In an otherwise nostalgic upbeat thread on the Daycroft High School Facebook Page, David wrote that his most memorable moment in high school was … contracting polio ...

Wait what? Who was posting this …David Kennedy? Only one classmate ventured to ask how he was doing and the rest was left bare on the table. Fortunately, he is eccentric and easy to spot in a crowd, even online.

As he describes, “I’m rather loud and wear outlandish clothes and hats and glasses, that sort of thing.” Additionally, he is very generous in offering information. So when I reached out, he gladly obliged.

At the time of our online interview in early January 2022, David was living in Costa Rica, a self-described Ascending Master (f1) with a main study in quantum physics and Gnostic (f2) teachings. He claims his grandmother was an assistant to Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy and was bequeathed Mrs. Eddy’s pet parrot…which evidently whistled when she vacuumed.

He played defense on the high school football team, but wrestling was his main passion. Before Daycroft, he had earned a tri-state wrestling championship when he was 14 with a YMCA program.

He studied art in college and was hired as an Exhibition Coordinator at the Denver Art Museum more than 20 years ago.

He’s working on a memoir in Costa Rica and looking for an editor. He has two daughters who live in Colorado.

In retrospect, David said he wasn’t aware of anyone else having contracted the virus before that day he did, so as far as he was concerned, it was all just happening to him.

He could have been the first.

He said the Mother Church blamed the epidemic on the mothers for not protecting their children with correct prayers… “My mother never recovered…She died at 64 because of not going to a doctor when she contracted ovarian cancer.”

But I’m jumping ahead…Here’s how David Kennedy recalls the time:

The Teenager

Then: A high school wrestler and charmer

At the Time

I was 16 in September 1972. My best friend Kirk Maddock and I lived in Darien (about 30 minutes from school). He drove a yellow Beetle convertible with white interior and we car-pooled to Greenwich as day-students.

Mrs. Dresser taught French, and looked like Katherine Hepburn, all librarian-like. Any time she turned her back, I’d open my book [to hide my face] and I’d be doing bird calls along with the other guys.

Day of Discovery

That day in September I was getting ready to play football. I realized that I hadn’t brought my football jersey to school, so Kirk gave me a ride home. I grabbed it and ran out the front door falling down a few steps at first, then face-planting onto the slate path. Both legs were completely paralyzed and the pain was like somebody poured battery acid into my blood stream. So I dragged myself to Kirk’s car in the driveway just twenty feet away. Neither of us had a clue what was going on.

The movement came back during the half-hour drive to campus when it was time to suit up and play. I told Coach Crump my back really hurt. He said it was probably a pinched nerve and gave me a massage to help the pain.

The 1972 Football Team. David Kennedy - Top Right; Coach Crump - Bottom Right

When the game started, I joined my teammates like a herd of elk to run onto the field. Then my legs gave out again, this time I landed face first into the soft grass in front of everyone.

He recalled his dad was oblivious to his condition and wasn’t happy about him being benched. He told his son he wasn’t worthy of wearing the jersey if he wasn’t going to play.

Mother Church Reaction

My mother was always very religious. I remember that shortly after the outbreak, the Mother Church (f3) sent out a message to anyone who’s children were sick, they said we’d like to meet at Daycroft. My mom described a wall of lawyers in the space, and then one guy stood up and said there’s nothing wrong with Christian Science, and C.S. didn’t cause this. Rather it was the mothers’ lack of faith and poor protection that caused this to happen. My mother never recovered. She was not the same woman afterwards. She just took it to heart. The Mother Church did not make any accidents.

Pray Away

Was this something you thought could be prayed away?

At first, I thought it was my fault. Only after studying other religions and faith-based groups, did I realize it was completely their fault. That’s when I became against the C.S. way.

Evolved Beliefs

How have your religious beliefs evolved over the years?

When I was young, I would go to whoever had instructed me and would question certain things. This doesn’t make sense. To everything they’d just always say, you have to have faith. What frustrated me was they couldn’t answer the question, why? What does that mean? Why do you have to have faith? I hate that because I’m logical. Whenever I heard that you need to have faith I knew they were trying to manipulate me or they didn’t know the answer.

During the time I was quarantined at home, the CDC was coming in every hour pricking me all over the place. I was 100 % paralyzed, couldn’t talk, blink or anything. This one evening, the guy who does his pricking sits next to me and goes, ‘the only thing still functioning in your body is your lungs, because of your parent’s “belief.” They refuse to put you in an iron lung and that’s where you need to go now.’

