By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer
Of all the well-wishers who have sent their prayers and thoughts to University of Hawai‘i football coach June Jones in the past few days, there is one man who wanted more than anything else to visit the Queen’s Medical Center as a show of solidarity and support: Les Murakami.
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| Les Murakami said, "I want to tell him to hang in there."
Advertiser library photo • May 13, 2000 |
Now at home for the first time since suffering a stroke on Nov. 2, Murakami, the beloved baseball equivalent of June Jones, is quick to point out that it was Jones who visited him in the hospital when Murakami fell ill.
"I would have gone right away to the hospital but circumstances prevented me from doing that," said Murakami, who was released Friday from Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific, about 24 hours after the UH football coach crashed his car into a concrete pillar on the H-1 Freeway.
"I want to tell him to hang in there," Murakami said, before making a bold prediction: "In my mind, I think he can pull through and be ready for spring camp (Thursday)."
Although nobody is expecting Jones to be up and out of bed that soon, Murakami is used to helping himself and others make the impossible happen. And as Jones attempts a long recovery from severe injuries suffered in the car crash, Murakami is setting his sights on nothing less than the physical condition he enjoyed before the stroke.
"For me, the long-term goal is to have full recovery of all things I could do before," Murakami said in his first interview since the stroke. "I ain’t giving up.
"I just try to do whatever I can do one day at a time. No question I’m making progress."
Murakami, 64, is speaking while lying down on a hospital bed in a recently renovated room that overlooks a swimming pool at his Wai‘alae Nui home on Halekoa Drive. While speaking, he’s doing tracking exercises with his left eye and periodically raising his right leg.
The stroke did not rob Murakami of his pride, mind or speech and the coach believes it’s only a matter of time before he’ll literally be back on his feet again.
"Right now, I’m doing whatever the specialists tell me to do to get better. I need to strengthen my weak side — the left — so I don’t do things only one sided."
At the rehabilitation hospital, Murakami spent seven hours a day, five days a week working to regain his physical and occupational skills and speech.
"They bust you up," he said, referring to the tough regimen. "It’s very difficult and very strenuous. A lot of the things are mind over matter.
"All the people want to see me gain weight, but there’s nothing wrong with my appetite. It’s just the hard work."
Happy with 2001 team
The coach has been following the progress of his baseball team’s games on the radio because watching television is still too demanding on the tracking he does with his eye.
"I cannot be more happy with the way they’re playing," he said "Anytime you can come back in the ninth inning the way they have been, you know you got something."
Murakami also praised interim head coach Carl Furutani and assistants Tom Gushiken and Les Nakama.
"Carl comes to see me before every series, but I don’t tell him nothing unless he asks," he said. "I really give guys like Carl a lot of credit."
"Dot" Murakami, who helped cook meals for players in the early years of the UH program, knows what it means to her husband to have people like Furutani, Gushiken and Nakama carrying on this year. "Les’ coaches are loyal," she says. "But they are friends before they are baseball coaches."
Health means everything
The 2001 season is Les Murakami’s 31st and last at UH. A selection committee, headed by Athletic Director Hugh Yoshida, has reportedly narrowed the list of successors to Arizona State head coach Pat Murphy, and assistant coaches Dave "Boy" Eldredge of Brigham Young University, Henry "Turtle" Thomas of Louisiana State and Mike Trapasso of Georgia Tech.
Murakami’s choice is not among the finalists.
"I was never on the selection committee, but the perfect guy is Lenn Sakata," Murakami said of the Kalani High graduate and former major league infielder who is manager of the San Francisco
Giants’ minor league team in San Jose. "But unfortunately, he doesn’t have a (college) degree.
"I really think he was everybody’s first choice. That’s why if I were him, I would go get my degree."
Murakami is not distracted by the pounding and drilling noise coming from the garage area, where workers are installing a wheelchair lift, or by the presence of his wife, who has returned from picking up a prescription for him.
Checking the medicine bottles in her hand, she notes that until his stroke, Murakami had never needed a prescription pill.
"This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever faced," Murakami said of the stroke, "because I could never prepare for something like this.
"First of all, I had none of the indicators. No high-blood pressure, my cholesterol was low, I don’t smoke, I was running three miles three times a week and five miles twice a week. And then something like this happens. So in my mind, I’m thinking about all the crazy guys who smoke and don’t take care of themselves. I can’t understand why they want to flirt with disaster."
The stroke has made Murakami realize the most important thing in life. "If you don’t have good health," he says, "everything else don’t mean nothing."
The coach is thankful for the treatment he received at both the Queen’s Medical Center and the rehabilitation hospital.
"They are very compassionate people," he said. "I was supposed to have left Rehab last week, but all the things at our house weren’t ready so they bent over backwards to let me stay another week."
Future as volunteer
Murakami will continue to rehabilitate at home for two to three weeks before being assigned to an outpatient program.
"When I get well," he says, "I think I’m going to do volunteer stuff, like clinics for coaches. That will be a way to give something back."
"Coach Les" watches as the woman who inspires his determination leaves the room to meet with a contractor who is calling for her.
"I think my wife is tougher than me," he says.
The man who once boldly predicted he would build a Division I baseball program at UH and have his team play in its own stadium made that happen. Now he is predicting full recovery, and when he returns to that stadium he helped build, he will go in under his own terms.
"My wife says what’s the difference, go in a wheelchair and watch a game," Murakami said. "But I want to walk in and watch a game."
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