Mourning and celebrating an inspiration

In many ways, Jacob Gould was an ordinary 16-year-old. A 10th-grader, he loved hanging out with his friends and chatting up girls at Kennebunk High School. He attended every football game the Rams played this past fall, including the state title contest in faraway Orono.

Jacob was a human sports encyclopedia. The only thing he liked nearly as much as watching baseball, football or professional wrestling was expressing his opinions about them. Last April, he told one of his teachers Notre Dame’s football team would wreck the University of Alabama’s the next time they played. The staff member none-too-gently reminded him that the Crimson Tide had destroyed the Fighting Irish three months earlier in the National Championship game, an indisputable fact that would have silenced most other people.

It didn’t deter Jacob, though; it just moved him to make his case more vehemently.

Like each of his peers, Jacob was unique, but one of the things that set him apart was his battle against Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare but deadly ailment caused by a mutation in the largest gene on the human X chromosome. Its onset usually occurs at age 5 or 6. Later on, progressive muscle deterioration ”“ first in the legs and pelvis and later in the arms, neck and other areas ”“ inevitably leads to paralysis and early death. There is no known cure for the disease, which afflicts approximately one in 3,600 males, or 28/1000ths of 1 percent of them. But that’s little consolation for the unlucky few who have it, and Jacob was one of them.

For the last few years, Jacob was unable to do anything completely independently. He had a one-on-one aide to get him to classes, take notes for him, and help him eat or attend to other basic needs his classmates all took care of routinely. Jacob couldn’t brush his teeth, comb his hair, scratch an itch or take a drink without help. But he never complained. Ever. The only time his eternal ebullience and trademark smile ever disappeared usually involved someone taking a verbal potshot at the New York Yankees, the New England Patriots or John Cena. He didn’t see himself as a wheelchair-bound student; he saw himself as a student. Period.

Jacob Gould died last Monday.

In a tribute published in the school’s online student newspaper, senior Griffin Drigotas wrote, “Few students at KHS possessed the unwavering happiness and strength that he [Jacob] did.” Fellow 12th-grader Ben Bath, like Drigotas a member of Jacob’s daily advisory group, succinctly described him as, “A positive, energetic young man who brightened many peoples’ days.”

Hundreds of community members Jacob impacted in one way or another gathered at St. Martha’s Church in Kennebunk last Friday morning to simultaneously mourn his premature passing and celebrate his extraordinary life.

Early last September in his grade 10 English class, Jacob was asked to write a brief “This I Believe” statement; the subject was up to him. His response, which was scribed for him by his aide Michael Dinehart, began, “I believe I can do anything if I put myself up to it. Nothing can stop you from getting to your goal.” A paragraph or so later, his essay concluded, “I believe this disease I have will go away. I will keep on fighting and never give up. This I believe.”

What turned out to be the last English assignment Jacob did was a “free choice” reading project. The book he selected was “October 1964,” a look back at that year’s World Series between the Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals, and he eagerly devoured every word of it. His reaction to Mickey Mantle, the star of the Bronx Bombers whose prodigious drinking and penchant for nocturnal wandering shortened his illustrious career, was noteworthy. Mantle’s rationale for his bad behavior: He thought he’d die young, just as all his male relatives had. He didn’t take into account that his father and uncles all toiled in lead and zinc mines, something Mickey himself escaped thanks to his prodigious baseball talents.

“Mickey Mantle was a great player,” Jacob wrote, “but he drank too much and had a lot of problems with his body as he aged. When he got older, he probably wished he had taken better care of himself.”

It’s ironic Jacob Gould died young, something he never intended to do, while the man he’d undoubtedly have idolized had he been born 50 years earlier lived far longer than he himself had anticipated or planned.

If there’s a heaven, it’s a cinch Jacob Gould now resides there. And if it’s truly a better place, Mickey Mantle is up there, too, only now he’s looking up to Jacob, rather than the other way around.

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