Celebrating 20 Years of Team Reeve

Before Bernadette Mauro pedaled her hand cycle onto the Verrazzano Bridge for the 2005 New York City Marathon, she pinned a clutch of charms to her sleeve to power her through the miles ahead.

Inscribed with the words love, courage and hope, they danced in the corner of her eye as she turned the gears – a reminder of the day’s greater mission.

“They represented Chris and Dana,” recalled Mauro, Director of Information and Resource Services at the National Paralysis Resource Center (NPRC). “And I wore them on my sleeve so I could look at them along the way.”

Christopher Reeve, a fierce advocate for spinal cord injury research, had died suddenly the year before. Then, in the months leading up to the marathon, his extraordinary wife Dana – founder of the groundbreaking NPRC – announced that she had Stage IV lung cancer.

The news left Reeve Foundation staff, including Mauro, reeling. Already grieving Christopher’s death, the thought of losing Dana was unimaginable.

And so, Mauro and a handful of colleagues plotted a late breaking entry into the marathon, dubbing the effort Team Reeve. The goal was to not only celebrate the couple’s legacy but signal that the critical work they had begun would continue.

“We needed a place where the community could step up, where we could be seen and heard,” Mauro says. “It was a way of honoring Chris and Dana. And it gave people the chance to give back.”

By day’s end, Mauro and 18 teammates had raised $22,000 for the Reeve Foundation’s research program – a respectable amount for a last-minute labor of love.

But that was just the beginning.

Within two years, the New York team surged to 50 athletes and raised an astounding $410,000. Word began to spread and people across the country raised their hands to ride and hand cycle and walk in marathons from Chicago to New York to London. They tackled surf challenges, triathlons, Tough Mudder competitions and epic cross-country cycling adventures, driven by the same never-give-up ethos that forever defined Chris and Dana.

A family from Los Angeles ran the New York City Marathon together three times in memory of a beloved father and grandfather. A 12-year-old raised $8,000 swimming a mile in honor of her uncle. A young man who lived with a C2 injury traveled from Ireland and used a sip-n-puff powerchair to achieve his dream of completing a marathon on his own.

"We never doubted that Chris and Dana’s work would continue,” says Mauro. “And Team Reeve helped prove that point.”

This November, Team Reeve will celebrate its 20^th anniversary. To date, it has raised more than $12 million for spinal cord injury research, directly helping advance gains in bladder function, blood pressure regulation and restored hand dexterity, and paving the way for the first FDA-approved trial studying epidural stimulation in patients with paralysis.

But it has also served as a balm for community members.

More than 1500 people have participated in Team Reeve events since 2005, carrying stories of loved ones living with paralysis and of their own injuries. Many return to the team again and again after discovering a powerful new source of support in one another.

Kelly Lamb, Team Reeve’s Senior Manager, signed up for the first of what would become six marathons with Team Reeve in 2014 after her boyfriend, Jon David, sustained a spinal cord injury.

"I was looking for a tangible way to help find a cure,” Lamb says. “But I quickly realized Team Reeve was much more than a fundraiser. The community I found among other athletes and families who understood paralysis was the lifeline I desperately needed.”

That sense of community and connection was exactly what Reeve Foundation Board Director Henry Stifel envisioned when he helped Mauro start Team Reeve.

When Stifel was 17, he was paralyzed in a car accident. It was 1982 and there was no place for his parents to seek support or help. No organization with its gaze trained on a cure. No peer support to help him understand a newly shaped life.

“I had no idea what was going on,” he says. “It was hard. I was scared. And, while I had the support of my family and friends, I had to face it alone.”

Refusing to accept that nothing could be done for their son, his parents launched the Stifel Paralysis Research Foundation later that year. After Christopher Reeve was injured, he and Dana expanded those efforts in what eventually became the Reeve Foundation.

In the wake of Christopher’s death and Dana’s diagnosis, Stifel knew it was critical to provide a place where the community could come together and carry their work forward.

“And that was the genesis of Team Reeve,” he says.

Over the past two decades, Stifel has served as a roving fan for hundreds of Team Reeve marathoners, zigzagging across New York City in his van to deliver energy boosting H&H bagels and endless encouragement along the way. He has savored every minute of those days as the city’s best self emerges for all the runners, but especially for the families who’ve come from across the country on a mission that is about more than simply finishing a race.

“I’ve always said the main reason this organization exists is because we don’t want anyone going through this situation alone,” he says. “I’m in awe of Team Reeve. It really takes a community to create this kind of movement.”