IF ever a story had a good side and a bad side it's the story of Jay Waller. When I first saw him in Queen's Medical Center last November he was in the 10th day of a coma, writhing, moaning, not recognizing the anxious family members who had flown in from Connecticut and California to be with him. They were at the edge of their nerves with apprehension for his future and anger about why he was there. A brutal beating and
surprising recoveryHe had been a baseball player and all-Ivy League football player for Yale University, Class of 1996. Also a skier and sky-diver. He had come to Hawaii to vacation before seeking admission to dental school.
On Halloween night he was pulled from a Jeep on Waialae Avenue, savagely thrown against a curb, kicked and beaten senseless. One eye was driven back into his head.
The record shows that a group of men in a van had overtaken him and committed the assault after a traffic hassle. It also shows the only one charged and tried was acquitted by a jury after a three-week trial, apparently for weak identification even though one man in the van specifically blamed the accused.
Waller's family members feel the way America will feel if no one is convicted of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Yet Waller and his family have something to rejoice about -- something that reflects as favorably on the health-care system in Hawaii as the failure to punish anyone for the awful crime reflects on our criminal justice system.
His moaning coma continued until close to Thanksgiving Day. Then he recovered enough to be flown to a Connecticut rehab hospital with a nurse and family members accompanying him.
When I first saw him I thought death might be his best friend. Yet today he is again a handsome young man. He says he feels good and is improving.
He still has some memory loss. The right side of his face is numb from a titanium plate in it. His eyes are back in place and work. A dent in his forehead has filled in. The entire right side of his body may permanently tingle as if it were asleep. But none of this shows. He now is targeting dental school for 1998 instead of 1997.
He and his family have great praise for the aloha spirit shown them in Hawaii -- even though his mother and sister experienced a car ripoff on the only day they felt free enough to go to the beach. Yale people, numerous friends of friends like my wife and I, and people they had never seen before rallied around.
Above all, they think the medical people who worked at Queen's "walk on water." Dr. Kristine M. Gebrowsky was the trauma surgeon called to see him at the emergency ward. She called in Dr. Calvin C. Kam, neurosurgeon, and Dr. Vincent J. Nip, plastic surgeon.
EVEN before I visited Waller and felt decent recovery seemed impossible, Kam had told the family he saw clues of hope in some of the moaning man's reactions.
By the time Waller testified in court a month ago his good looks were back. Jurors, however, also saw life-size color photos of him in his coma and heard testimony about it.
After a three-week trial they acquitted Genero Gualdarama, 36, of Palolo on all but a misdemeanor charge on which they couldn't reach a verdict. This dealt with being an accomplice to a third-degree assault with a year as maximum imprisonment. No effort so far to seek another trial on it or of any other person.
Waller's mother, Sydney Waller of Jamestown, R.I., wrote an open letter to "Dear Friends in Hawaii" that reflects both the bad and good of her son's Hawaii experience. It appears on the letters page. Jay Waller, 24, is again living with his sister in Lake Tahoe, Calif.