OHIO STATE

Team Rod forges ahead: ex-OSU QB upbeat despite setback

Jon Spencer
Reporter

COLUMBUS — It's been a long, arduous, often painful march, but former Ohio State quarterback Rod Gerald can finally see the goal line.

Crossing it, though, will require hurdling a couple of opponents — a la Ezekiel Elliott — he didn't expect to find in his path.

Dealing with disabling health issues for several years, which sometimes confined him to a wheelchair, Gerald kept his vow to walk into Ohio Stadium last month with other members of the 1975 team celebrating their 40th reunion.

Spinal surgery and fundraising efforts, spearheaded by rabid OSU fan Paige King and fellow members of Team Rod, helped make his trip from his home near Dallas to Columbus possible.

Rod Gerald (front) and another former Ohio State quarterback, Cornelius Green, admire some of the memorabilia on display in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center during a reunion of the 1975 Buckeyes last month.

As buoyed as he was by that reunion, the 58-year-old Gerald — a first-team All-Big Ten performer in 1977 — was even more excited about the prospect of a second back surgery this month making him feel like his old self.

He goes back into the hospital Thursday, but it's to deal with post-surgery complications that arose from a staph infection that has led to an infection in his bones.

The end zone is still in view. Getting there just won't be as easy as he made it look with his MVP performance in the 1977 Orange Bowl, where he rushed for 81 yards and a TD in a 27-10 victory over Colorado.

"I'm the ultimate optimist," Gerald said. "I was looking forward to the second surgery, but I knew something was wrong when I came back to Ohio because everything was painful. I was using a walker when I walked into the Shoe. You know how I felt about that. (He wanted to do it with no assistance.)

"I used the walker more to conserve energy. I didn't want the pain to become so unbearable I had to sit down or lay down on the field.

"That," he said, chuckling, "would have really sucked."

Gerald believes the procedure Thursday will involve treating the infection, cleaning the metal in his back and maybe trimming some bone to relieve pressure. That will have to heal before operating on his spine, which was originally set for later this month.

Team Rod raised $10,000 in one month for expenses related to the first surgery through a crowdfunding site, AKickInCrowd, founded by Columbus businessman Tony Reynolds. That campaign was called #AWalk2TheShoe.

A second project, dubbed #Overtime and #ARush4TheGoalLine, has raised almost $2,000 toward remaining surgery with a goal of reaching $5,000 before the deadline, nearly a month away.

On the first project, Reynolds covered the eight percent fee that usually comes out of the funds raised on his site. Arnie Cisneros, president of Home Health Strategic Management in Lansing, Michigan, is picking up the fee for the second project.

Cornelius Green, Gerald's OSU teammate and predecessor at quarterback, learned of Gerald's plight through Cisneros, who was a team trainer when both played at Ohio State. Cisneros suggested to Gerald that he have surgery.

Former Ohio State quarterbacks Rod Gerald and Cornelius Green form the O-H-I-O with TeamRod founder Paige King and her husband Chuck during the weekend in Columbus when Ohio State hosted Northern Illinois.

"Arnie and I knew we couldn't do the legwork that Paige could do, the daily (social media) stuff," said Green, who dropped the "e" at the end of his last name after his playing career since most of his family went by the more traditional spelling. "Paige and Tony Reynolds are good at that. It's a blessing that all four of us came together and found Team Rod.

"I'm glad Paige is the face of it because she'll attract more attention than Arnie and I would get."

King, originally from Circleville but now living in Beaumont, Texas, started a "Buckeye Love" page on Facebook a few years ago. That's how she made connections with Green and Gerald, who calls her "coach" because of her unflagging desire to help him and persistence in prodding him to attend the reunion.

It was Gerald's first trip back to OSU since he finished his career with the Buckeyes in 1978.

"It was just a whirlwind of fun and emotion," King said of the reunion weekend, which she attended with her husband, Chuck, and other members and supporters of Team Rod. "I felt like crying all the time. I know Rod did. Seeing him smile ... he's been dealing with the (health problems and crippling financial woes from trying to get by on a $1,000 monthly disability check) for so long by himself and kept it to himself for so long."

Gerald, a former supervisor for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, speaks freely about years of drug addiction that began when he was at Ohio State. The shame he felt was one of the reasons he stayed away.

"Some of the guys, once they saw me at the reunion, they were like, 'It's Rod. He's OK,'" Gerald said. "If they were a little skeptical it's because it got ugly my junior and senior year. It's so sad being an addict.

"But they were proud of me, happy to see me. They were carrying me around. I couldn't go downstairs with that walker, so they'd pick me up. They showed me a lot of love."

Gerald and Green, who broke the color barrier by becoming Ohio State's first black quarterback, were reunited for the first time in nearly 40 years, leading to an emotional embrace at the Columbus airport.

As teammates, Green became a big brother to Gerald. They roomed together until the dorms opened Gerald's freshman year. After Green's career ended, he ended up in Dallas, with the Cowboys, where Gerald's father had a church and treated Green like a surrogate son, even baptizing him.

"Fate played a part in all of this," said Green, who is a coach and staff member at St. Albans School, a private boys school in his hometown of Washington, D.C.. "Ohio State went all over the world to find another Cornelius Green and they went to Texas and found Rod. I knew he was special and making it even more special was that his dad was Cornelius Howard Gerald and my name is Cornelius Howard Green. I got drafted by Dallas, where Rod's dad was. His father took me and some of my teammates under his wing, so we would always attend his church.

"This (reunion with Gerald) was more than fate. It was meant to be."

Memories of that weekend, and seeing ex-teammates with household names in Ohio like Brian Baschnagel and Tim Fox, keeps Gerald's spirits high as he concentrates on crossing the goal line.

"He was just getting so down on himself," King said. "Coming back to Columbus and seeing the outpouring of love did a world of good for his self-confidence and going forward with this ... just to live again,"

jspencer@nncogannett.com

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To contribute to Team Rod

You can copy this link to contribute: http://akickincrowd.com/projects/teamrod-a-walk-2-the-shoe-sat-sept-19th/143. Or visit the Team Rod page on Facebook.