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Price goes toe-to-toe with a killer - ALS
By St. Clair Murraine
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
7 Up until recently, as his wife pleaded with him to stop, Dave Price would crawl to the top of his house to clean the gutters. He still rides his bike a lot, plays tennis a few days each week and regularly lifts weights.

That's a lot more than his doctors figured the 53-year-old schoolteacher would be doing now, almost six months after Price was diagnosed with the debilitating disease ALS - commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Life these days is a bit surreal for Price, the former tennis and soccer coach at Wakulla High.



“I didn't know. You never think it would be you,” said Price, who received the news he didn't want to hear two days before last Thanksgiving. “I felt down, but I'm staying active. It's unreal, (but) I'm not quitting.”

He still drives every weekday from Tallahassee to Wakulla Middle School, where he's been teaching physical education for the past 27 years. But the symptoms of ALS are obvious - he speaks with a thick slur and his steps lack the pep with which he used to scamper around the tennis courts and track as a star athlete at Florida High in the late 1960s.

Price was so good as a two-sport athlete that, in 1971, he was named athlete of the year at Florida High.

Now he's using every opportunity to fight back against one of the most mysterious diseases. In January he and some of his friends and their sons took a skiing trip to Lake Tahoe.

“I thought it was going to wear out my knee,” he said. “It was like skiing on one leg.”

Although his doctors haven't told him directly, several medical Web sites suggest that life expectancy of an ALS victim could be two to five years. Some patients have lived longer than 20 years.

While he continues working to replenish his muscles that have been weakened by the disease, Price has relinquished his roles as soccer and tennis coach at Wakulla High. The football team also lost the man once known as “the voice of the War Eagles” as announcer during the games.

His wife, Diane, said he reluctantly gave up that assignment.

“He had a very distinctive voice, but he didn't recognize that his voice was slurring,” she said.

Price noticed the first sign of ALS in 2005 while on one of his usual tennis outing with a group of friends. One of them noticed shrinking in his left leg, prompting him to make his first visit to a doctor.

He underwent a battery of physical examinations, traveling to several physicians around the state for several months before a final diagnosis was made. All along, his wife had been reading up on the symptoms and had a strong inkling that he might be a victim of the disease for which scientists haven't determined a cause or cure.

Doctors at Emory University Hospital came with the diagnosis that didn't surprise his wife, although it stunned Price.

“It was very hard because I knew what they were going to tell him,” she said. “I knew he had no idea. When the doctors told him, he was shocked and it was very hard for him to accept. He kept asking why, why did it happen to him.”

Price wasn't the only one shaken by the diagnosis, especially since he's been involved in physical activities most of his life. Word of the ailment that struck the man many in Wakulla County consider a coaching legend spread quickly.

“Everyone has been upset about it just because he's such a neat person and has personality,” said Lauren Miller, a former player on one of Price's tennis teams. “It's kind of difficult to see. I don't know.”

Miller described Price as a coach who emphasized the team concept. He didn't tolerate players who didn't demonstrate sportsmanship, she said, recalling the scolding she got from Price when she tossed her racket over a fence in frustration during a match.

“He didn't have a lot of patience for players who were mouthy,” she said. “He always told us to respect our teammates. He expected you to be self-disciplined. That has really helped me.”


Contact St. Clair Murraine at (850) 599-2317 or scmurraine@tallahassee.com.