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The Strongest Man That I Ever Knew: Remembering Jarrett Knyal

January 16, 2009 on 10:14 pm | By Matt | In Fitness Philosophy |

Jarrett Knyal taught me what it means to be “strong.” And in the the process proved that the mind is always more powerful than the body.

“If you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do… the body is never tired if the mind is not tired.” -General George S. Patton

The strongest man I ever knew was named Jarrett Knyal.

And tonight, I want everyone to know who Jarrett was.

Who Is Jarrett Knyal?

Jarrett was an athlete. He was a father. He was a talented designer and artist. Sometimes, he was a stubborn pain in the ass. But above all, Jarrett was strong. Strong in ways that most of us wish we were.

I’m not going to employ clever writing tricks to lead you through a story where you know what the ending is before I even begin. This isn’t a novel or a short-story, it’s real life. And while a sense of suspense might keep people reading, I want you to continue on to the next paragraph because you want to learn. Learn what it means to have real courage … and real strength.

So I’ll start with the end. Which in my opinion is just the beginning. But I’ll let you decide that.

Today marks one year since Jarrett died.

Jarrett left all of us lying on a bed in-front of a south facing window in his home in Ann Arbor, MI —  the winter sun warm on his face; his wife and family — including his two children Wade and Violet– with him. 

Jarrett had fought colon cancer for over four years. He fought hard, he fought long, and he refused to give up until he realized that the most courageous thing he could ever do in his life was to let the sun bathe his face and move on.

Jarrett was a fighter. If he were a boxer I would put my money on him every time. Always. Even today, knowing what I know now. There was nothing that life ever served him that he wasn’t willing to take on. Try to beat Jarrett down, and you’d fail. He’d drag himself back up and say “Bring it on.” That’s not a guy you want to take on.

I know that because I worked with him 10 hours a day for almost three years. And even though he reported to me, he kicked my ass. Everyday. You want people like that around you.  And I miss that.

To me, Jarrett was like steel. Like iron. Surrender was never an option — not just in fighting his cancer, but in his life, period.

There’s another thing you need to know about Jarrett.

This is something that he would probably be pissed off if I even brought up, but I’m going to anyway. Jarrett, if you want to come haunt my dreams for this, it’s fine. You taught me strength, after all. So I can handle your ghost if you choose to send it my way. Bring it on, brother.

So here I go: Jarrett spent the second half of his life in a wheelchair with half an arm (actually, he had full arm — but half of it was prosthetic.)

It wasn’t because of dumb luck, an accident, genetic flaw, or disease. It was because he made a single bad decision one day. We all do it, but rarely does it have such an immediate consequence.

The thing to know about Jarrett is that all through high school, he had created a reputation for himself as an athlete. He was captain of the football team and made All State. His brothers and family say he was “fearless” — bordering on reckless.

One day during college, Jarrett decided to steal a flag off from a rival fraternity’s roof top. It was supposed to be an innocent prank — the kind of thing you do when you are 22 and think you are immortal. We all do those things.

But something went wrong.

The flag staff hit a live powerline, badly burning Jarrett’s arm and throwing him off the roof, breaking his neck. He woke up in the hospital, the lower part of his arm amputated and paralyzed from the waist down.

Years later, Jarrett shared this story with me. It took him a long time to do this because I truly think that he was embarrassed of his youthful recklessness. When he told me the story, he took full responsibility for how he got where he was and he never pitied himself. He said that he was young and stupid and he got what he deserved. Of course, I don’t think anyone would say the he “deserved” what his youthful indiscretion resulted in, but Jarrett wasn’t interested in “fairness.” He was interested in living.

That was Jarrett. And that was his difference.

I want you to think about that for a moment. Really.

Would you have the courage and level of self-reflection to take responsibility for a mistake you made, or for your behavior, and to admit it? Would you do it without excuses? Even more profound, if you were in the prime of your life, and strong and healthy and lost the use of your legs, how would you respond?

Jarrett responded by saying “Bring it on.” Not immediately — but eventually. And that’s all that counts.

He went back to school to learn to be a graphic designer because he realized this was something he could do successfully even with his “limitations.” But of course, he had no real limitations. Just the brains to understand how to make them irrelevant — like figuring out how computers could help him do that.

Jarrett refused to be defined by his “disability.” He hated that word, and did everything he could to erase that label in the minds of people who knew him.

Soon after his “accident”, he ran the Chicago Marathon in his wheel chair. When his strength and endurance began to wane in the final few miles,  his brother offered to help push him.

Jarrett refused.

He finished the marathon. Himself. Under his own power.

And it wasn’t the first or last marathon Jarrrett wheeled. In fact, just tonight, I found this 1995 New York Times article on the New York Marathon that quoted Jarrett. He wasn’t a spectactor. He was a runner.

Could you — would you — do that? Do you have that level of strength, courage, focus and determination?

This was something I had never known about Jarrett until his memorial.

The Jarrett that I knew from the office was well on his way to middle-age: A slightly pudgy guy who adored his son Wade and was glowing the day that he learned his wife Bridget was pregnant with his second child. 

I had this sense that Jarrett was different the moment I met him, but I never knew how much until I saw the pictures of the marathon he “wheeled” at his memorial. He had a massive upper body and muscle that would have shamed the most fit of us — with our two legs there to carry us, instead of wheels.  He pretty much did everything that people with use of their legs did — and I would argue far more.

The first time I met Jarrett was over a speaker phone when I interviewed for my position as eCommerce Marketing Director at Quicken Loans. 

