El Pasoan, 65, to tell of small triumphs in Web profile
By Doug Pullen / El Paso Times Article Launched: 05/19/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT


Edith and David Mairs in their El Paso home. He attributes his ability to live with ALS to "the power of love." (Adriane Jaeckle / El Paso Times)

David Mairs used to play first base for the Jefferson Airplane's softball team back in the peace-and-love days of 1960s San Francisco.

These days, he's going to bat for a different team -- the approximately 30,000 Americans battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, named for the durable New York Yankees first baseman known as "The Iron Horse," who died from ALS in 1941.

ALS, also known as motor neuron disease, affects cells known as motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement, according to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Mairs, who will turn 66 on May 31, is part of the MDA's monthlong ALS: Anyone's Life Story project. It's a series of ALS patient profiles

David Mairs, whose ALS was diagnosed in 1987, is one of 5 percent of ALS patients who have lived with the degenerative disease for more than 20 years. (Adriane Jaeckle / El Paso Times)being posted daily in May at www.als-mda.org as part of its 17th annual ALS Awareness Month campaign.
Mairs' story will be posted Thursday at the MDA's ALS site and its main site, www.mda.org.

"If I can help the MDA in any way, I will," Mairs said. "Over the years they've always been there for us."

There have been a lot of those years. Mairs is in a very small group -- 5 percent -- who have lived with the degenerative neuromuscular disease for more than 20 years. Many people who are diagnosed with ALS have a three- to five-year survival expectancy, though the ALS Association reports on its Web site that "more than half live longer."

Mairs was diagnosed in 1987 when he was an electrician working for a company that wired high-rise

buildings in the Bay Area. Now he's paralyzed and relies on the electricity that powers his wheelchair and other devices that help him.
"I'd wake up in the middle of the night," he said of those fateful first days. "I'd have a leg cramp and get up and walk around."

The problem grew progressively worse.

"I had trouble walking ... everybody knew something was wrong," he said.

He had lived a pretty carefree life until then, having partied on the weekends and playing softball for the Airplane's team, whose opponents included another seminal San Francisco band, the Grateful Dead. Mairs went to school with Marty Balin, who went on to form the Jefferson Airplane, sharing lead vocals with Grace Slick.

The young electrician occasionally drove trucks for the group and did electrical work at the mansion that served as the band's HQ.

He recalls those days fondly, if with a little bemused disbelief at particular memories.

Legendary promoter Bill Graham, who pitched for the Dead's softball team, once hosted a 30th birthday party for "Saturday Night Live" star John Belushi.

"Bill Murray showed up late. He was in L.A. He hitchhiked all the way up," Mairs remembered. "We had a wild time. Every weekend there was an event."

He spent many of those weekends in the late '60s and early '70s at Graham's Fillmore West, a breeding ground for leading artists from the West Coast, including Jimi Hendrix, Santana, the Dead and the Airplane.

Mairs recalls doing electrical work for Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner and Slick, who were living together at the time.

"They had a baby girl named China. I was in the hallway and he said, 'We have to go out,' and they took off, leaving me with little China," Mairs remembered.

It was a time of cultural upheaval in the country, led in part by San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, the epicenter of the hippie nation, and the Summer of Love declaration of 1967. Bands like the Airplane and the Dead provided the soundtrack, but their own chemical experimentation was notorious.

"If you were backstage with (the Dead) and anything touched your lips, you'd be gone for at least one day. You'd be tripping," he remembered, a smile crossing his warm, friendly face.

That he's alive, much less a nice and articulate guy, says a lot about Mairs' strong will to live and his desire, as Thelma Herrera of the local MDA office says, "to get to the point in his life where he can live in harmony with it."

"He's such a neat man," Herrera said. "He has so much to offer. He's so evolved."

But for the first five years of the disease, Mairs said, he wasn't such a nice guy. His wife left him, and his son and daughter grew tired of his desire to die.

"I was horrible when I think about it. I figured that if I die, I wanted to do it my way. It was my disease," he explained. "I was very selfish. I didn't realize that when your loved ones know, they all are suffering. I didn't share it with anyone."

Mairs was in a nursing home in Monterey, Calif., in 1996 when he met a nurse assistant named Edith, who went above and beyond the call of duty.

"I went to college and she'd get me up, dress me and get me on the bus to class by 8 o'clock," he recalled fondly. "I'd get home, and she would rush from home and help me and rush back."

"I was attracted to his personality," the soft-spoken Edith said. "He's very kind."

A relationship blossomed, and the couple began living together in 1997. On Aug. 27, 2000, they married in the alley outside a chapel in Las Vegas because it wasn't wheelchair accessible. They have nine grandchildren between them.

Edith has family here, which led the Mairs to take up permanent residence in El Paso in 2004. Since the move, they routinely offer their house for ALS support group meetings and other MDA functions. He has also taught classes at El Paso Community College.

When asked to what he attributes his longevity with a disease that the ALS Association says affects 5,600 new patients a year, Mairs pondered for a moment before answering.

"That's very hard to say, but I think the power of love is a huge factor. We seem to have tapped in somehow. I don't know how," he said. "We were (the) peace-and-love (generation). I know we were open to that power. Every day Edith wakes me with a smile. How could I not go on?"

Doug Pullen may be reached at dpullen@elpasotimes.com; 546-6397.



Information

David Mairs' "ALS: Anyone's Life Story" will be posted Thursday at www.als-mda.org and www.mda.org.

Call the MDA for more information at 800-572-1717.

Check out the ALS Association site, www.alsa.org, or call 800-782-4747.


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