Tragedy of Buddy Miley lingers 10 years later

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Tragedy of Buddy Miley lingers 10 years later

By ED KRACZphillyBurbs.com

He was 17 when his body turned to stone.

He held tight to hope for the next 10 years. It vanished.

For 13 years after that, his hope was that God would take him. He never did.

So he arranged his own meeting with death, with the help of Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

Ten years later, Buddy Miley's tragic life and untimely end still resonate.

Buddy Miley still lives here, in the home of Bob Miley. He lives in photos and framed collages.

“He was my best friend as well as my brother,” Bob said. “From the time he was 5, he was my third leg. We did everything together.”

Buddy became a standout athlete, playing football, basketball and baseball, first at Archbishop Wood for three years, then at Tennent for his senior year. Bob, who was a young teacher of political science and American history at Tennent, was always there for Buddy, on and off the field.

That's what made one autumn Saturday more than 33 years ago so painful.

It was the day Buddy's life stopped.

Bob saw it. He was sitting in the bleachers at Plymouth-Whitemarsh's football field. What Bob saw on Sept. 29, 1973, four months before Buddy would have turned 18, still haunts him.

There was a player pileup near midfield. One by one, the players rose. Buddy didn't.

Minutes passed. Buddy still hadn't risen, still hadn't moved.

Bob left his seat and made it down to the field.

“I think I knew at that moment that he was paralyzed,” he said.

Buddy was taken by ambulance to the now-closed Sacred Heart Hospital in Norristown.

“I remember walking into the emergency room and talking with him,” Bob said. “He kept saying to me, "Am I paralyzed, am I paralyzed, am I paralyzed?' I told him I didn't know. I had to lie. I didn't know from a medical viewpoint, but I sensed it, because nothing worked. He couldn't feel my hand on his arm. He couldn't feel my hand on his knee. He didn't react at all.”

Buddy kept saying he was thirsty.

Bob found a sponge, soaked it in water, and dripped some of the liquid onto his brother's lips.

His name was Albert Miley Jr. He was the second of three sons and the fourth of seven children born to Albert and Rosemarie Miley. Bob believes he was in second grade when Albert became Buddy. “I think it was my father who created the name Buddy to distinguish between himself and my brother,” Bob said. “He was always Buddy to me.”

A BAD SITUATION

Patty Miley was a sophomore at Archbishop Wood, hanging out with friends at Plymouth-Whitemarsh's field when her brother went down. She remembers going to the hospital, but not realizing the gravity of her brother's plight until hours later.

“I didn't know what a broken neck was,” she said. “To me, it was nothing different than a broken leg. I just didn't know. I didn't realize how serious it was until I got home that night. One of Bob's friends called who was in med school and I told him what happened. He said, "What?' I knew it was a bad situation.”

Miley, only slightly a year younger than Patty, was at her parents' Warminster home with Jimmy, the youngest family member, as her brother lay motionless.

“My aunt told us, and I remember her having me and Jimmy drop to our knees and start praying right there on the couch,” she said.

For 231/2 years after that fateful Saturday, Buddy lived in an addition the Mileys had built onto their home. Patty and got married, becoming Patty Rudolf and Farrell. They had six children between them. Both of Patty's sons remember Buddy in their own way.

Matt Rudolf, now 22, had a small tattoo in Buddy's memory etched onto his back. Shane Rudolf, a junior lacrosse player at Hatboro-Horsham, wears a T-shirt beneath his uniform with Buddy's old football number, 6, framed with angel wings. And only recently, Montana Farrell chose to write a three-page essay on her Uncle Buddy as part of a ninth-grade assignment, although she was just 5 when Buddy left and never really knew him.

“I miss him,” said Patty. “[but] I'm glad he is at peace.”

The Mileys still refer to the addition as Buddy's room. The bathroom is still Buddy's bathroom. And the family members still get together in Buddy's room each Christmas, just as they did when he was alive. What they don't talk about much is why. Why Buddy?