A few months earlier Jarrett had been diagnosed with colon cancer and had undergone a round of chemotherapy, followed up with surgery. He was was working from home each day lying on his belly, designing websites for us.  It was painful for him him, but he rarely let us know.

So I knew Jarrett first as a voice on a phone, and later as a person who challenged me and the entire entire company to be better every day. I later learned that he was an amazing athlete, both before and after his accident.

The thing I finally realized about Jarrett, was that he approached each problem as a man living on borrowed time — which made it pretty damn hard to say “no” to him. If Nike wanted to living, breathing example of the philosophy “Just Do It”, Jarrett was the best I’ve ever known.

He had a fire, and he wasn’t going to let it burn unnoticed. But it wasn’t ever self-centered. Anyone who knew him would agree with this. Did he have his moments? Well ask his wife Bridget. He could get cranky and impatient sometimes. But people who have the fire inside are often like that.  But in the overall scale of his life, I’m sure Bridget would agree that they rarely mattered in the end. They were blips. Just merely tiny blips. And those blips made Jarrett human.

What Jarrett realized was the preciousness of our time here, and he held all of us accountable to that time.  A second wasted felt like a lifetime to him, and he pushed like only Jarrett could. Later, his wife said that his favorite saying in the morning was: “Let’s get going, we’re burning daylight here!”

How many of us could approach each day with that level of zeal and enthusiasm?

For a while Jarrett and all of us thought he had beat the cancer. 

But it came back.

And he learned this right around the time that his second child, Violet, was born. 

But Jarrett kept fighting, trying a radical colon cancer treatment that required pouring hot chemo into his gut in the hopes of stopping the cancer. It was crazy, but the guy always had crazy hope. That was Jarrett.

Unfortunately, the treatment didn’t work.

The cancer was still there. And it had spread.

Even after that treatment, Jarrett tried as best he could to make it in to the office to finish up the projects he had committed to. I never asked him to do it, he just did it. His body was weak and frail, and even his spirit started to fail. But he wheeled himself in and sucked it up. After all, he was a warrior. And he did what warriors do.

That was Jarrett … again.

I distinctly remember the day Jarrett finally came to me and told me he couldn’t fight anymore. The look of pain on his face was something you can never erase from your memory. Jarrett said the cancer was just too pervasive, and barring a miracle he had to start planning for “other things” — namely his family.

The warrior had admitted he was done fighting. I nodded, not knowing what to say. I knew it was bad, but inside I still believed Jarrett would win. He had so many times before.

Six weeks later, Jarrett left us. He had lost the war.

What Jarrett Knyal Taught Me

Had he really lost the war?

No way.. Jarrett won …although he never knew that when he was “here.”

I never believed Jarrett was ”gone” and let me explain.

When a pebble is thrown into a pond, it causes ripples. These ripples continue through the water until they fade or hit the shore. But they never really end — they just transfer their energy. From the stone to the water to the shore and to everything.

People like Jarrett Knyal aren’t pebbles, they are boulders.  And boulders don’t cause ripples, they cause waves.

The action of tossing that mass and energy into a pond is something that persists beyond what we can immediately be seen. It can go on-and-on in faint whispers until it becomes amplified again – in the way that it changes or effects people. That can takes weeks, or months, or years, or decades — but it does persist.

Like I hope it will persist now in all of you who might be reading this, but never had the pleasure of knowing our friend Jarrett in flesh and blood.

The most profound lesson Jarrett Knyal taught me was that our actions matter. Who we are and how we respond to our environment extends far beyond ourselves.  We cannot know how the little acts of courage and strength that we act upon each day can transform other’s lives.

Case in point: I know that Jarrett’s cancer directly caused at least three people to stop smoking. These are people who may not have made that choice had they not known Jarrett.  So his existance has impact far beyond the beat of his heart or the draw of his breath. It far transcends this.

Personally, Jarrett’s honesty and courage has made me better person in so many ways. It’s taught me that boundaries are only in your mind and that your outlook is the only thing that holds you back. Your will and attitude mean so much more.

And most of all, Jarrett taught me there are no excuses. 

Be strong in your mind, and you will be strong everywhere. Just witness Jarret’s wife Bridget and his two children Wade and Violet — three people who are even stronger than the strongest man I ever knew.

If Jarrett, Bridget, Wade and Violet could do it,  so can you. Learn from the boulders … and the strongest man and family I ever knew.

Learn More About Jarrett

If you want to learn more about this extraordinary man, who he was and what he meant to so many people, visit these links:

• The Jarrett We Know and Love: In Video (Jarrett LOVED Woot — these are photos from his co-workers and of his desk at Quicken Loans — we all miss you Jarrett … so much.)
• Goodbye Spiderman: A Tribute from Quicken Loans The Diff
• Clayton Closson Remembering Jarrett on the Quicken Loans Blog
• To You, Jarrett Knyal - Vox
• Into The Home, Into The Heart
• Jarrett Knyal: Warrior and Survivor
• Jarrett: Our “Cockroach” and Champion of Quizzle
• Farewell Jarrett from Amy Prior
• Pour Some Out For My Homie - A Tribute to Jarrett from Ann Marie
• Jarrett on Google

And to hear what sums up Jarrett for me, listen to this song from Bruce Springsteen.

Enough said.

When they built you brother, they broke the mold.

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Tags: Bruce Springsteen, Cancer, Colon Cancer, Courage, Energy, Fitness Philosophy, Inspiration, Jarrett Knyal, Leadership, Love, Perseverance, Power, Quicken Loans, Strongest Man, Strongest Man Ever, Terry's Song, The Diff

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