Though he did all his own stunts in the movie, it wasn't until after his accident that Christopher Reeve became Superman. Reeve died unexpectedly on Sunday of heart failure after treatment for a systemic infection that began with what is commonly known as a bed sore. He was 52.
In 1995, the athletic actor was paralyzed from the neck down when his horse balked at a jump and he crashed to the ground.
The injury to his spinal cord was so severe he was given little hope of improving, let alone of fulfilling his vow of one day walking again. We were among those who thought he just might do it.
Reeves didn't walk. But through an unprecedented exercise regimen and the use of cutting-edge technology he regained more mobility and sensation than medical science expected. In doing so, he gave hope to the disabled and he used his progress to demonstrate to government and medical science that, contrary to conventional wisdom, progress was possible.
Last summer, in a meeting with Monitor editors, Reeve's wife, Dana, shared stories of her husband's fight to heal himself. She spoke of the depression that led him briefly to consider suicide and then of the courage that allowed him to become his own definition of a hero -"an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles."
Reeve overcame self-pity and pushed himself through an intensive daily exercise regimen that slowly allowed him to regain some feeling and mobility. The story of his battle to regain use of his limbs - first a finger, then his toes, then an arm, then, in a swimming pool, his legs - awed physicians.
Reeve used himself as a model for what was possible given determination and the resources only the wealthy can command. But he devoted his life to making as many of those resources as possible available to everyone with a disability. And he forced medical science to rethink the limits.
With his wife and friends, he formed the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, an organization dedicated to raising the money to fund research that would help improve the lives of the disabled