There was an uproar on the fifth floor and Terry Carroll was in the midst of it.
I have no idea what set it off, but apparently in conversation with someone he made an inflammatory comment.
“It’s not that I want my parents to die, but I won’t be that upset when they do.”
And the word spread and seemingly everybody had to have their crack at Terry.
He didn’t really mean what he had said, did he?
Yes, he did.
He repeated it. Over and over.
Seemingly without any emotion.
How could he be that unfeeling? These were his parents fer god’s sake.
Nobody could understand how he could possibly feel that way about the two people who had brought him into this world, changed his diapers, nurtured him, etc., etc.
But Terry was adamant. No matter how often he was challenged on the matter, he insisted that that was how he felt.
I kept quiet because I thought I had at least an inkling of what he meant.
Not, I hasten to explain, that I felt like that about my parents.
But I suspected that Terry might just be overstating the way he felt, or perhaps didn’t feel, about his parents.
I suspected that Terry’s parents might have been similar to mine in that they didn’t ever show affection either to each other or to their offspring.
I believe that’s pretty much how each of my parents was raised, and they continued the tradition when they had their own family.
But in Terry’s case I further suspected that his parents may have also raised him using a technique that might be called “tough love”.
You see Terry had a disability. He was unsteady on his feet and had difficulty coordinating. It also affected his speech; he usually hesitated slightly when he spoke. None of us knew exactly what his condition was and he never told anyone about it as far as I knew. My best guess was that it was something like cerebral palsy, but I really didn’t know. Everyone just accepted him as he was and I don’t think anyone ever asked him about it.
So I’m guessing that his parents may not have been as sympathetic to his disability as he might have wished and wouldn’t let him use it as an excuse. They may have encouraged or “forced” him to try to live as “normal” a life as possible. And perhaps he had some lingering resentments towards them because of that. But that’s just a guess.
In any case if that’s what happened, it seems to have worked, because he was a smart guy and he did well at Penn State. And he never used his disability as an excuse or to get sympathy.
Terry will be appearing in some future posts, but I’ve decided to bring his personal story up to date.
A couple months ago I tried to see what became of him and I found that he died in April 1996 at the age of 47. And I got in touch with a distant relative of his and finally found out what his disability was: Friedreich’s ataxia which
is a rare, inherited, autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disorder that primarily affects the nervous system, causing progressive damage to the spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and cerebellum, leading to impaired muscle coordination (ataxia). The condition typically manifests in childhood or adolescence, with initial symptoms including difficulty walking, loss of balance, and poor coordination. As the disease progresses, it can also impact speech, vision, and hearing. Many individuals with Friedreich’s ataxia develop scoliosis, diabetes, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a serious heart condition that is a leading cause of mortality in patients.
Friedreich’s ataxia is caused by mutations in the FXN gene, which result in reduced production of frataxin, a protein essential for mitochondrial function, particularly in iron-sulfur cluster biogenesis. The deficiency of frataxin disrupts cellular energy production and leads to oxidative stress, contributing to the neurological and systemic symptoms associated with the disorder.
He died of respiratory failure due to that disease. I haven’t been able to find out what he was doing between his graduation from Penn State and his death.
Terry outlived his parents. His mother, Margaret Lord Carroll, died in 1979, and his father, Stanley Orlando Carroll, died in 1988. Was he as stoic in the face of their deaths as he expected to be? One can only speculate.
He had a sister, Patricia, who died in 1953, aged 13. The death certificate lists the cause of death as “Spastic quadriplegia” and “Birth injury”. Terry would have been four at the time and probably didn’t know his sister as it appears she had been confined in an institution for six years.
And he had a brother, Anthony, who may still be alive, but I’m unable to find anything about him. I think I very vaguely remember meeting him once, but that may be a false memory; I’m just not sure.
But I did find out that Terry and I were distantly related. He was my tenth cousin once removed. I think he would have gotten a kick out of that.
