Wayne Sebastianelli had been with Adam Taliaferro from the moment he fell awkwardly to the field at Ohio Stadium and couldn’t get up. The Penn State football team doctor stayed with Taliaferro in Columbus until his father arrived the following day. He visited him often at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital, when he couldn’t move his arms and legs, then after he began a miraculous recovery.
So Sebastianelli was a bit apprehensive almost a year later when Taliaferro warned him about what might happen on the night of Sept. 1, 2001.
“I remember him goofing around a couple days before that night and saying he was going to run out of the tunnel and onto the field,” Sebastianelli recalled. “He’d pop in every now and then into the office and tell us that. I’d say, ‘Be careful.’ He was just going to do it.”
Less than 12 months after suffering a severe spinal cord injury, Taliaferro thrilled the record crowd of 109,313 at Beaver Stadium when he led the Nittany Lions onto the field for their opener against Miami (Fla.).
On that night 20 years ago, he wore his blue No. 43 jersey, waved to the roaring crowd as he waited to be introduced, walked onto the field with a hop, skip and jog.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Taliaferro said. “We were in the locker room and I felt like I was a player all over again. I had that nervous feeling I’d get before every game. Doc Sebastianelli came up to me at my locker and asked if I was OK.
“He said, ‘Adam, whatever you do, people are going to appreciate it.’ I went out there and this peace just came over me.”
It was very unlike how the freshman cornerback had felt on Sept. 23, 2000. He tackled Ohio State running back Jerry Westbrooks late in a lopsided loss, then tried to use his arms to pull himself up but couldn’t. He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t work. He couldn’t his extremities.
“The thought of being paralyzed never went through my head,” he said. “I remember Bhawoh Jue, our other corner, saying, ‘Adam, c’mon, get up!’ I remember him reaching down toward me and I started panicking because I couldn’t move anything. I remember looking up and seeing Doc Sebastianelli and Coach (Joe) Paterno. As time went on I started to panic. I remember telling Doc, ‘I can’t move! I can’t move!’ From that point it kind of got blurry.”
Sebastianelli and other medical staffers placed him on a stretcher. Dr. Chris Kaeding, Ohio State’s orthopedic surgeon, helped stabilize Taliaferro. The following day, Dr. Gary Rea performed a two-hour spinal fusion surgery at Ohio State Medical Center.
After four days, Taliaferro was flown to Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, near his home in Voorhees, N.J. He was moved in early October to the Magee Rehabilitation Center.
“About four or five days into my stay at Magee, my dad (Andre) rolled me up to the rooftop so I could get some fresh air,” he said. “Two guys were playing basketball and I broke down. That was the first time it hit me that I was disabled. I realized I was broken. My body didn’t work anymore.
“That was the first time I cried. My dad said, ‘Get it all out. We were waiting for you to have this moment.’ That was probably one of my lowest points.”
He was told he had a 3 percent chance of walking again. About three weeks later, however, came a turning point: After his parents had gone home one night, one of his nurses noticed he was moving a toe.
“She asked me to do it again, and I did,” Taliaferro recalled. “It was about 10:30 or 11 at night and she called my dad. He drove back to see it for himself. We had a celebration in the hospital room that night. He called Coach Paterno and some of my teammates to finally tell them good news. It was probably one of the best moments of my life.”
Andre also called Sebastianelli after 1 a.m. and screamed the news to him.
“I still feel chills when I think about that call,” Sebastianelli said. “I knew then that he was going to be able to walk. He was the miracle. He just took off after that. It was meteoric.”
Taliaferro walked out of Magee on crutches in January 2001. He underwent therapy there as an outpatient for four hours daily until April and returned to Penn State as a student in May. He still expected to play football again. That was until preseason camp in 2002.
“I was sitting in the locker room and the guys were putting on their shoulder pads and helmets,” he said. “I felt like I was going to cry. It hit me that I wouldn’t be playing anymore. Then I thought back to the patients at Magee who were struggling just to walk and struggling to breathe on their own.
“I thought, ‘What the hell are you thinking?’ I never thought about it again. I always thought how fortunate, blessed and lucky I am.”
Tom Bradley, who became Penn State’s defensive coordinator in 2000, said Taliaferro would have had a great career. The three-sport athlete at Eastern High was a first-team all-state selection on offense and defense. He was widely considered one of the best high school players in South Jersey history.
“He was the best young defensive back I ever coached,” said Bradley, who was on the Penn State staff from 1979-2011. “He had great skills. He could do everything. He was tough. He was smart. He understood the game. He was coachable. He was just an exceptional talent.”
Taliaferro served as a student assistant coach, graduated from Penn State and earned his law degree from Rutgers-Camden. He joined Bristol-Myers Squibb as a health-care advocate and became a politician, seeking fourth term as a New Jersey Assemblyman. The Adam Taliaferro Foundation provides emotional, financial and educational support to victims of catastrophic spinal cord injuries and their families, and he often visits patients at Magee, hoping to provide the hope to others that he found there.
Now 39, he’s married to Erin (Mulshenock), a former Penn State swimmer. They have two children, Cruz, 6, and Chloe, 3.
So much of that wouldn’t have happened if not for the injury.
“Of course, I can be bitter about not playing football, but it really taught me how to discover myself,” Taliaferro said. “I truly thought I was just a football player and that’s all I could do. The injury was horrible, but the life lessons I learned going through it were priceless.”
Sebastianelli is not surprised by what Taliaferro has accomplished. He said he had nightmares “for a long time” about that afternoon in Columbus in 2000. Almost a year later, Taliaferro made a walk at Beaver Stadium that will be remembered forever.
“I was on our sideline and I could see the tunnel,” Sebastianelli said. “I saw Adam walk out. As soon as the crowd saw him, it was just over. I had tears streaming down my face. There was a referee standing near me and he asked if I was OK. ‘I’ve never felt better.’
“I’ve been doing this for 40 years and you just don’t see that. You don’t get that special gift very often. That was one of them. That was truly special.”