“Everything happens for a reason, even though you may not ever see it,” said. “But I believe when you are born, there is a plan for you. You go through things and you may not see why, but the plan is there. Maybe he was the chosen one because he could handle it best, because of the effect he could have on others. Maybe he was chosen to teach others to be grateful for what they have.”

He walked onto the field in his white sneakers, hair flowing from beneath his helmet. The face mask had three bars, like a lineman's, not the typical two-bar quarterback job. There was almost a rock-star quality to him. Then he started hollering at the Plymouth-Whitemarsh players warming up across the field. He was brash. He was confident. “One of my teammates said either he's stupid or really good,” said Carmen Frangiosa. “Turns out, he was really good.”

WHAT IF, WHAT IF, WHAT IF?

Carmen Frangiosa didn't know Buddy Miley that well, although he saw him periodically through the years at various fundraisers the Plymouth-Whitemarsh community conducted for Buddy.

He was there that Saturday. He was one of the Plymouth-Whitemarsh tacklers on the play Buddy never got up from, a play he has replayed over and over ever since.

“I thought about it a thousand different times,” Carmen said. “If he had not turned [the play] up, if he had just gone out of bounds — what if, what if, what if? How many times can you slice it?”

The play was a reverse pivot option. Playing quarterback, Buddy started right, then pivoted back and began to run left before trying to cut upfield. He was swarmed.

“That play in itself was a nothing play. It was routine,” said Carmen, a middle linebacker, “something you run 100 times in practice.”

Pat Delaney wasn't there that Saturday, but he knew Buddy. They were 12 when they met playing for the Pennsylvania Little Quakers, a regional football all-star team. He would've been on the field the day Buddy was injured, but his quick temper had gotten him in trouble and the coach had asked him to leave the team a week earlier.

“I feel bad for anyone who didn't know him,” Pat said of Buddy. “My man was special.”

When Pat heard of Buddy's injury, he began visiting him at the hospital, sneaking six packs of beer in for “Monday Night Football” games. He would hide under the bed when the nurses made their bed checks every hour or so.

Pat still does something for Buddy.

Nine years ago, he and his wife, , began a scholarship at Tennent. The Buddy Miley Scholarship is for athletes, but not necessarily those who get good grades. It's also for those who need financial assistance. The scholarship is in the amount of $5,000 per year for four years.

“I celebrate Buddy's life,” Pat said. “He always saw the good in people. It was confusing watching him suffer for 23 years. I used to be confused, anyway. I always looked for a reason why, and everybody has their own reasoning, but he changed my life.

“I cherish life. I cherish people a lot more than I used to. To me, I thank God I was exposed to him. I truly feel special. To this day, I sit and count to 10 before losing my temper, and I don't do it much anymore. Buddy taught me that.”

Carmen Frangiosa went on to play at Wake Forest on a scholarship and took the memory of that day, of Buddy lying motionless, with him.

“Everyone else went on and did whatever else they did,” Carmen said. “And Buddy that day, boom, right that day, he was done. Time stood still for him.”

He was really good, all right. Baseball might have been his best sport. At 6 feet 3 and 170 pounds, with a slingshot for an arm, a college scholarship probably awaited him. Bob said Buddy shared his ultimate goal — the one he had before he became tethered to a hospital bed and a wheelchair. He wanted to play football at Arizona State, but, even more, he wanted to raise a family and be a coach. “He would have been a great coach,” said former Central Bucks West coach Mike Pettine, who developed a close relationship with Buddy after the accident. “He was always intrigued with the X's and O's. We used to talk philosophy on end.”

RIGHT ON TOP OF IT

Bill Juzwiak was 29 when Buddy went down. He's 63 now. Thoughts of that day remain, in his words, “fuzzy.”

“Exactly what happened, it's hard to tell, hard to remember,” Bill said. “In a sense, I think what God does for us [is] he helps us forget things he doesn't want us to remember.”

Bill can't remember how many of his Tennent players, if any, quit the team Monday morning. Others have said several football players across the Suburban One League quit their teams after hearing about Buddy's accident.

