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Warren Grant escaped death once before.
Twenty-six years later, there won’t be another Houdini-style manoeuver. And he’s letting everyone know it’s OK.
“That’s the way things go,” Grant says, matter-of-factly, bedridden at the Saint-Vincent Hospital, in palliative care.
No one knows how much time the popular Ottawa golf pro has left. Doctors gave him weeks to live and that was months ago. He’s been off antibiotics for seven weeks — side effects-free and loving it! — and is just waiting for the end to come. Not being able to get out of bed to play pool with his buddies, was among the last straws.
“I always said when I can’t take care of myself, that’s it,” the 70-year-old said Monday to a couple of newspaper visitors. “I think it’s getting pretty close.”
Golfers in the Ottawa area know Grant’s story, part of it anyway.
He had been the club pro at Manderley on the Green in North Gower for two years when the motorcycle he was riding in May, 1992 went out of control and put him in a wheelchair, a paraplegic with no sensation from the chest down. Any sense of personal loss was trumped by his gratitude to the two angels dressed up as off-duty firefighters who happened by Riverside Drive when Grant was lying helpless at the side of the road.
Warren Grant taken in “old” pro shop at Manderley. After his accident and when Head Professional at Manderley.
Along with a fractured spine, Grant had suffered two collapsed lungs. The passing firefighters happened to have an oxygen tank in their truck and their quick work saved Grant’s life, although a lesser man would have died from the organ issues and sepsis Grant overcame during months in hospital.
If only he had an answer for necrotizing fasciitis, better known as flesh-eating disease. Grant, who had still been teaching golf to a loyal following in his so-called “semi-retirement”, got out of bed on Thanksgiving Sunday, Oct. 9, 2016, and had his usual shower, when he was suddenly overcome with a paralyzing weakness.
Too numb to even get into his wheelchair, he called for an ambulance. Within 45 minutes of arriving at the Queensway Carleton Hospital emergency department, Grant was on the operating table for the first of what would be a series of surgeries.
With no nerve endings in his hip due to the accident, Warren had no idea his own flesh was under siege. Only the secondary symptoms of fatigue and nausea alerted him.
In 2001, Warren Grant was named CPGA teacher of the year. A disciple of the legendary ball striker Moe Norman, Grant was renowned for teaching golf fundamentals from the ground up, and not just re-doing a client’s swing.
Surgeons did what they could, but the procedure was so invasive, eventually leakage from the wall of his bladder was getting into the wound, creating ongoing infection. While receiving antibiotics strong enough to kill a horse, Grant was given the option of further surgery, to try to repair the bladder.
“But to get at it, they would have had to go through the bladder from the front and the odds weren’t on my side they could even do it,” Grant says, flatly.
Subsequent issues put him into the intensive care unit last February and again in April, largely due to complications from that initial surgery.
In 2001, Warren Grant was named CPGA teacher of the year. A disciple of the legendary ball striker Moe Norman, Grant was renowned for teaching golf fundamentals from the ground up, and not just re-doing a client’s swing.
By this time he made the decision to carry on trying to battle the infections with medicine, and now he’s put a stop on that, to let the poison “do its job,” as he puts it. Sepsis will come.
“What will happen, the infection will get into my bloodstream good enough to just take me away,” Grant says, not in dread. “It’s like having an incurable cancer. The same situation.”
His eyes bright, voice calm, he says these things without emotion, which has a way of unnerving his close friends and family who have witnessed his stoic battles before.
“I don’t think his body will allow him to give
Warren Grant gives a golf clinic at the Manderly on Sept. 5, 1997.
up, even though he’s rationalized it in his mind,” says Ernie Ferne, who co-owns the Manderley golf club with his wife, Jill, and his brother, Don Ferne.
“He’s never been one to give up on anything, even before the accident.”
After the crash, the Ferne brothers wasted no time telling Grant he could retain his job at Manderley, despite having lost the use of his legs. Don Ferne has known Grant for close to 35 years, dating back to Grant’s time as a teaching pro at Cederhill before Ferne brought him to Manderley to be the head pro.
