Antoine Campbell has walked the talk his whole life.
“Stay in your lane,” the middle school principal in Solon and basketball coach in Copley tells youth looking for an easy way out.
He remembers being their age, struggling to hit curve balls. He never left his lane or the batter’s box until he found his swing.
For Campbell, life isn’t about questioning the path ahead. It’s about adapting to the terrain.
So in these past three weeks since a bad back surgery left him paralyzed from the waist down — as “reality sets in” that he may never walk again — how he recalls the moment he could no longer feel his legs says it all.
“My mind goes instantly to getting better. In my world, what’s done is done,” this former college basketball star said Sunday with his wife next to his hospital bed. “I can’t go backwards. I can only look forwards. If I don’t [look forwards], I’m stuck in something I can’t control.”
No one to blame
Campbell blames no one for what‘s happened to him.
The 44-year-old father of four went to an Akron hospital Jan. 20 for outpatient surgery to correct spinal stenosis. It was supposed to take an hour.
Surgeons would widen his spinal column to ease pressure on the fragile nerves inside. But after the incision was closed, blood filled the column and the pressure mounted. When he awoke and was unable to will his legs to move, an emergency medical team whisked him to another hospital where doctors stabilized his condition.
Two weeks passed and the feeling crept back into his legs. Recovery seemed promising. Then on Wednesday at Edwin Shaw Rehabilitation Center, a blood clot broke free from his heart and lodged into both lungs.
He nearly died. And the blood-thinning agent that’s keeping his arteries flowing and his lungs filling is now complicating his spinal recovery, which could get worse if it ever gets better.
But as he lay Sunday propped up in a hospital bed, Campbell just smiled, his spirit unbroken and flying high on the support of family, friends, families he’s coached and practical strangers in every community he’s touched.
A GoFundMe account launched Saturday by friends like David Benson, who visited Campbell on Sunday, and Kevin Floyd collected nearly $40,000 in less than 48 hours.
“It reminds you of how many good people there are in the world,” his wife, Jodi Campbell, said.
Antoine tries not to cry talking about the text messages from people he barely knows.
“It’s totally humbling,” he said. “It’s the love and support you feel when you feel alone, but you’re not alone.”
Road to recovery
Even though the blood clot nearly took his life, Antoine’s optimism and drive are still powering his long and uncertain road to recovery.
“He’s still confident that he’ll be able to walk again,” said Floyd. “He’s a fighter and a competitor. If it’s possible for him to walk again, he’ll walk again.”
The Campbells, who live in Copley, have no idea of the total cost of the many hospital stays, the operation or the rehabilitation ahead.
Jodi has set her mind to the day her husband comes home to a house not fit for daily life in a wheelchair. She’ll need a ramp, a vehicle to transport Antoine, wider doorways, a downstairs bedroom, lowered sinks and a renovation of a new downstairs bathroom so Antoine can use it.
Workers who help with such planning have suggested that Jodi get Antoine a miniature refrigerator. That may fill his personal needs. But Antoine is the kind of father who cooks eggs and bacon on Saturday mornings for his family.
“A bottle of water in a mini fridge won’t cut it,” said Jodi. “It’s not about him being able to survive on his own. He wants to be the dad he’s always been.”
She thinks about the possibility of him being able to operate a car one day. She doesn’t know what that would require, or how much it would cost way down the road when they cross that bridge.
“At this point, I don’t even know,” Jodi said. “I don’t even know how he’s going to be able to go places. He’s not going to be able to get out of the house on his own.”
The couple, he an assistant principal in Solon and she a third-grade teacher in Nordonia Hills, have taken the rest of the year off work. She can’t bear the thought of not being there, not after this past week.
“I watched him almost die on Wednesday. I need to be with him,” Jodi said.
Always running together
Jodi grew up in East Canton. She met Antoine, who grew up in Detroit, at Ashland University in the mid-1990s.
The pair of education majors played basketball for the rural university, where Antoine was inducted into the sports hall of fame a few years ago.
Antoine married Jodi her senior year in 1999. Fresh out of college, he took a job outside of his degree to teach special education in Mansfield then taught in Copley. He was an assistant principal in Maple Heights and then Akron, where he was the top administrator at the newly opened Akron Opportunity Center for students with behavioral issues.
He’s spent the past 14 years as principal of Solon Middle School.
In Akron, Antoine met Floyd, a juvenile probation officer with a few clients attending Antoine’s school. The men connected. Their sons were the same age. They all coached and played basketball together.
Floyd moved to Copley, where his wife is a school principal, in 2011. He knew from Antoine that it would be a good community to raise a family.
At the time, Antoine and Jodi Campbell were raising their four children, including three boys active in sports. Antoine volunteered, mostly without pay, to coach them and other youth. After his kids aged out, he continued to coach the Amateur Athletic Union.
“Antoine is a selfless guy. He gives his time to everyone. He wants to see everyone succeed,” Floyd said. “And don’t get me wrong, when he coaches, he can be loud. But he lifts up those kids. They respect him. And the parents love him.”
If not for the surgery gone bad, Antoine would have been taking his oldest son, AJ Jr., to visit colleges where he might get a football scholarship. On Monday, he would have run the fourth annual Copley Slam Jam Tournament for local youth basketball players and traveling teams.
But the event was canceled in light of the accident. Floyd wishes the event would have gone on to raise more money and support for the Campbells.
Aside from the GoFundMe account, the community has stepped up in so many ways, Jodi said. Her neighbors have planned and will provide her family with daily meals through March.
That gives Jodi and her family some time to brace for what’s next. “I have no idea what other challenges we’ll come up against,” said Jodi. “It’s still shocking.”
Floyd said the hope Antoine has inspired for years in children and the Copley community is being repaid. The love is pouring in from Detroit to Ashland University to Akron, Copley, Nordonia Hills (where Jodi teaches third grade), Solon and beyond.
Floyd thinks back to his friend’s reliable performances as a college point guard. “He got assists,” he said. “That’s how he made his living in college, he helped his teammates just like he does now with the kids.”
“He would do it for us,” he said.
Reach Beacon Journal reporter Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.
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