Bill can't remember how many games Tennent won that year. One, maybe two, he thought. He does recall after one win piling his team onto a bus that went straight to Sacred Heart to deliver the game ball to Buddy.

“You think about it,” he said. “I was very close to the situation. I could've said, "Don't play. You shouldn't be a football player.' I could've not been the coach. I didn't play a big role in it, but then again, I was right there, right on top of it. It does affect you.”

Bill continued coaching and teaching math at Tennent until 1985.

Buddy remains with him.

“It was very rough,” he said. “It still is. But God has taken care of me.”

Two fractured vertebrae in his lower neck left him paralyzed from the neck down. But his spinal column wasn't completely severed, so there was some feeling. More like excruciating pain. The ungodly pain that would crash over his body way too often felt like electrical shock or, as Patty said, “like he was getting sharp knives in him all the time.” The distress would show on his face and he would just stop talking, even in mid-word, to let the horror subside. The bedsores were bad, some of them the size of a fist, the worst ones maybe two, three inches deep.

On March 17, 1997, Bob Miley looked over his right shoulder, the way he did every evening after spending two to three hours with his brother, and said, “I'll see you tomorrow.” Buddy looked firmly back at Bob, not saying a word. “I didn't know it at the time, but maybe he did, that that would be the last time he would ever see his brother alive,” Bob said.

Buddy had grown weary of the pain and had abandoned hope of ever walking again. It was time for action.

HE CALLED TO SAY GOODBYE

Buddy had seen Dr. Jack Kevorkian on CNN's Larry King show in 1995. He approached Bob, asking him his thoughts on suicide. He talked to about suicide. Ultimately, he was taken to see Kevorkian by Jimmy, who declined to be interviewed for this story, along with his mother, although both told their stories to a Philadelphia newspaper and on an HBO special.

It was Jimmy who accompanied Buddy on trips to see faith healer Pat on and to the Shrine of Lourdes in France. Nothing cured Buddy.

Kevorkian was Buddy's final, desperate hope.

Jimmy told an HBO interviewer that, on March 18, 1997, he and Buddy went to Detroit, checked into a Quality Inn outside town, and waited. At sunset, there was a knock at the door. In walked Kevorkian and two assistants.

Also known as Dr. Death, Kevorkian was the Michigan doctor who specialized in putting ailing people out of their misery by using a homemade suicide machine. With the click of a switch, the machine would release a lethal cocktail of concentrated Pentothal, to induce a coma, and potassium chloride, to produce a heart attack.

Kevorkian claims to have assisted at least 130 people in their deaths between 1990 and 1998. He was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison in 1999. Now 78, he's in failing health, suffering from Hepatitis C, according to his lawyer. On Dec. 13, it was announced that he would be paroled June 1.

When Kevorkian arrived at the Quality Inn, he questioned Buddy, Jimmy recalled during his HBO interview:

“Are you sure you want to do this?” the doctor asked.

“I don't want to do this, I have to do this,” Buddy responded.

Before checking into the hotel, Buddy phoned from the airport.

“He called to say goodbye,” said. “It was very strange when you know you're talking to somebody for the last time. I tried to say the right things in a short time.”

She hung up the phone and cried for 10 minutes. She called Patty, crying, to tell her the news.

Jimmy returned home to welcoming arms. Bob was the first to greet him, promptly wrapping Jimmy in his arms.

“I'm not angry,” Bob said. “He was neurologically sound. He was quite capable of making his own decisions. Ex post facto, I have to support his decision. He was a rational, thinking human being who did not want to live anymore.”

He left behind a taped message for his mother, telling her that the pain had become too intolerable, that he was happy where he was, and that, if she needed anything, to call on him. He signed off, “your guardian angel.” He also left a note to Bob, one written the way he did all his writings, with a pencil between his teeth. Three more words: “Sorry. Love, Bud.” He was 41.Ed Kracz can be reached at 215-345-3069 or ekracz@.... March 18, 2007 6:15 AM

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