a couple years to find another escape to replace surfing: chair racing.
"I had to discover a sport for myself," says Brewer.
Brewer's life might have been much different 30 years ago, when the prevailing philosophy for rehabilitating quadriplegics — "quads," as he says — was to teach them a vocation so they could work and earn a living "and build self-esteem," says Brewer. But rehabilitation came to embrace sports and competition, which demand physical independence while also providing mainstream integration. Brewer helped blaze the trail for it all.
"We are the first generation of the physically active," he says.
In 1976, Brewer convinced Deseret News Marathon officials to allow him to compete in their race. They later changed their minds, then changed their minds again. It seemed a preposterous notion, this idea of pushing oneself 26.2 miles in a wheeled chair, but Brewer made it to the finish to become only the second quad to cover the distance in the United States. He needed nearly six hours to complete that first Deseret News race. Years later he would become the first quad to cover a marathon in less than two hours. A new frontier was opened for wheelchair athletes.
"In 1973, the longest race for organized wheel sports was 220 yards," he says. "We had to fight to get a 3K."
Brewer won gold medals in the marathon at the Seoul Paralympics in 1988, plus silver medals in the 1,500- and 800-meter distances on the track. After that, he essentially retired from serious competitive racing to spend more time with his wife and children, but he continued to train for his sanity and his need for motion and emotion. He entered last spring's L.A. Marathon, which served as the U.S. Paralympic trials, and, much to his own surprise, won the race and a spot on the team despite going up against men half his age. He has trained with a certain ferocity since then.
"(Making the team) has given me license to train my butt off," he says.
Brewer rises at 5 in the morning to do his first workout: three or four miles on rollers (the wheelchair version of a treadmill). An art teacher at Bountiful's Millcreek Middle School, he gets to work at 7:30. In the afternoon, he does his serious workout: repeat sprints up a hill or speed work on the track or long-distance sessions. On weekends he'll complete a 20-mile push on the hills near his Kaysville home. Twice a week he lifts weights.
Brewer's workouts are supervised by Randy Frommater, a former U.S. Paralympic coach and college decathlete who applies his knowledge of able-bodied track workouts to wheelchair racers.
"John's my friend first and an athlete second," says Frommater. "And he's someone to work out with."
Frommater is so devoted that he actually pushed a chair himself alongside Brewer in a few races to keep him company and challenge him.
"The first time I did it I couldn't even unstrap my helmet," says the coach. "My arms cramped. It's good exercise, and it's kind of fun. It's better than a bike or car for John. He can practice drafting, and he has someone to push against. He's usually on his own in Utah races."
Part go-cart race, part rowing exercise, wheelchair racing is grueling, alternately wild and tedious. Brewer has been clocked by police going 58 miles per hour down hills. During a race, he must weave between able-bodied racers and potholes to survive the downhill, then push himself up hills and mountains while the able-bodied pass him. The sport has its hazards. Brewer once flew off a cliff after failing to make a turn on a mountain road near Sundance ski resort.
"The guys in the open class (full upper body use, no legs) can smack up to 25 miles per hour on the flat," says Brewer. "I do 18."
Brewer carries a card that verifies his competition classification. The classes are defined according to injury. Brewer is considered quadriplegic, although he does have some use of his upper body. When athletes report to the Paralympics, they are muscle-tested to ensure fair competition. Like able-bodied Olympic competition, there is cheating at the Paralympics, as well. Even within the various classes, there are differences in disabilities.
"The Canadians have trunk muscles I don't have," says Brewer, referring to some of his top rivals. "Mine was a spinal cord injury in my lower neck. It just missed my hands. My grip is weak. I have a little sensation in one shoulder. The injury is incomplete. I can barely move one toe. Just a trace got through. It doesn't mean I have any use. I have no trunk (stomach muscles). I'm not bilateral. I've got more strength on my right side than my left. I've got a broken up rib cage on the left side (from the car accident)."
Brewer was injured one morning in 1973. He had been up most of the night to get ready for a move to Hawaii, where he planned to attend school and surf. His life changed forever when, sleepy and preoccupied, he ran a red light and was struck broadside. But after a couple of years of "working through my anger," he began to fashion a full life again. Two years later Brewer met and married Annie, an able-bodied social worker. They have four children.
"He's pretty remarkable," says Annie. "He's very independent. . . . He's never bored."
The wheelchair became a part of family life, never more than on one evening a few years ago when each member of the family climbed into wheelchairs — there were extras stored away in the house — and went on a "walk" together around the neighborhood, eventually arriving at a gas station where they ate ice cream cones. Brewer's children also have traveled with him to out-of-state races and even ridden on the lead race vehicle.
Annie believes the accident forced her husband to develop in other ways besides the physical, such as his teaching and art. He paints portraits, which were once exhibited in his own art show. "I've always got something I'm working on," he says. His subjects are often his students. Brewer has been a school teacher for 24 years, teaching ceramics, drawing, painting and art history.
"He uses his own personality to get through to the kids," says principal Bryon Nielsen. "Not just on art but on growing-up issues. He really has a way with getting through to at-risk kids. He shows a lot of interest in the kids. He's one of those the kids know genuinely likes them."
(Says Brewer, "When I introduce myself to the class, I tell them [about his injury]. I put them at ease. They're curious. They want to know how you drive, how you dress . . . ")
Just as he once did with surfing, Brewer turns to wheelchair sport for release. There are some evenings when he takes off on a long push to the Great Salt Lake and something magic happens to a man closely tied to the aesthetic and the athletic.
"It's such a spiritual thing," he says. "You turn off the music and listen to your heart beat. You listen to your inner voice. It is a way of meeting yourself. There are a lot of things that go through your head. . . . I go out on a 20-miler, and I come back full of love. If people worked out more, they'd be kinder and better. It's the way to world peace."
There is another reason he seeks the company of the Great Salt Lake on some of his training sessions. He feels home there smelling the salt on the breeze and listening to the lapping of the waves. Sometimes he will even stop for a moment to stick his feet into the water and feel whatever slight sensations can slip through the damaged wiring of his body. It recalls his days as a surfer.
"Someday I want to hook up (with his old surfing buddies) and go to Mavericks (a famed California surfing beach)," he says. "I want to go out there in a boat and watch them shred."
While he is in Australia, he plans to see the famed Aussie surf. He will visit the famous Kirra Surf on the Gold Coast. He will check out Bells Beach. He will watch the surfers shred the 20-footers. He will stick his toes in the surf, inhale the salt smells, feel the sea breezes in his hair, let the roar of the surf fill his ears.
"I've always wanted to see the big waves in Australia," he says.
E-MAIL: drob@desnews.com