Gymnast Exceeds His Grasp
There was a loud, crunching sound as Jonathan Ham’s head struck the padded concrete floor. He had fallen off the high bar practicing a simple gymnastics maneuver.
On impact, his right shoulder went numb. He briefly sat up, then lay motionless.
“I knew something was wrong,” he concluded.
Kathy and Dwight Ham were preparing to leave their Northridge home for dinner when the phone rang. It was the gymnastics club calling about their 16-year-old son.
“They said there had been an accident,” Dwight said.
Kathy and Dwight immediately drove to the club in Chatsworth. Paramedics put Jonathan’s neck in a hard, cervical collar and placed him on a wooden backboard. He didn’t seem too worried, telling his mother, “Get my history book because I have a test tomorrow.”
He would spend the next two weeks in intensive care after X-rays revealed he had broken his neck between the fifth and sixth vertebrae and dislocated his neck between the sixth and seventh vertebrae. He received medication for the pain and to help relieve muscle spasms.
He underwent surgery. One vertebrae was fused and a metallic device was used to assist the cervical fusion. For 2 1/2 months, he went to Granada Hills High wearing a halo to keep his neck stationary. It was held together by screws drilled into his skull.
“He looked like someone from Mars ready to wire up a transistor radio for perfect sound,” his father said.
Seven months after breaking his neck in November of 1995, Ham was back practicing on the high bar. His doctor advised him to give up gymnastics, but he refused.
“What do you want me to do, play chess the rest of my life?” he responded.
Last spring, Ham earned a gymnastics scholarship to Illinois, where he’s a freshman on a team ranked No. 4 in the nation. He returns to the region on March 7 for a meet at UC Santa Barbara.
The question that needs to be asked is who’s crazier--Ham’s parents for letting him return to the high bar or Ham himself?
“I don’t think you can tell a child of that age, ‘No, you can’t do that,’ ” Kathy said. “He had it in his blood. He said, ‘Mom, I’m not going to live in fear the rest of my life.’ ”
Kathy knew the dangers involved from being a gymnast at Cal State Northridge. She and Dwight decided it was Jonathan’s call.
“He had been a gymnast since he was 3 years old,” Dwight said. “We told him he had already competed nationally. If he had quit then, he had nothing to be ashamed of.”
But Jonathan wouldn’t quit.
“I didn’t want to be a failure,” he said. “It was a test to see how tough I was.”
Besides regaining his strength, the 5-foot-4, 130-pound Ham had to overcome the fear of falling again.
“There was a lot of fear,” he said. “I lost confidence in my abilities.”
Dwight remembers his son breaking out in cold sweats during practice. One day, Jonathan fell and then ran out of the gym in panic.
“In the end, the thing that helped the most was being confident that God wouldn’t let me down,” Jonathan said. “I figured if I was going to die, I’d already be dead. If I wasn’t going to walk, I already had the chance. It was meant for me to go back to gymnastics. The fear went away.”
He even returned to surfing, another challenging endeavor.
Looking back, Ham said going through the ordeal made him stronger.
“For one, it taught me not to worry what people think,” he said. “Going to school with the halo, some people would make fun or stare. It strengthened my Christian faith. It gave me a burning desire to be better in gymnastics.”
At Illinois, Ham’s roommate is his former Granada Hills classmate and California Suns Gymnastics teammate Eric Nishimoto.
Ham’s injury and recovery prompted him to become a pre-med major and consider medicine as a career. Ham recently observed two back operations.
“It was awesome,” he said.
Ham is still trying to conquer the high bar; next up is medicine. Never doubt what can be achieved with a hard head and a big heart.
Eric Sondheimer’s local column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422.
