Paraplegic man swims for miles, hoping his big heart, charity help others in wheelchairs

In 2003, an oncoming car slammed into Ed Petner at full speed, a split-second accident that knocked him off his bicycle, sent him crashing through the windshield and placed the young father in a wheelchair at 44 — a sudden paraplegic.

So fast-forward 20 years and find Petner charging across his Clayton pool, finishing up lap No. 40 on a mile-long swim, singing out loud to a Paul Simon song in mid-backstroke while his legs hang behind.

“I feel like a fish,” he says when the mile is complete. “When I’m swimming, it’s like I’m in my element. I feel powerful and capable and competitive. ... It’s my way of saying f--- you to the accident.”

Petner, now 64, finished his 13th mile swim with no flotation help Wednesday on the 20th anniversary of the crash, which happened in Connecticut and transformed his life as a Wall Street money-manager on-the-go.

For three years, he focused on intensive therapy, hoping to regain use of his legs until finally, at a moment he describes as hitting bottom, conceding it wouldn’t happen that way.

Christopher Reeve reaches out

But now he fights disability in the pool, where he plans to finish between 16 and 20 mile-swims before the lanes close in September. So far, his pursuit has rounded up $12,000 for the Christopher Reeve Foundation, and he’s shooting for $25,000.

With every stroke, he imagines new advances, new technologies, new chances.

“I’d like for my grandchild to see me walk,” he says, preparing to swim. “I’d love to be able to go to the beach. I love the beach. It’s the simple things you want back.”

In his old life, Petner jokes that he looked a bit like Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent: 6-foot-3, 210 pounds, black-rimmed glasses. Sometimes in New York, kids would see him running in his harried life and yell, “Superman!” Not long after his accident, Reeve, the original cinematic Man of Steel, called Peter via a mutual friend, offering encouragement and his home phone number.

Reeve, star of the 1978 “Superman” film, broke his neck after being thrown from a horse in 1995 and lived the next 9 years paralyzed from the neck down.

Petner was always a good swimmer, even more so a runner, and on the day of his crash he was shooting for a personal-best 35-mile bike ride. He still plays ping-pong, and he once fell out of his chair reaching to make his shot, breaking his femur in the process. He felt nothing, he said, and didn’t realize he’d broken the longest bone in his body for a week.

Clayton and the retirement community where he and his wife, Peggy, live offers relief from the Connecticut cold, which can be doubly painful for someone in a wheelchair. But swimming, along with driving, makes Petner feel freest.

‘I don’t really think of him as a paraplegic’

In a driver’s seat, nobody can tell he’s using hand controls.

In the pool, it’s nearly impossible to spot his paralysis, using only a pair of webbed gloves to increase his stroke and a pair of shoes to keep his feet from scraping bottom. He can swim a 65-foot pool length underwater.

“Everything he does, he does to the nth degree,” says his neighbor and swimming partner, Rob Paxton. “When he’s in the pool, you can see the freedom. He can out-swim me. ... I don’t really think of him as a paraplegic.”

Petner recalls that moments after the crash, he didn’t exactly hear a voice in his head as he teetered between life and death, but somehow the word “relax” was magically stamped on his brain. Later, in the ambulance, he had a clearer and more classic near-death experience: feeling both unimaginable peace and an indescribable sense of awe.

As he struggled to breathe, he heard the paramedic’s faint voice calling, “Think of your kids,” and he recalls feeling almost amused at the invitation to return to Earth while experiencing such bliss. But he stepped back through a supernatural door and recalled the technique he’d picked up from Peggy’s Lamaze classes: Imagine you’re sucking air through a straw.

Soon, the same doctor who treated NHL great Wayne Gretzky was telling Petner he’d never met a more positive patient, never seen someone so bold in the face of such a giant setback.

Petner has learned that he can recapture the joy he felt in the minutes after crashing. It is achievable now through deep breathing, he says, or especially in the pool.

He keeps a gratitude journal, keeping note of momentary pleasures like a bright-colored flower, and he finds they add up. He’s writing a book called “The Ride: My Journey to Joy Through Paralysis,” and he prides himself on the truth in its title. He lifts himself out of the water, drops back into his wheelchair, and considers the weight of what he’s just accomplished: swimming a mile without using the lower half of his body.

“Who the hell could imagine a paraplegic doing what I just did?” he asks.

Maybe Christopher Reeve could, fresh from a phone booth, channeling the power hidden inside.

How to help

To assist with Petner’s drive to raise funds for the Christopher Reeve Foundation, go to: http://give.reeve.org/team/519821