Grant is forever grateful to the Ferne family. But he IS family, they counter back.
“He was the employee everybody wants to have,” Don says. “He treated the business like it was his own. He wanted to make sure he got the best out of sales, that clients and staff were happy.
“I never met anybody who loved the game of golf, and later on the teaching of it, as much as he did. His joy of the game came through. That’s something you can’t fake.”
“We’ve just been so proud of him,” Ernie adds.
As much as the Fernes believed in Grant, they couldn’t have imagined what was to be. Grant underwent months of painful rehab and willed himself to remain an extraordinary teacher of the game, perhaps better than ever, despite now instructing from a wheelchair instead of a standing position. In 2001, Grant was named CPGA teacher of the year.
A disciple of the legendary ball striker Moe Norman, Grant was renowned for teaching golf fundamentals from the ground up, and not just re-doing a client’s swing. The challenge, after the accident, was teaching it without being able to demonstrate it.
A fitness freak before and after life in a wheelchair, Grant was as well-read as any golf pro, and excelled at communicating, and personalizing, every lesson to the individual.
“Warren’s special gift was his uncanny ability to pinpoint the root cause of a bad swing,” says Ken Forsythe, a longtime student of Grant’s, and now a friend. “Warren focused on the fundamentals and made sure you understood them … it didn’t matter how good your hand-eye co-ordination was — or your physique.”
Eventually, Grant cut back the pro shop work to focus on teaching. His clients were so loyal they would follow him from Manderley in the summertime to the Ben Franklin Dome in winter. Even while laid up for months at Saint-Vincent/Bruyère Continuing Care, Grant was still getting requests for lessons on his warrenstotalgolf website. So, he sent out a letter online to let people know he was conceding victory in the match play of life.
“Unfortunately, fervent desire isn’t enough to get you back on your feet, as my condition has taken a turn for the worse and my days are numbered,” Grant said in the note. He thanked all his clients for the pleasure of working with them, and expressed regret “that I no longer get to make that journey with you.”
Though he says he has nothing left to will, Grant’s final arrangements are being looked after by his devoted sister, Peggy Morrison. Peggy and her husband, Alan, have logged thousands of miles on the return trip from North Bay to see Warren.
Grant and sister Peggy Morrison grew up in Summerside, PEI. ‘He has no sense of how his perseverance has impacted others,’ she says.
Warren and Peggy grew up in Summerside, PEI and formed a tight bond out of difficult family circumstances. Their father died in a car crash when they were infants and an older sister died suddenly at age 16. Warren, a powerfully built young man, was in his early 20s when he had another brush with life-altering tragedy. Happily married for about a year-and-a half, Grant lost his wife, Cathy, in a car accident. The couple’s daughter, Tamara, was two months old at the time.
Grant remarried and fathered a son, Todd, but never got over the loss of Cathy and his second marriage didn’t last. He was separated at the time of the motorcycle accident.
Fortunately, Peggy was in Ontario, having moved to North Bay by then, and was able to be there for Warren, just as she is there for him today, not that he asks for much help. Five years ago, for his 65th birthday, Peggy took him to the Grand Canyon.
“Warren has never wanted to be a burden to anyone,” Peggy says. “Despite the challenges he has had, he’s been very independent and it’s really inspiring. What stands out most is his humility.
“He has no sense of how his perseverance has impacted others.”
“I did the best I could as I went along, that was my attitude all through life,” says Grant, in typical understatement. “I was doing something I loved, so it worked out well.”
As per his wishes, Grant will be cremated and his ashes flown to Summerside where he will be buried next to Cathy.
First, the grim reaper will have to win out and that will be no small task, taking down this giant of a man.
“He is one tough dude,” Don Ferne says. “I always thought he’d come out (of hospital). I felt he could beat anything. This comes as a bit of a shock, but he seems at peace with it.”
His legacy endures. An 11-year-old boy, Raheem, who took lessons with Grant for two-plus years is self-publishing a novel, due out soon. Though not a golf story, the hero of the tale is a young man named Grant. The book is dedicated to: Warren Grant.
wscanlan@postmedia.com
twitter.com/hockeyscanner
查看原文...
