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Never giving up the battle against ALS Paul Sokoloski Opinion

Thursday May 14, 2009 | 01:00 AM

Paul Sokoloski psokoloski@timesleader.com

In times of great need, America built its reputation as a great country because its people can always depend on others around them to join the rally.

It is why our nation came back strong from the horrid terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. And to a lesser extent, it is why sports teams that look lost for most of the game can rebound to win a championship in the final two minutes of a Super Bowl or in the bottom of the ninth in the World Series.

Former Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Red Sox ace Curt Schilling once marveled at that type of human spirit, after he put it on display by pitching the Red Sox to the 2004 World Championship despite working on an ankle that was mincemeat and seeping blood during the biggest games of his life.

So when Outback Steakhouse managing partner John Hess was given the chance to help battle a mean and unrelenting affliction known as ALS, he couldn’t wait to step to the plate.

“It’s the American way to help other people,” Hess said.

The best way to help battle Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis – better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease – is to keep chipping away at it.

Knowing this, a contingent from the Wilkes-Barre area including Hess, former Coughlin High School football coach J.P. Meck and WBRE-TV sports director Phil Schoener headed down to Barnesville, Pa., and not only took their swings in the tournament, they made donations to it.

“Phil (Schoener) asked me to play,” said Meck, who now serves as an usher and security guard at Wachovia Arena. “He told me about the cause. I said, ‘Well, for sure.’ ”

The disease caused Larry O’Rourke, the tournament director of Wednesday’s sixth annual Reporters’ Challenge Charity Golf Outing at Mountain Valley, to send part of this year’s proceeds from the event to benefit ALS research and treatment.

O’Rourke, a sports writer who covers the Philadelphia Eagles for the Allentown Morning Call, began his charity tournament six years ago to assist various causes.

He was also diagnosed with ALS in April of 2008.

“There’s a lot of research that needs to be done that isn’t covered by the drug companies, certainly isn’t covered by the government,” said O’Rourke, who now walks with a cane. “We’re going to donate a lot of the money to Hershey Medical Center’s research. I don’t care if they use the money for coffee, if it helps them stay up all night researching this condition.”

Nobody beats this affliction, which saps the body of strength, attacks nerves and cripples the functions of the body’s limbs.

Not even the great Gehrig, the New York Yankees “Ironman” who contracted ALS and called himself “The luckiest man on the face of the earth” during a retirement speech that will reach its 70th anniversary on the Fourth of July.

“We have cancer survivors,” O’Rourke said. “We don’t have any ALS survivors.”

Mainly because the medical profession doesn’t have a cure.

“The big problem that we have is we don’t have a solid identity on how it’s caused,” said Beth Stephens, a clinical research coordinator at Penn State’s ALS clinic in Hershey. “We know that there are family genes that would put someone as a risk factor. There are probably environmental things. But we don’t know what those things are right now.”

They’re trying to figure it out.

O’Rourke is currently part of a drug trial that doctors hope can stop the progression of, but not cure, ALS.

“You would absolutely take that,” O’Rourke said.

Added Stephens, “I think beating it, reversing it, is down the road. But we’re coming closer to identifying what is causing ALS. In the next five to 10 years, we’ll have that.”

So there’s hope.

But researchers, and their patients, need more.

That’s why every little donation, such as the one made by the Reporters Challenge, can help.

“It might be $1,000,” said Schoener, a friend of O’Rourke’s since childhood. “But it means more than just a dollar amount.”

For good people such as O’Rourke, it means people are still willing to battle for a good cause, for as long as it takes.

That’s another thing that contributes so much to America’s greatness. We never give up.