SHAKOPEE, Minn. -- For most people, it's difficult to see the images of a once-active teenager lying in a hospital bed, unable to move.
For Holt Bennington, 29, it's both difficult and familiar to see the pictures and watch the story of Benilde-St. Margaret's Jack Jablonski, who suffered a severe spinal cord injury late last week. Bennington himself has only to reflect on his own fateful hockey injury to understand what Jablonski and his family are going through.
"Everything was very clear. I remember hitting the boards, laying on the ice, not being able to move," Bennington said from his Shakopee home on Wednesday.
On Jan. 15, 1998, Bennington was a sophomore at Shakopee High School playing in a junior varsity game in St. Peter. He says he gave a check before sliding into the boards. He realized immediately his injury was serious. But he couldn't know, then, how much the injury would change his life.
"To imagine the life that would come ahead of me, at that moment in time. No, I couldn't even think about it," he said.
Upon x-rays and further examination, doctors later determined Bennington was paralyzed.
"They told me that right away, that it's going to be quadriplegia that I'm going to be suffering from," he said.
But a diagnosis that would bench some people in life, didn't change Bennington. He determined then to persist and move forward -- fighting for recovery and adjusting to his new way of life.
"I just wanted to get better. I wasn't going to question how bad it was. I just wanted to know where up was from there," he said.
Since that day in 1998, Bennington has followed his attitude through months of therapy and years of changes. He is doing better than doctors once predicted -- with significant movement in his wrists, biceps and shoulders. He's also continued to reach several milestones: graduating from Shakopee high school; earning a broadcast degree from Brown College; and serving as a mentor to others with spinal cord injuries.
Now he hopes to also help Jack Jablonski and his family. Bennington visited Jack's parents on Tuesday, hoping to offer them perspective... and hope.
"You just do what you can and just try to make the best of everything. And I think that's all anybody really can do. And I hope that through all this Jack can do the same," Bennington said.
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