The morning of April 27, outside the Nova Domus hotel in Rome, Jerry and Joan Rodin and a group of South Sounders boarded a bus to go to a flea market. The previous year, Joan had heard about a tour of Italy led by local restaurateur Joe Stortini. On their 50th wedding anniversary, Jerry surprised her with two tickets.
It was supposed to be a dream vacation. In an instant, it turned into a nightmare.
“As I was putting our bag in the overhead rack, Joan went down the steps of the coach,” Jerry recalled. “I heard somebody yell, and I looked out. There was Joan lying in the street.”
She’d tripped and fallen onto her head. She was unconscious. Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma was holding her hand to comfort her. Someone else was phoning for help. Twenty minutes later, she was in the emergency room at San Camillo Forlanini Hospital.
Doctors operated twice that day to relieve the swelling and stop the bleeding in her brain. Since then, Joan’s been in a coma.
“For the past six or seven days, she has been opening her eyes about half an hour at a time,” Jerry said this week.
He can’t tell if she recognizes him, especially as he wears a mask, a cap and a gown in her room.
“I do feel she recognizes my voice,” he said. “I have had several people who have been in comas tell me they hear things.”
He has stayed on at the Nova Domus, where the staff treats him with great kindness, he said. Some days, he walks through historic sections of Rome before he visits Joan for five or six hours in the city’s largest hospital.
Over the course of a week, as he sat by Joan’s bed, he wrote down their story.
They met when she was 14 and he was 16. When he asked her parents if they could date, her mother allowed him to take her to a movie and Smitty’s Drive-In once a week.
“I remember a silly incident when the family went on a vacation to Yellowstone Park,” Jerry wrote. “I followed them all the way out of Tacoma because I didn’t want to be without her. I realized I loved her so much.”
On Dec. 28, 1957, with her parents’ permission, they married at Asbury Methodist Church. Within a few months, they bought a house on Tacoma’s McKinley Hill. He took a job at Waterhouse Motors, where he worked for 39 years. After their children, Laurie and Mark, were born, Joan had a small home day care. In 1969, she took a job as a school cook. She ended her career as the beloved, efficient head cook at Jennie Reed Elementary School.
Since their retirement, the Rodins have been walking three miles a day five days a week. Jerry, 70, and Joan, 67, were so fit and healthy they didn’t think they needed to spend $800 for trip insurance on their $10,000 tour.
Now, on his sixth week in Rome, Jerry sits by Joan’s bed, rues that decision and yearns for home.
The nurses and doctors at the hospital have been good to them, and the care has been excellent.
The San Camillo bill is one of the few things he doesn’t have to worry about.
“Basically, the hospital is free for me,” he said. “They are on socialized medicine, and I’m in a public hospital.”
Joan’s doctors tell Jerry that in a few weeks she’ll be well enough to leave the hospital and come home on a medevac flight.
A flight in a private plane would cost about $130,000, he said. If he can figure out how to get her home on an airline flight, it would cost about $50,000 to replace eight seats with a bed, and to have a nurse accompany her.
The costs are staggering, and the logistics are just as daunting. They’re more than he could handle alone.
Thanks to a lifetime of well-tended friendships, he doesn’t have to.
The Rodins’ best man, Bob McCrimmon, and pals Bill and Joy Barnes and Jim Richberg have been working every angle they can to get them home.
They’ve asked U.S. senators and representatives to try to arrange a spot for Joan on a military medical plane. No luck so far.
They’re investigating all the angles of international medical flights, from corporate jets to planes being delivered from Europe.
They heard that Tacoma lawyer John Messina was on his way to Rome and asked him to meet with Jerry. He did, and connected Jerry with an English-speaking lawyer in Rome.
They call Jerry daily, and give him strength.
They’re planning fundraisers.
They want what he wants: Joan Rodin, recovering at home among the people who treasure her.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman @thenewstribune.com
HOW TO HELP
• The family has set up a donation account for Joan Rodin at any Columbia Bank.
• July 20: Dessert and auction, 2-5 p.m., Joeseppi’s Restaurant, 2207 N. Pearl St., Tacoma. Donations welcome. For information call 253-761-5555.
• July 27: Dinner, raffle and auction, 5-7 p.m., South Tacoma Eagles, Aerie 2933, 7037 S. Pine St. Tickets $7. For information, call 253-474-5637.
• Aug. 9: Dinner and auction, 6 p.m., Our Savior Lutheran Church, 4519 112th St. E., Tacoma. Tickets $20. For information, call 253-531-2112.
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