GORHAM, Maine — In the summer of 2020, Jack Weeks and his family went to Delaware to visit his father's family. On the day they were to drive home to Gorham, the air condition in their van broke, so they stayed another day while it was repaired.
On that beautiful June day, when they might have been headed home to Maine, the family instead went to the beach. Jack, who was then 16, was playing with cousins and dove into the water—but it was much shallower than he anticipated. He hit his head and knew instantly that something was not right.
"I wasn't really scared ... It was quiet. I couldn't really do anything so I just closed my eyes and let it happen," explained the Casco Bay High School senior.
"I remember diving in and then I blacked out and I woke up and I was just underwater," Jack remembered.
Luckily for Jack, his father's cousin saw his dive and knew something was wrong. She ran down the beach and pulled Jack out of the water. A local ER doctor was nearby enjoying the beach with his family. He ran to Jack and started performing CPR.
Jack was rushed to a local hospital by helicopter. His parents, Kip and Cammie Weeks, were met at the hospital by a chaplain. They fared the worst until they saw their son being worked on by medical staff who were pumping sand and water from his organs. Finally, they heard him speak.
"Kip goes, 'What did you do buddy?' and [Jack] goes, 'I don't know,'" remembered Cammie Weeks. "We kept telling him that we loved him."
Jack was transferred by helicopter the same day to Children's Hospital in Wilmington, Delaware, where he and his parents would stay for 30 days.
There the family learned the extent of Jack's accident. His C5 vertebra was broken and there was damage to his C4 and C6. Jack underwent surgery on the front and back of his neck, he was given a breathing tube and a feeding tube.
"No one had said, 'Your son is paralyzed,'" Kip Weeks said. It wasn't until a nurse mentioned that Jack was "nipple-down paralyzed" that the Weeks understood the uphill journey their son and their family were now on.
The couple said they grieved for a moment and then simply said, "Ok. Game on!"
From then on, Kip and Cammie, who are divorced, got to work finding resources for their son. They chose the Shepherd Center in Atlanta which specializes in treatment for spinal cord injuries. Cammie took Jack to Georgia and Kip returned to Maine to care for the couple's other two young children and to find and purchase a home that would suit Jack's new needs.
Jack Weeks
While at the Shepherd Center Jack learned how to live with his paralysis, he learned how to push himself, and he made friends he will have for a lifetime—other young men whose lives also changed in an instant.
"Shepherd was amazing," recalled Jack. "I did not think I would regain anything at first but slowly at Shepherd I realized that stuff was happening and I got excited and here we are now."
While there, Jack regained movement of his arms and hands.
And while Jack made great physical strides in his recovery there, it was sharing his own personality and positivity that helped buoy others.
"Jack is super cool," said Holden Shaw over Zoom from his home outside of Memphis, Tennessee. Holden was at Shepherd recovering from breaking his neck in an ATV accident just one month after Jack broke his neck.
"Whenever I first got to Shepherd's, [Jack] was the first one who told me it's going to be all good and we are just happy to be alive," Holden said.
"He’s a jokester," Cammie Weeks said of her eldest child.
It was this humor Jack spread around the Shepherd Center, often helping get other patients out of bed when they were depressed.
"He would always crack jokes and make sure that I was in a good mood," Holden recalled.
"I make fun of myself for being paralyzed," Jack said. "It kind of gets me through day by day ... dark humor which is horrible but it's what I like."
Typical teens, they got into mischief at the Shepherd Center and shared a lot of laughs while there.
"I feel like we tapped into this pulse of love that I knew was there all along but I just never experienced it," Cammie Weeks said of the nurses, staff, and other parents of children with spinal cord injuries they encountered while living at the rehab center.
Holden Shaw said it was Jack who helped him see hope on the horizon.
When Jack returned to Maine in December 2020 after six months of rehab, everything had changed. He returned to a new home, one that his divorced parents now lived in together, and slowly he returned to the life he had before. Now, though, there were new limitations.
"I realized that it is going to be a lot harder in the real world again than it used to be," Jack said. "I think the worst part for me is depression at night. It keeps me up. It's all I think about. But besides that, I am mostly positive."
His mother tells Jack it's OK to be depressed.
"It's OK to be sad, it's OK to feel angry. You just can't live in those feelings," Cammie Weeks said.
The family is choosing to find the silver linings in their new life.
"It has brought our family so much closer," Cammie said.
"There are great moments in this," Kip said.
"You have to celebrate every little win and just never give up," Cammie said.
"We joke but we are very honest," Kip said. "I don't sugarcoat anything. I make sure that [Jack] is aware of everything that is happening. We don't hide anything and we have faith. Just as if you have faith in God, you have faith that our son is going to walk again."
Jack, too, believes he will walk again someday.
Cammie and Kip said the outpouring of support from the community has been overwhelming. Jack's accident has cost $2 million so far, with insurance covering part of the bills. The family continues to fundraise to pay for things insurance does not cover like the therapy that Jack participates in at Project Walk Boston. They are also trying to purchase an all-terrain wheelchair for Jack and want to get him enrolled in stem cell trials, which are costly.
"I feel like I was meant to do this. I am fulfilling whatever my life's purpose is," said Cammie, who has become a mentor to other mothers whose children have experienced similar injuries.
If acceptance, hope, and positivity are inherited, it is easy to see where Jack gets his strength to face challenges with grace.
"I live day by day and just kind of say it is what it is," he said. "I don't really care much that I am paralyzed anymore. I kind of got over the fact that I am. I just live my life day by day."
To follow along with Jack's journey or to donate, go here.