Paralyzed LeGrand has reason to believe

WOODBRIDGE, N.J. -- Eric LeGrand makes this face sometimes. He scrunches up his nose and mouth, wiggles them a bit, stretches them from side to side.

He's got an itch. He can't scratch it because he is paralyzed below the shoulders.

If his mom was close by, he'd rub his face against her chest, shoulder or arm. He does that with his girlfriend, too. He'll even do it to one of his physical therapists now and again.

But when no one is close enough, he just makes that face.

"I miss the most being able to take care of myself," he said.

Sunday, it will be one year since the 21-year-old LeGrand played his last football game, made his last tackle. Rutgers had just scored, and kicked off to Army late in a game at then new Meadowlands Stadium. LeGrand, a 270-pound defensive lineman for the Scarlet Knights, made a hit on Army kick returner Malcolm Brown and fractured his C3 and C4 vertebrae. LeGrand remembers going down and being dazed, but didn't understand at the time how severely he was hurt.

The amazing thing now is, for a guy who still can't scratch his nose, LeGrand will tell you with a smile -- always with a smile -- why he has so many reasons to be grateful.

He survived an injury that not everyone survives.

He's breathing without a ventilator, something doctors had told his mother would be unlikely.

He spent five months as a patient at Kessler Institute in West Orange, N.J., where he saw people with spinal cord injuries who could not even eat. Now he's an outpatient there, rehabbing three days a week.

After missing most of his junior year, he's back to working on his degree at Rutgers. He takes classes three nights a week, using an online video conference to watch the lectures from home.

He greets his former teammates in the locker room before each Rutgers home game, then he goes to his new job.

Like most athletes do when they are done playing, LeGrand is now a sportscaster. He does analysis during pregame, postgame and halftime of Rutgers radio broadcasts. He's already done his first TV spot, too.

He hangs out with his friends and his girlfriend. He tweets -- (at)BigE52--RU has more than 21,000 followers -- and posts on his Facebook page thanks to a voice activated laptop.

He's often asked to speak at schools and churches, to talk about overcoming adversity by staying positive, never giving up hope, believing in God and yourself.

Believing is a big part of LeGrand's life.

In the two-bedroom apartment where he and his mother, Karen LeGrand, live in Woodbridge, about a mile away from the home where he grew up in Avenel -- which is being rebuilt to accommodate him -- there is a wood carving of BELIEVE on the TV stand.

The art work on the living room wall, BELIEVE.

On the front of his mom's black shirt, BELIEVE in red letters with LeGrand's number, 52.

Eric LeGrand believes he will walk again.

"When I get better . . . ." He says that a lot. Never if. When.

Karen LeGrand would have it no other way.

"We have faith and we pray and we know in the long run -- we don't know how long it's going to be -- but in the long run he's going to be OK," she says. "He's going to be fine. He's going to walk and he's going to do great things. And he's going to do great things in the interim as well."

LeGrand's appearance at the Hale Center, Rutgers' athletic facility, draws a small crowd. His former teammates stop to chat and make plans.

"The neat thing is he's still E," coach Greg Schiano says. "I love the way the players treat him. They treat him like the same guy. I think that's why he likes being around the team."

While there has been great progress in treating spinal cord injury patients, it is still almost impossible to predict recovery.

"Because the numbers may say there's only a 20 percent chance of walking, you really don't know that," said Dr. Monifa Brooks, who treated LeGrand at Kessler. "We kind of go in with open minds."

The only thing the LeGrands have closed their minds to is negativity. That's why they don't get angry. Angry people are negative people and there is no place for negativity in the LeGrand home.

"One thing I'm going to do when I get better, I'm going to go back out to the Giants' field. Where I got hurt, I'm going to lay down. I'm going to get up and run back off the field, right back to the sideline.