Graves - Victim of a Sinus Infection Turned Virulent

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Pushed into new ideas on form

V. Iovine NYT Thursday, June 19, 2003

WEST ORANGE, New Jersey With pumpkin-tone linoleum floors, red brick walls and a clutch of metallic blue balloons at the reception desk, the color scheme at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation here has none of the subtleties of a Graves palette. But in the clinic's cafeteria, Graves was wearing a polo shirt in the cerulean blue he has made famous on everything from spatulas to high-rises as he dined with a band of elderly ladies in wheelchairs.Graves was in a wheelchair, too, jammed up against the table, a pair of black golfer's gloves by his tray. "They make it easier to lift the weights," said Graves, 68, referring to his physical therapy. Paralyzed from the waist down as a result of a recent spinal cord infection, Graves, the agile architect and designer, has spent the last 10 weeks at the Kessler Institute, relearning how to live and work, and revising his notions of day-to-day functionality.Universal design, once just a matter of complying with an abstract code, has become a personal reality. His dining chair now has wheels, and his shower has support bars.In late February, while Graves was visiting Germany, a sinus infection turned virulent. It now appears, said Kirshblum, associate medical director at Kessler, that Graves developed either myelitis, a viral infection, or bacterial meningitis. Whether he will walk again remains to be seen. Realization, Graves said, "comes on slowly.""If you think positively, it will be a slow recovery and you're happy," he said. "If not, it will be a different life and you'll learn to live with it."The timing of his illness could not have been worse for an architect who may have left some critics unchallenged and unmoved, but was embraced by the public. Graves was busy with projects for the Target retail chain, which sells his affordable teapots, dustpans and chessboards. His office of 105 architects and designers, Graves Associates, was working on dozens of private houses and new buildings, including the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. His first Manhattan skyscraper - a 67-story mix of retail, office and luxury condominiums - was going up on Fifth Avenue.In his room at the institute, Graves recalled falling ill on what was a routine business trip to see clients. He packed two vials of medicine, both marked "take two a day." Thinking the second bottle (an antibiotic) was a refill of the first (a decongestant), he took only the decongestant. He did not improve. Five days after returning to his home in Princeton, New Jersey, Graves was driven by severe back pain to the emergency room."I remember the first night," Graves said. "It was so gruesome and so painful you want to die. I don't say that lightly; 14 hours of pain is a lot. Your legs are going numb, but you don't think paralysis."By morning the paralysis had spread, and Graves was moved to New York - Presbyterian Hospital, where antibiotics and other treatments were administered. The paralysis stopped at his midsection. After a six-week stay in New York-Presbyterian, Graves was sent to the Kessler Institute - the same clinic where Reeve went for rehabilitation. He has been living at Kessler since early April.The goal of therapy now, Kirshblum said, "is for to achieve independence at the wheelchair level."Graves is expected to remain at Kessler through the summer. Mundane activities like pulling on pants are still a major chore. Visitors come every day from his office in Princeton - most often one of his six partners, smuggling in a gourmet meal. He is plotting how to get to meetings in Manhattan, by van with the big wheelchair, or by car with the collapsible one? "Work is the easiest thing to think about," Graves said, "The difficulty is living in a way that gives privacy, or whatever you're used to, without being demeaning.""Everyone around here asks me if I'm going to design a wheelchair," he said, "but what about this stupid room?" His list of design abominations is long: The wheelchair arms are too high to slide under the sink; the shelves are so deep he cannot get at anything toward the back. There are only two drawers within his reach. Each night, he has to make a list of things to be retrieved, windows to be operated, drawers to be closed before the last visitor leaves for the night. "These are simple things," he said. "I'm not even talking about how ugly it is."While his eyes have been opened to a new dimension of design, Graves is not going to let his condition slow him down. In contrast to those movies where the hard-driving workaholic suddenly comes up against the fragility of life and takes up watercolors, he is not about to retire. " has always placed a high priority on work and has often sacrificed aspects of his personal life in favor of his work," said Nichols, who joined the Graves office 26 years ago.Graves said he planned to cut back on the 30 or so lectures he gives each year and to work in the office rather than on the road. But he will continue to meet with clients at a new space, accessible by ramp and elevator, up the street from his current office.Retrofitting his own home in Princeton has proved to be an aesthetic challenge. Two consultants from the Kessler Institute have made a checklist in anticipation of his return. But in a house where every grain of bird's-eye maple veneer has been carefully matched, and with a resident as opinionated as Graves, ripping out walls and adding grab bars will not be easy. More Tuscan villa than the 1920s furniture warehouse it once was, the Graves residence is the work of three decades of lavish attention.Luckily, the place has such generous proportions that almost every door is wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair. An elevator will be added, and a pair of French doors leading to the dining room will be removed to make it easier to get to and from the kitchen. Then there is the mountain of marble statuary, including a bust of Napoleon, that will have to be moved out of harm's way.Graves does not know yet how he will accommodate Sara, his 11-year-old Labrador. For the past two years, he has been lifting her onto his bed at bedtime. Now she will probably sleep on the floor.The guesthouse will be outfitted for a caretaker or perhaps a couple to help Graves, who has been married twice and has two adult children, but has lived alone since 1975. Now, he says, with evident emotion, "I wish I had a partner, somebody to help with this. I don't want a partner who is a servant but someone who is happy to be in there helping."Every night, Graves dreams of walking again. The other day, he dreamed he was watching a Mets game and there was an advertisement for a futuristic film. "There was a superwoman with a 24th-century gun," Graves recalled. "She looked at me. I was walking. And she said, 'The amphibian walks!'"Graves laughed. "You really have to keep your sense of humor," he said, "or you're cooked."The New York Times Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com