Cornell alumnus Christopher Reeve dies Oct. 10

By Franklin Crawford

Actor Christopher Reeve '74, theater arts, died of a heart attack in Northern Westchester Hospital on Sunday, Oct.10. He was 52.

Christopher Reeve, left, speaks with students and staff at Cornell's Center for Theatre Arts (now the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts) in this file photo from 1993. University Photography

"Christopher Reeve was a dynamic individual who made remarkable contributions to the arts and to the public's appreciation for scientific research," said Tommy Bruce, Cornell vice president for communications and media relations. "His humor and generosity never waned throughout his long struggle to overcome his injury. He exemplifies the very highest Cornell ideals. We remember him with affection and admiration. Our best wishes and prayers are with his family and his many friends throughout the world as we mourn his loss."

Reeve came to Cornell in 1970 and majored in theater arts and English, combining the two into an independent major. He achieved sudden and stunning celebrity in 1978 for his role as the "Man of Steel" in the Hollywood blockbuster "Superman: The Movie." Three "Superman" sequels followed. But in 1995 a tragic horseback riding accident left Reeve paralyzed from the neck down. The 42-year-old actor found himself cast in the role of his life as one of the world's foremost champions for the treatment of spinal cord injury research. It was a part Reeve played to perfection.

In 1999 he created the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, one of several groups that, among its various works, helped support a two-year stem-cell study conducted at the Weill Cornell Medical College. The study, published in the March 2003 issue of Nature Medicine, was conducted by researchers in the Department of Neurology who discovered a new source of neural stem cells in the adult human brain. By that time, Reeve had become an outspoken advocate for stem-cell research, arguing on behalf of the science before a conflicted Congress. It was a far cry from his days as a Cornell undergraduate, when Reeve acted in several plays a year, including The Good Woman of Szechuan, Waiting for Godot and A Winter's Tale. He spent his Cornell senior year at the Juilliard School in New York City and shortly afterward made his Broadway debut with Katharine Hepburn in A Matter of Gravity.

Stephen Cole, Cornell professor of theater, directed Reeve in A Winter's Tale and met with Reeve at various informal events after he graduated.

"He was a terrifically nice guy with a good sense of humor," said Cole, who recalled a story Reeve told him when they last met in the late 1970s. Reeve had just completed filming "Superman: The Movie," although the film had not been released. Reeve said he'd gotten an audition call for the role of Superman after talent scouts spotted him performing in the role of a Nazi S.S. officer in an off-off-Broadway production.

"The irony of that process was not lost on him," said Cole.

Reeve returned once to Ithaca in 1993 to deliver a keynote speech for a Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County luncheon. During that visit Reeve also spent time on campus meeting with student actors at the former Center for Theatre Arts and visiting with one of his former teachers, Daniel Schwarz, professor of English and the Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow.

"From the time I taught Chris as a freshman in fall 1970 in an advanced 200 level freshman seminar entitled ÔThe Reading of Fiction,Õ he and I remained close throughout his Cornell years," said Schwarz. "I remember working with him to plan his senior year in New York City in order that he could pursue acting training and theatre opportunities.

"I kept in touch with him before and--on occasion indirectly by letter--after his accident, and spent quite a bit of time with him during his 1993 visit when his film "The Remains of the Day" was previewed here." Schwarz said Reeve was "a fine student--articulate, enthusiastic, and well-prepared--and a warm and gentle presence, and, even after his successes, a modest man dedicated to becoming the best actor he could be."

At Cornell, Schwarz said, "he was respected by his peers and his teachers. He did not have illusions about the Superman movies, but took pleasure in the the pleasure those films brought others. He felt that in The Bostonians and The Remains of the Day he was developing his craft."

A year and a half later, Reeve was thrown from his horse during an equestrian event in Commonwealth Park, Va. The fall shattered two neck vertebrae and left him confined to a wheelchair. Reeve never gave up hope that he would one day regain the full use of his body and he worked relentlessly toward that goal, often achieving remarkable success only to be thwarted by physical setbacks.

In 1998 Cornell Alumni Magazine published an excerpt of Reeve's clear-eyed autobiography, Still Me, one of two books he authored. Reeve describes in poignant detail the daily rigors of living as a quadriplegic and his own struggles to resist self-pity, anger and despair. The experience, he said, redefined his idea of what made a hero.

"When the first 'Superman' movie came out, I gave dozens of interviews to promote it," Reeve wrote. "The most frequently asked question was: What is a hero? I remember how easily I'd talk about it, the glib response I repeated so many times. My answer was that a hero is someone who commits a courageous action without considering the consequences ... Now ... I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles."

The most difficult lesson he had to learn from the accident, he wrote, was that "I know I have to give when sometimes I really want to take." Reeve was speaking of his role as a husband and father. But it is clear that as time went on, he took that lesson into the world and became a different kind of action figure altogether -- a messenger of hope, and by his own hard-won terms, a true hero.