Twenty-six years later, there won’t be another Houdini-style manoeuver. And he’s letting everyone know it’s OK.
“That’s the way things go,” Grant says, matter-of-factly, bedridden at the Saint-Vincent Hospital, in palliative care.
No one knows how much time the popular Ottawa golf pro has left. Doctors gave him weeks to live and that was months ago. He’s been off antibiotics for seven weeks — side effects-free and loving it! — and is just waiting for the end to come. Not being able to get out of bed to play pool with his buddies, was among the last straws.
“I always said when I can’t take care of myself, that’s it,” the 70-year-old said Monday to a couple of newspaper visitors. “I think it’s getting pretty close.”
Golfers in the Ottawa area know Grant’s story, part of it anyway.
He had been the club pro at Manderley on the Green in North Gower for two years when the motorcycle he was riding in May, 1992 went out of control and put him in a wheelchair, a paraplegic with no sensation from the chest down. Any sense of personal loss was trumped by his gratitude to the two angels dressed up as off-duty firefighters who happened by Riverside Drive when Grant was lying helpless at the side of the road.
Warren Grant taken in “old” pro shop at Manderley. After his accident and when Head Professional at Manderley.
Along with a fractured spine, Grant had suffered two collapsed lungs. The passing firefighters happened to have an oxygen tank in their truck and their quick work saved Grant’s life, although a lesser man would have died from the organ issues and sepsis Grant overcame during months in hospital.
If only he had an answer for necrotizing fasciitis, better known as flesh-eating disease. Grant, who had still been teaching golf to a loyal following in his so-called “semi-retirement”, got out of bed on Thanksgiving Sunday, Oct. 9, 2016, and had his usual shower, when he was suddenly overcome with a paralyzing weakness.
Too numb to even get into his wheelchair, he called for an ambulance. Within 45 minutes of arriving at the Queensway Carleton Hospital emergency department, Grant was on the operating table for the first of what would be a series of surgeries.
With no nerve endings in his hip due to the accident, Warren had no idea his own flesh was under siege. Only the secondary symptoms of fatigue and nausea alerted him.
In 2001, Warren Grant was named CPGA teacher of the year. A disciple of the legendary ball striker Moe Norman, Grant was renowned for teaching golf fundamentals from the ground up, and not just re-doing a client’s swing.
Surgeons did what they could, but the procedure was so invasive, eventually leakage from the wall of his bladder was getting into the wound, creating ongoing infection. While receiving antibiotics strong enough to kill a horse, Grant was given the option of further surgery, to try to repair the bladder.
“But to get at it, they would have had to go through the bladder from the front and the odds weren’t on my side they could even do it,” Grant says, flatly.
Subsequent issues put him into the intensive care unit last February and again in April, largely due to complications from that initial surgery.
In 2001, Warren Grant was named CPGA teacher of the year. A disciple of the legendary ball striker Moe Norman, Grant was renowned for teaching golf fundamentals from the ground up, and not just re-doing a client’s swing.
By this time he made the decision to carry on trying to battle the infections with medicine, and now he’s put a stop on that, to let the poison “do its job,” as he puts it. Sepsis will come.
“What will happen, the infection will get into my bloodstream good enough to just take me away,” Grant says, not in dread. “It’s like having an incurable cancer. The same situation.”
His eyes bright, voice calm, he says these things without emotion, which has a way of unnerving his close friends and family who have witnessed his stoic battles before.
“I don’t think his body will allow him to give
Warren Grant gives a golf clinic at the Manderly on Sept. 5, 1997.
up, even though he’s rationalized it in his mind,” says Ernie Ferne, who co-owns the Manderley golf club with his wife, Jill, and his brother, Don Ferne.
“He’s never been one to give up on anything, even before the accident.”
After the crash, the Ferne brothers wasted no time telling Grant he could retain his job at Manderley, despite having lost the use of his legs. Don Ferne has known Grant for close to 35 years, dating back to Grant’s time as a teaching pro at Cederhill before Ferne brought him to Manderley to be the head pro.
Grant is forever grateful to the Ferne family. But he IS family, they counter back.
