Richard Fritzky had this advice Sunday for the 2008 graduates of Felician College: When life throws a curveball, at you and it will, "pause and remember me, a friend who bears witness to the miraculous every time he opens his mouth or his mind."
Fritzky shared the life lessons he learned battling death after he was stricken in October 2005 by neisseria meningitis, a disease that led to the amputation of his legs and nine of his fingers, and had doctors initially predicting that if he survived, he would never be able to speak or use his mind again.
Fritzky gave a commencement address so moving that the audience of more than 1,500 responded with a thunderous standing ovation and many in attendance were in tears. Fritzky also received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Felician.
Dennis Daniels, a trustee and regent at Felician for more than 20 years, and an executive of the Wakefern Food Corp., also received an honorary doctorate. More than 400 received bachelor's and master's degrees, including Bergen County Sheriff Leo McGuire.
Felician President Theresa Mary Martin read a list of Fritzky's accomplishments: former president of the Meadowlands Regional Chamber of Commerce, former commissioner of Employment and Training for the State of New Jersey, former commissioner of State Planning, longtime adjunct professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and author of two books.
But the accomplishment that received a murmur of amazement from the audience was Martin's comment that Fritzky is the father of 12 children. His children and his wife, Maggie, had front-row seats for the ceremony at Felician's John J. Breslin Theatre.
"Richard Fritzky is a living miracle," Martin said, explaining why he had been chosen for an honorary degree. "Richard Fritzky knows he is loved by God. And Richard Fritzky said 'Yes' to God. That's why God is using him to teach us how to hope," she said.
The "curveball" that changed Fritzky's life forever, he said, was "meeting neisseria meningitis on a beautiful day in October — this stalking death that kills 100 percent of those over 50, like me."
Before he was placed in a medically induced coma, he told his family, who had come to say goodbye to him, "believe as I believe and all will come out well." Doctors warned that the odds were good that Fritzky would "never again be able to utter a cognitive thought."
Three days later, he awoke briefly, said "I love you, Maggie," and slipped back into the coma. But he continued to surprise the doctor's with his recovery, and after 441 days, he left the hospital "with head and heart intact."
"It was the end of my dashing races to the car, late always for the next meeting," he said, "the end of socks and sneakers and basketball games", but the start of a new appreciation for the meaning and purpose of his life and of his role on earth.
While in rehabilitation at the Kessler Institute, he used to playfully tease a young woman patient, urging her to cheer everyone around her up by giving them one of her smiles. When she left the institute, she told him that "she thanked God everyday that I had been there for her," Fritzky said. "In that instant, she answered my long-suffering 'Why me?', he said. "I was exactly where I had to be and I never looked back."
"There is no higher purpose on earth than in carrying one another," he told the graduates, urging them to respond to suffering with service and joy. "For life is not meant to be easy, but neither is it meant to be sad," he said.
