Sioux County Folks--Chad Hoekstra

For several semesters years ago, some of my students, the photographer Doug Burg, and I worked on a collection of stories we called Sioux County Folks, fifty portraits of ordinary people drawn from the county around us. When finally it was finished, the price tag for publication was well beyond our reach. The book, I'm very sad to say, never reached publication.

One of the students interviewed Chad Hoekstra and then wrote this story. Hoekstra, a Dordt College student at the time, became quadriplegic as a result of a childhood fall. This is the story that student wrote in 2002.

Chad Hoekstra died last week, on July 13, of complications resulting from pneumonia. By any standards, his was a heroic life. 

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Everyone stares the first time they see him. Maybe he’s used to the double takes by now. It’s been 12 years. Maybe it’s no big deal. After all, it’s the machines they stare at, and machines don’t have feelings. Maybe, at first glance, nobody notices the human connected irreversibly to those machines. Too bad. He might actually be worth the second look.

“Oh, man, Jordan’s retiring again!” There’s a low whir of a motor, and Chad appears in the doorway. A basketball game is in full swing on the television behind him. His wheelchair seems to move by magic, but it is really Chad blowing and sucking on the wired straw in front of him. Years of practice have honed his driving skills to make it look effortless. He maneuvers through several doorways smoothly before stopping quickly. Gizmo, the family’s long-haired Chihuahua, stands fearlessly in his path, undaunted by wheels twice his size.

“Gizmo, move!”

Chad’s mom, Linda, rushes over from the kitchen to scoop the obstruction out of harm’s way.

“Chad, you have to watch him more carefully!” 

Gizmo barks his agreement.

He’s heard this admonition before; there are more important things to discuss. “Mom, Michael Jordan just announced this is his last season. I think he’s really gonna quit!”

“So then you’ll stop watching basketball?” she smirks.

“Of course not! But maybe with all his free time, he can write me another autograph! Oh, they’re playing again!”

Chad spins and zooms back into his room to keep up his commentary on the game. Gizmo chases him happily down the hallway amidst calls from Linda to watch out for each other.

Such a conversation is typical in this household, but when Chad was born twenty years ago, such a scene would have been unimaginable. As the healthy first born of Reverend Cliff Hoekstra and Linda, Chad was a typical Sioux County kid. He hopped on the bus to Sioux Center Christian in the morning and learned to play basketball with his dad in the evening. He squirmed though catechism on Sunday mornings and played tag with cousins at his grandparents’ after lunch. He had birthdays, he laughed, he ate cookies and grumbled about wearing boots. When he was five, he became a big brother to Keith. He dreamed about trips to Disney World and believed girls had cooties. Then he turned eight.

Chad says he doesn’t remember the day it happened, but his family will never erase the memory. He was playing on a dirt pile behind his friend’s house when he somehow slipped and fell, and in the fall actually broke his neck. He was rushed to the hospital, where he would spend the next six months. 

Doctors determined the break had paralyzed his body from the neck down and told his parents that the weight of their son's body would eventually crush his lungs. Cliff and Linda had to make the decision to give him a tracheotomy, an irreversible procedure to place a tube in his neck that would, for the rest of his life, tether him to a machine that would breathe for him. He would never again breathe on his own. 

But, he was alive. Chad’s father says the choice of committing his eight-year-old son to a machine for life or watching him suffocate, not really a choice at all, was still impossibly painful, as it would have been for any parent. 

Grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts--everyone rallied behind the family for the trying months to follow. Little Keith got to know his relatives very well when his mom had to spend night after night by the hospital. The church family was there too. Cliff was the pastor at Faith Christian Reformed Church in Sioux Center when the accident happened. Donations of food and money were more than generous. Brother Keith had more than his share of lovingly donated meals throughout this period. The outpouring of love was tremendous.

The hardships did not get any easier to bear, however. When Chad was finally able to come home, his new life required huge adjustments. Without the hospital’s constant flow of nurses, Cliff and Linda were thrust into the position of total caregivers--a twenty-four hour a day job.

“Oh, they learned to cope,” Chad smiles distantly; “they just stopped sleeping.” The strain finally proved to be too much. The pastor of Faith Christian Reformed Church realized that meeting the needs of both his family and large congregation were clashing. For Reverend Hoekstra, he found himself at a crossroads. He had to say good-bye to the church.

But it wasn’t the end of the road. The exhausted parents finally found a program that would pay for in-home nursing care until Chad turned 21. Able to sleep again, Cliff was also relieved to be offered the leadership of a small church in Rock Rapids. The congregation welcomed the pastor and his family, though the Hoekstras continued to live in Sioux Center, where Chad’s medical programs were finally beginning to seem established. His teachers graciously helped him through the remainder of second grade, and he was able to join his peers for the beginning of third.

Chad mastered negotiating his wheelchair from classroom to classroom, often racing his friends down the hallways. Writing proved to be a new struggle. For a time, Chad tried to write his assignments by holding a pencil in his teeth. His teachers, wanting to read what he'd be writing, enlisted the help of a school aid.

“It was better than taking my mom to school every day,” he says, then smiles brightly at Linda. 

He claims he was the first in his class to get his own car. Affectionately referred to as the “van house,” the spacious vehicle is equipped with a stereo system, CD player, TV, and exceptionally good heaters. It doesn’t sound much different than the typical Sioux County teenagers’ dream car, "Except that the heaters are more important to me than the stereo,” Chad says with a laugh.

Today, twenty-year-old Chad Hoekstra is a sophomore at Dordt College in Sioux Center. Though he isn’t able to live on campus, he doesn’t lead a dull social life. He has learned to mix business with pleasure. On a trip to Sioux Falls last week to pick up a new wheelchair battery, Chad made an impromptu visit to a friend. On his insistence, they went out to dinner – steak – and an action movie. 

Chad Hoekstra is nothing if not “all guy.” His favorite topic is basketball. He recently set up a basketball league of his own, via the internet, where he and his friends “play” each other using the statistics of actual professional players. His good-natured competitive attitude helps his friends bring him into a special place in their own world.

Chad is a new generation. He is surviving disabilities that not many years ago would have ended his within hours. Yet antibiotics and impossible engineering innovations, Chad has not only survived twelve years physically, he has fully lived them in every way. 

Still, because these advances are so new, it's no wonder we feel more comfortable dismissing them to our imagination rather than having to deal with them in real life. Being the first in a generation is never easy. 

Whether he likes it or not, Chad was chosen for that duty. At first glance, his life might look like something out of a sci-fi flick, a body kept alive by machines. But look again. His body may be proof of the wonders of technology, but his existence is proof of the wonders, the miracle, of life.