Stricken Retired General Takes The High Ground
Diagnosed With Lou Gehrig's Disease, Mikolajcik Decides To Make A Difference

By Special To The Day


Published on 9/9/2006 in Region » Region News


by U.S. Force

• President George H.W. Bush, left, with Brig. Gen. Thomas Mikolajcik during a visit to Somalia in January 1993.



When retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Mikolajcik, 60, a Norwich native, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2003, he made a decision.
“You can sit back and say, 'Why me?' or you can say, 'What can I do to help other people and make a difference?' ” Mikolajcik said this week in a telephone interview from his home in South Carolina.

Mikolajcik decided to raise awareness about the illness, commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, which he learned would attack his nerve cells and the pathways in his brain and spinal cord, eventually paralyzing him.

There is no cure for the disease. His doctor predicted he would die in less than three years.

Now, three years later, he is in a wheelchair and needs his grandchildren to turn the pages of the book when he reads to them, but he has helped establish a South Carolina chapter of The ALS Association, helped open the first ALS clinic in the state, and brought attention to the higher risk of ALS for men who have served in the military.

“We're moving at the speed of light, not the speed of bureaucracy,” he said.

Mikolajcik was born at The William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich on Aug. 17, 1946, during a thunderstorm. “I came in with a bang,” he said.

He attended Greeneville Elementary School and graduated from Norwich Free Academy in 1964. He was designated Norwich Native Son in 1993.

The retired general, whose final assignment before retiring in 1996 was as director of transportation for the Air Force at the Pentagon, has been using his connections in Washington to raise awareness about the disease.

In meetings with members of Congress and Department of Defense officials, Mikolajcik has cited studies that show that people who have served in the military appear to be more likely to later suffer from ALS.

According to a report published by The ALS Association last May, men with a history of military service have a nearly 60 percent greater risk of contracting ALS than men who didn't serve in the military. Other studies, including some conducted by the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments, have come to similar conclusions, the association said.

“It's imperative that the government take a lead role because there's a direct correlation between military service and ALS,” Mikolajcik said.

The association estimates that about 30,000 people in the United States have ALS. Mikolajcik wants the government to choose one agency to take a lead role in consolidating research funds, because the relatively small number of people with the disease doesn't attract research by pharmaceutical companies, he said.

His efforts appear to be paying off.

In May, Mikolajcik met with William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. As a result, officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Institutes of Health are planning a comprehensive workshop on ALS this fall, Mikolajcik said.

He has also been advocating for ALS patients in South Carolina. At the time of his own diagnosis, he was surprised by how little support patients were offered.

It was like “diagnose and adios,” Mikolajcik recalled.

Rebecca Jordan, executive director of The ALS Association, South Carolina Chapter, said Mikolajcik inspires other ALS patients.

“Now they feel that they're not alone,” she said. One family that visited the clinic walked in with newspaper clippings about Mikolajcik, Jordan said.

Mikolajcik's daughter, Christina Robertson, 32, said the success came so quickly because her father doesn't take no for an answer.

While the disease has attacked many of Mikolajcik's motor functions, his voice remains clear and strong, and he has used it to make speeches at the Medical University of South Carolina and at Rotary Clubs.

Mikolajcik's mother, Teofila Mikolajcik, 85, still lives in the Prospect Street home in Norwich where her son grew up. She said she talks to him every day.

“He has a wonderful attitude,” she said. “It helps me a lot.”

Her son said the values he acquired in his hometown have stayed with him all his life.

“I look back on my years in Norwich with great love and appreciation,” he said. “How many people get to go to a high school that's like a college?”

After graduating from the Air Force Academy in 1969, Mikolajcik began his 27-year career in the Air Force. He flew missions in Vietnam and commanded a C-130 transport wing at the Rhein-Main air base in Germany during the first Persian Gulf War. He also commanded all air operations in Somalia between December 1992 and April 1993, and was the wing commander of the Charleston Air Force Base from 1991 to 1994 as a C-17 unit was brought there.

After finishing his career at the Pentagon, he and his wife, Carmen, retired to Charleston.

Mikolajcik said he chooses to focus on the things he can do. He said he can still go out in his motorized wheelchair and “terrorize the neighborhood,” and he still goes out to restaurants, even though he needs help eating and has to drink his wine through a straw.

“If people look at me funny, then that's their problem, not mine,” he said.

Despite the impediments brought on by the disease, Mikolajcik said he still lives by a creed he acquired in the military: “You lead, you follow, or you get out of the way.”




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