Says Injections Ruined Basketball Career : Disabled Athlete at War With Air Force

Willie Harris went to war the day he was discharged from the Air Force.

While many of his military buddies went to Vietnam in February, 1967, Harris went home to Los Angeles to prepare his own battle.

“My job in the Air Force was to play basketball, to win games and prestige for my base commander,” recalled Harris, who enlisted in October, 1962, and was eventually stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque, N.M.

“Then I hurt my knees,” he said. “But that didn’t stop them from using me. They pumped me full of cortisone and sent me back out there, week after week after week.”

Once a promising player who starred for three years on an Air Force team, Harris left the service in pain, his knees aching like those of a man twice his age. He blamed three years of military-approved steroid injections in his knees for the crippling condition. He was bitter, and he vowed to be repaid for his career-ending affliction.

Eighteen years later, Harris, now 43 and living in Cerritos, refuses to surrender despite overwhelming odds. His fight with the Air Force goes on, and so does the anger.

“This damn thing has affected me, my kids, my wife . . . . Too much damage has been done,” said Harris, running a finger along a zipper-like scar on his right knee where doctors have tried to surgically slow the rapid deterioration of his joints, an arthritic condition that someday may require a wheelchair. Harris contends the injections accelerated the breakdown of the joints.

“After all the hurt and the letdowns I’ve had, I’ve become a very hate-filled man,” he said.

Mobility Hampered

Harris clings to the slim hope that somebody will hear his cries and rally to his side.

He is a towering 6-foot, 8-inch man, built solidly like a steel bridge support, who must duck when he walks through doorways.

These days, he shuffles more than he walks, his mobility hampered by seven-pound metal braces on each knee. Negotiating the stairs in his two-story home is a slow ordeal for the man who once scored a record 56 points in an Air Force championship game. Standing for any length of time is now a luxury.

“A man at his age should be able to run around, play ball with the boys and do things with his family,” said Kanu Patel, an Orange County orthopedic specialist who examined Harris earlier this year. “He has the knees of a 65- or 70-year-old man.”

Tryout Invitations

Even with braces, Harris received tryout invitations from seven professional basketball teams after his military discharge. But Harris’ knees could not support his dream and the first and only tryout in the summer of 1967 lasted less than a day.

Since then, Harris has struggled through months of severe depression, alcoholism, five operations on his knees and a fragile marriage. He receives a $1,500-a-month disability check from the Veterans Administration to support his wife and four children.

But Harris wants more. He wants to sue the Air Force for “18 years of anguish and lost income.”

When Harris was discharged, he was initially given a 20% disability rating and $28 a month. Several years later, the Air Force changed the rating to 30%, a decision that entitled the Mississippi native to a one-time payment of $3,500. A year later, the Air Force notified Harris that he had been overpaid and asked him to return $2,200. He never has.

“Sure, I wanted to play (when he was injured). Bad, real bad,” he said. “I trusted them and accepted their word that cortisone was safe.

Then, when I just couldn’t play anymore, when the pain was too great, they discarded me like a spent cartridge.

“Now they’re going to pay. Even if I have to go to Washington in a wheelchair, I’m going to picket. I’m going to raise hell. I won’t quit. I can’t quit. I want someone to hear me.”

Ironically, one of the military’s biggest boosters, Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Buena Park) has come to Harris’ aid.

After sending dozens of letters to lawmakers, including three to President Reagan, Harris found a willing listener in Dornan.

Dornan has introduced a bill in Congress that may pave the way for Harris to eventually sue the Air Force. Dornan’s legislation, a private-relief bill, is a long shot. In 1983-84, an estimated 180 private-relief bills were introduced in Congress. Only 15 became law, according to House Judiciary Committee records.

“Only a handful make it through Congress to the President’s desk,” said Brian Bennett, Dornan’s chief of staff. “Honestly, this a gamble, and we’ve told Willie that from the start.”

In 1982, the Air Force denied Harris’ claim for more compensation. It contended that heredity and his size contributed to his arthritic knees.

“The available medical evidence fails to establish a connection between any cortisone injections you received . . . and your present condition,” wrote Col. R. R. Semeta, the officer who reviewed Harris’ compensation request.

Case Closed

Because Harris failed to appeal the ruling within six months, the case was closed.

Moreover, as a military veteran, Harris could not sue because a 1950 Supreme Court ruling, known as the Feres Doctrine, says a serviceman cannot sue the government--even in cases of medical malpractice--when injuries arise from military duty because Congress provides other forms of military and disability benefits.

Dornan’s bill would waive the statute of limitations and allow Harris to appeal to a federal District Court the Air Force’s 1982 decision not to grant more compensation, Bennett said.

Richard Fox, a Century City attorney who specializes in military cases, said it is likely that any malpractice suit Harris brings against the Air Force will be dismissed.

“No matter how compelling the case, most judges would toss the case out,” said Fox, who helped change Harris’ Air Force disability rating from 20% to 30%.

‘You Can’t Win’

“What veterans, like Willie, don’t realize is, you can’t win. The system doesn’t allow them to,” he said. “It would take an act of Congress to change the Feres Doctrine. The tragedy is, good men like Harris continue to wage a futile fight.”

Despite the odds, Harris wants to press his case, believing he has the medical evidence to support his claims of malpractice.

In March, 1983, Dr. Pamela E. Prete at the Long Beach VA Hospital wrote: “His avocation (basketball) plus multiple steroid injections in the knees exacerbated his severe knee disability.” In the same evaluation, Prete diagnosed Harris’ condition as “osteoarthritis,” a degenerative joint disease.

A decade earlier, Dr. Arthur Retig wrote in a VA discharge summary:

“The condition appears to have been service-aggravated, since there is reasonable evidence that repeated cortisone injections . . . may be harmful.”

100 Injections Given

Harris estimates he received nearly 100 cortisone injections over three years after he injured both knees in a tournament at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida in 1963.

Despite the pain, Harris said, Air Force doctors assured him that cortisone would reduce the swelling and discomfort in his badly strained knees and that he could play the following weekend. Harris consented.

“We’d play our games on Friday and Saturdays,” Harris recalled, “so every Thursday I’d stroll over to the doc’s office on base, walk right in and get the injections.

“At first my knees went numb, but the next morning I felt like I could run a hundred miles. No pain,” he said. “What I didn’t realize was, the cortisone was masking the pain, and I was damaging my knees for life.”

Finished 1983 Season

Because of the cortisone shots, Harris was able to finish the 1963 season and play the next two. But the pain in his knees never really went away. By the fall of 1964, he was wearing metal braces when he played, and his mobility suffered.

Harris worried that his career might be in jeopardy and he passed on a chance to try out for the 1964 Olympic team. By the start of the 1965 season he was playing less and less.

“They knew how much I wanted to play,” said Harris, who perfected his game as a child by playing long into the night on the Lexington, Miss., plantation where his family lived.

Harris’ glory days are behind him. Orthopedic specialists believe Harris may have to wear some type of prosthesis, such as surgically implanted kneecaps, to prevent the total loss of movement in the joints.

“I think about all those $900 hammers the military buys and $500 toilet seats,” Harris said. Then they say they can’t help veterans, veterans who have been mistreated. It really hurts to love your country, then watch that country turn its back on you.”