He puts his hand behind my head so I can look out to the driveway. He says, ‘See that van (a coroner’s van)? You’re going to be in there before the sun rises.’ Then, dropped my head and walked out.

At age 16, it was like, ‘What did I do wrong?’ I had broken a bunch of CS rules: I had sex, was smoking and had alcohol, but hadn’t killed anybody. On a scale of 1-10 of bad things these should be a ½ point. I guess not.

I became a staunch atheist after that and went through a nihilistic period reading a lot of Nietzsche (f4).

Excerpt from David’s book in progress:

As I laid in my parents’ bed on the first floor, 100% paralyzed except for my lungs. I couldn’t even blink my eyes. I would stare at the cracks in the ceiling to find faces and animals in fantastic landscapes making up stories of a beautiful damsels in distress being saved by a knight in shining armor, while I tried to comprehend what I had done so wrong in my short sixteen years of life to piss God off so much that he had to stop controlling the orbiting of the planets, sun, and the ebb and flow of the of the oceans to punish me for my sins.

As the sun rose the next day, I was grateful that I hadn’t taken that ride in the (coroner’s) van. So now that I didn’t need to reflect on my own mortality, I started accepting that I wasn’t going to the Olympics as a wrestler, go to the prom, or drive a car. The doctors told me I would never be able to get out of bed.

They were wrong about that too. My first time out of the bed was when my father laid me on a bed sheet and dragged me around the house, then I put a small foot stool under my chest and used my arms to drag myself around. When my back was strong enough, I was able to use a wheelchair.

And David’s been popping wheelies in them ever since.

Talk Therapy

Have you had a chance to talk about your experience with anyone?

Nobody comes to mind. I don’t think I had that conversation. I talked a lot with my mom. She was always there, and she couldn’t talk about it, definitely not my dad. I’m close to my sister Beth, who’s three years older, but didn’t talk to her about it. My dad’s attitude was mostly stiff upper lip. You know, get back in the game, rely on yourself, and get it done. My dad never talked about D-day for instance. He drove a Jeep across Europe and liberated Jews from a concentration camp, but never spoke of it.

All the relationships outside the family were all pretty new because I had just started at Daycroft that year. The girl I was dating was the first to visit me as soon as the quarantine was lifted, but she said her parents told her that she wasn’t allowed to see me anymore.

Patty Warner (another Daycroft student) was the real love of my life though. She was there for me and would push me around in my wheelchair on campus and come to my home in Darien on weekends.

Finding Support

How have you reflected on your experience over the years? Did you seek out any online forums?

No, I didn’t reach out. I didn’t go to any forums or anything like that or support groups. I have so many friends that are disabled. The community finds you. I was on Obama’s senior staff for the DNC as a disability rights coordinator in Denver. I checked ADA regulations at restaurants and gave etiquette training for the fire and police departments and volunteers - politically correct things to say.

When I got my diploma, I was invited to attend graduation at Daycroft. A hippy friend rented a hearse to drive up to campus. I was wearing a leather jacket and cowboy boots. When they called my name, the gloved guests were doing the little golf clap, but my guys were standing on chairs whooping it up.

I was in New England a few years ago, and I realize I drove through Greenwich three times and it never crossed my mind to visit the school.

Mandated Vaccinations

What do you think of mandated vaccinations?

It breaks the Geneva convention. It’s a war crime.

Living with a Disability

What’s it like living with a disability now…

I went through a major victim mentality for a long time. ‘Woe is me’ worked with women for a long time. It’s only been since I got into quantum physics/energy vibration that I’ve been taking it to a metaphysical level. We create everything. We are the director of our lives…

Footnotes

Ascended Masters

…consider themselves to be spiritually enlightened beings who in past incarnations were ordinary humans, but who have undergone a series of spiritual transformations enabling them to live in a fifth or sixth dimension. (ArtsAndCulture.Google.com)

2. Gnosticism

… is “the belief that human beings contain a piece of God (the highest good or a divine spark) within themselves, which has fallen from the immaterial world into the bodies of humans. All physical matter is subject to decay, rotting, and death.” (WorldHistory.org)

3. The Mother Church

Located in the heart of Boston, The Mother Church is the centerpiece of the Christian Science Plaza (ChristianScience.com). Colloquially, it’s the headquarters where all national Christian Science decisions are made.

4. Nietzsche

Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favor of perspectivism; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism (Wikipedia).