Paul Gorham is going home. Six months after his world quickly and horribly turned upside down, he’ll return physically changed but emotionally even stronger.

He’s the three-sports star from South Portland who played in the late 1970s and more recently has been the head football coach at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. Now some are calling him a miracle man for what his body endured.

Weeks after he was on the sideline at the Rose Bowl watching Oregon beat Wisconsin on the second day of 2012, he was airlifted from his Connecticut home to the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, fighting to breathe. He had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease with no known cause and no known cure. What was thought to be a bad chest cold or maybe pneumonia suddenly was more serious.

He needed a double lung transplant, and in early March got it. He was at the clinic for nearly six weeks before surgery: getting enough oxygen to parts of his body was a challenge. Weeks later, both legs were amputated about 6 inches below his knees.

More recently he was moved to the rehab unit. He’s been measured for his prosthetic feet. Daily, physical therapists work with Gorham to bring back muscles that haven’t been used for six months. His new lungs work fine. Just ask his nurses, said Kathy Gorham Connelly, his sister.

Six months? Many times he and his family didn’t know what the next day would bring, let alone the next week.

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“I don’t reflect on it too much,” said Gorham after he returned to his room from another session of physical therapy. “I can’t. I’d get discouraged. Those are six months that are lost from my life. I have a daily schedule on my wall. What I do tomorrow gets all my attention.”

He is 51 years old and has survived a personal trip to hell many can’t imagine. Brett Brown knows his closest friend well. They met as Mahoney Middle School teammates in South Portland more than 35 years ago.

“There’s some inherent toughness that’s revealed when you compete,” said Brown. “He’s always been that way. He’s always been resilient. He’s Maine. It doesn’t matter where he lives, he’ll always have that Maine toughness.”

Brown is the son of Bob Brown, who coached both boys on the 1979 South Portland team that won the Class A basketball state championship. Brett Brown is the head coach of the Australian Olympic basketball team and is getting ready to leave for London and the upcoming Olympics. He called from half a world away to talk about Gorham. “I wanted to. I had to.”

Brown is also an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs. He visited the Gorham home in Cheshire, Conn., when the Spurs were in New York last winter. “The drive back to New York was as disturbing as anything I’ve experienced, worrying in my heart of hearts that I might not see him again.”

Gorham asked his family and friends to keep his medical condition private. Sacred Heart simply posted a statement on its website saying its head football coach was on medical leave. Now his fraternity of college football coaches and his extended family that is the Sacred Heart community are stepping up.

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The target date for Gorham’s release from the Cleveland Clinic is July 10. There are plans for Gorham to return home in a handicap-accessible Winnebago.

On Aug. 2, the university is hosting a Welcome Home Paul Gorham Tribute. Athletic Director Don Cook thinks 200 to 300 friends may attend. A donation of $100 is requested. A website, paulgorham.org is up.

Gorham knows all this. His mind remains focused on his todays and tomorrows. Yet he will let his thoughts go back to that day in Pasadena, Calif., and the Rose Bowl. Gorham and his 20-year-old son, Matt, were guests of Chip Kelly, the Oregon head coach. Matt plays football at Brown University. He’s a tight end, the same position Paul Gorham played so well at the University of New Hampshire. Paul Gorham was all-Yankee Conference selection in 1983.

Kelly played football at New Hampshire when Gorham was a graduate assistant there. They became friends. “Being on the sideline at the Rose Bowl was great,” said Gorham. “Being there with my son made it more so, watching two great teams playing in an old throwback stadium like that. It was special.”

He won’t think how something so special was balanced by something so terrible.

Any other year, as late June runs into the July 4th holiday, Gorham would be back at Higgins Beach in Scarborough at the family summer home. He would play golf nearly every day, many times at the Portland Country Club with his cousin, John Marshall, and Marshall’s son-in-law Matt Ryan, the Atlanta Falcons’ quarterback. Yes, Marshall is the father of Sarah Marshall, the former basketball star at McAuley High and Boston College, where she met her husband.

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Refreshed, Gorham would return to Sacred Heart to continue planning for preseason practice. He got the head coaching job in 2004 after 18 years as an assistant at other universities. Sacred Heart plays in the Northeast Conference, in what was once called Division I-AA.

It will be his decision if and when he wants to return to college coaching. I asked him among all the things he missed, what he wants to do first.

“Leave here,” he said Thursday. Everything or anything else will follow.

The marvel of medical technology, and the doctors and staff at the Cleveland Clinic saved his life. His family and close friends nourished it.

That Paul Gorham is coming home is his triumph.

Staff Writer Steve Solloway can be contacted at 791-6412 or at:

ssolloway@pressherald.com

Twitter: SteveSollowayPPH
 


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