“He was the employee everybody wants to have,” Don says. “He treated the business like it was his own. He wanted to make sure he got the best out of sales, that clients and staff were happy.
“I never met anybody who loved the game of golf, and later on the teaching of it, as much as he did. His joy of the game came through. That’s something you can’t fake.”
“We’ve just been so proud of him,” Ernie adds.
As much as the Fernes believed in Grant, they couldn’t have imagined what was to be. Grant underwent months of painful rehab and willed himself to remain an extraordinary teacher of the game, perhaps better than ever, despite now instructing from a wheelchair instead of a standing position. In 2001, Grant was named CPGA teacher of the year.
A disciple of the legendary ball striker Moe Norman, Grant was renowned for teaching golf fundamentals from the ground up, and not just re-doing a client’s swing. The challenge, after the accident, was teaching it without being able to demonstrate it.
A fitness freak before and after life in a wheelchair, Grant was as well-read as any golf pro, and excelled at communicating, and personalizing, every lesson to the individual.
“Warren’s special gift was his uncanny ability to pinpoint the root cause of a bad swing,” says Ken Forsythe, a longtime student of Grant’s, and now a friend. “Warren focused on the fundamentals and made sure you understood them … it didn’t matter how good your hand-eye co-ordination was — or your physique.”
Eventually, Grant cut back the pro shop work to focus on teaching. His clients were so loyal they would follow him from Manderley in the summertime to the Ben Franklin Dome in winter. Even while laid up for months at Saint-Vincent/Bruyère Continuing Care, Grant was still getting requests for lessons on his warrenstotalgolf website. So, he sent out a letter online to let people know he was conceding victory in the match play of life.
“Unfortunately, fervent desire isn’t enough to get you back on your feet, as my condition has taken a turn for the worse and my days are numbered,” Grant said in the note. He thanked all his clients for the pleasure of working with them, and expressed regret “that I no longer get to make that journey with you.”
Though he says he has nothing left to will, Grant’s final arrangements are being looked after by his devoted sister, Peggy Morrison. Peggy and her husband, Alan, have logged thousands of miles on the return trip from North Bay to see Warren.
Grant and sister Peggy Morrison grew up in Summerside, PEI. ‘He has no sense of how his perseverance has impacted others,’ she says.
Warren and Peggy grew up in Summerside, PEI and formed a tight bond out of difficult family circumstances. Their father died in a car crash when they were infants and an older sister died suddenly at age 16. Warren, a powerfully built young man, was in his early 20s when he had another brush with life-altering tragedy. Happily married for about a year-and-a half, Grant lost his wife, Cathy, in a car accident. The couple’s daughter, Tamara, was two months old at the time.
Grant remarried and fathered a son, Todd, but never got over the loss of Cathy and his second marriage didn’t last. He was separated at the time of the motorcycle accident.
Fortunately, Peggy was in Ontario, having moved to North Bay by then, and was able to be there for Warren, just as she is there for him today, not that he asks for much help. Five years ago, for his 65th birthday, Peggy took him to the Grand Canyon.
“Warren has never wanted to be a burden to anyone,” Peggy says. “Despite the challenges he has had, he’s been very independent and it’s really inspiring. What stands out most is his humility.
“He has no sense of how his perseverance has impacted others.”
“I did the best I could as I went along, that was my attitude all through life,” says Grant, in typical understatement. “I was doing something I loved, so it worked out well.”
As per his wishes, Grant will be cremated and his ashes flown to Summerside where he will be buried next to Cathy.
First, the grim reaper will have to win out and that will be no small task, taking down this giant of a man.
“He is one tough dude,” Don Ferne says. “I always thought he’d come out (of hospital). I felt he could beat anything. This comes as a bit of a shock, but he seems at peace with it.”
His legacy endures. An 11-year-old boy, Raheem, who took lessons with Grant for two-plus years is self-publishing a novel, due out soon. Though not a golf story, the hero of the tale is a young man named Grant. The book is dedicated to: Warren Grant.
wscanlan@postmedia.com
twitter.com/hockeyscanner
查看原文...
