Brothers raise money for spinal cord research

By Andrea Blair

It was a slip of a rope that changed everything for the Crawford family of Louisville.

Todd Crawford, 22, had just graduated with a biology degree from the University of Kentucky and was applying to the UofL School of Dentistry. His 25-year-old brother, Trey, was entering his fourth year in the UofL School of Medicine. Youngest brother Ryan was about to enter his junior year at UK, where he was majoring in business.

All three were busy pursuing their own educational paths. But priorities changed on a hot summer day in August 2002.

Todd, Ryan and some friends were cooling off in the Ohio River just east of Louisville, taking turns on a rope swing, when Todd slipped off the rope and landed head first in shallow water.

“At first I thought he just got the wind knocked out of him,” remembers Ryan.

But it became clear that something was seriously wrong. They called 911, and Todd was airlifted to a local hospital.

The impact had resulted in a spinal cord injury, and Todd was left paralyzed in his legs and with limited use of his arms. He was hospitalized for two months.

His mom, Joyce Crawford, who was widowed when the boys were young, took temporary leave from her job to help Todd with his rehabilitation. Ryan transferred to UofL to be near his brother.

“Our family has always been close, and my mom and brothers helped me out tremendously,” Todd says.

With the support of his family and friends, Todd began to heal. He went through vigorous physical therapy and met with experts from across the country, including Scott Whittemore, a “Bucks for Brains” professor and director of the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center at the University of Louisville.

In a twist of fate, Trey had worked as a research assistant in Whittemore’s lab just the summer before as part of the National Institutes of Health Summer Research Program. While in the lab, Trey “coauthored and helped drive a very important paper that resulted in a major new direction in my lab and close to $800,000 in new research funding,” Whittemore says.

“It’s kind of ironic the way it happened,” Trey says. “I had conducted spinal cord injury research with Dr. Whittemore and was on an orthopedic/spine surgery rotation when Todd was injured.”

Whittemore discussed research advancements with Todd and showed him videos of laboratory rats with severed spines that were able to walk after Whittemore’s research group treated them. They used an experimental therapy that combines stem cells and gene therapy to repair spinal cord injuries.

“It was great to see that,” Todd says.

Todd Crawford Foundation

Todd gained strength and adjusted to life in a wheelchair. He went back to school and earned an MBA from the UofL College of Business in 2006. Upon graduating, he decided he wanted to make a difference for people with spinal cord injuries.

“After my injury I had a lot of friends and family who held fund raisers for me [to help pay for rehabilitation],” says Todd. “When I completed my MBA, I wanted to move the momentum from raising money for myself to raising money for spinal cord research.”

That led to the creation of the Todd Crawford Foundation in 2006 (toddcrawfordfoundation.org). Todd and close family friend Bart Brown, who entered the UofL Brandeis School of Law this fall, created the foundation to raise money and awareness for spinal cord injury research; Ryan and Trey serve as officers. The foundation’s signature event—the 5K Run, Walk or Roll—was held June 28 at Louisville’s Waterfront Park, raising $10,000 for the KSCIRC. Last year’s event brought in $6,000.

Todd says they chose to donate to the KSCIRC because they wanted to support a local group that was making tremendous strides in research and treatment.

“We have such a great research facility [in the KSCIRC] and so many great advancements are happening there, but the community isn’t as aware of it as we would like,” Todd says. “One of our goals is to increase awareness of the center.”

Whittemore says that knowing Todd Crawford and his family “keeps us aware of why we are doing what we are doing. Sometimes you can get lost at the lab studying mice and lose focus. Todd and other people with spinal cord injury are an inspiration for us to move what we do in the lab to the clinic in a timely manner,” he says.

Since finishing his MBA, Todd has focused his energies on the foundation. He hopes it will continue to expand so they can provide more money for research.

Ryan graduated in 2005 with a business degree from UofL. He works for CH Robinson, a Fortune 500 transportation sales company in Louisville that helped sponsor this year’s race.

Trey graduated in 2008 from the UofL Department of Orthopedic Surgery Residency Program and is completing a spine surgery fellowship at Washington University-St. Louis. His goal is to join a medical school faculty where he can conduct research and teach spinal surgery.

“I was already interested in orthopedic surgery,” Trey says. “After Todd was injured, my interest in spine surgery was solidified.”