By Sherri Drake
The Commercial Appeal (Tennessee)
Copyright 2006 The Commercial Appeal, Inc.
The last thing James Coleman remembers about Hell Night two years ago — when he collapsed into a coma — is warming up with his fellow Memphis Fire Department recruits.
He doesn’t remember the quitter’s bell or the taunts of instructors.
“I heard they called it Hell Night, but I didn’t know what it exactly meant,” Coleman said recently. “If you want to be a firefighter, you got to do this. You do it or you quit. I wasn’t about quitting.”
This week, Coleman and his mother and conservator, Barbara Coleman, settled their federal civil rights lawsuit with the City of Memphis.
He’ll receive $450,000 over four years: $120,000 this month, $100,000 next year, $80,000 in 2008 and the last payment of $150,000 in 2009 will go to his attorney, Jeff Rosenblum.
Coleman, 43, will also receive back pay and will be on the payroll at the same rate as his fellow classmates through 2009. A third -year fireman’s salary is roughly $47,800.
In 2009 he’ll apply for line-of-duty pension and, if determined to be disabled, will be paid about 60 percent of his income for the rest of his life.
The city raised the cap for his lifetime medical expenses to $1.1 million.
“This settlement is a victory for the Coleman family,” Rosenblum said Thursday. “It brings closure and certainty.”
City officials admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement, saying they chose to resolve the claims “to avoid incurring additional expenses and inconvenience occasioned by continued litigation.”
On the night of Oct. 12, 2004, recruits faced several consecutive strenuous exercises, or “evolutions,” sometimes repeating drills if one recruit made a mistake. Instructors heckled the recruits — “They’d have to drag me off of there dead before I rang that bell,” they said.
Seven recruits were loaded on ambulances that night. Six were treated for dehydration and released. But Coleman didn’t wake up for a couple of months.
Well into the training, Coleman collapsed while crawling along a fire hose. Recruits later recalled asking a sluggish Coleman if he needed to stop. He’d told them, “We can’t quit.” Just before the drill, he’d been ordered to do 20 pushups for taking off his helmet.
Coleman spent months in rehabilitation after waking up from a coma. He said doctors told him he’d had a heat stroke.
“When I woke up, I couldn’t believe it,” Coleman said. “I said, ‘No, that didn’t happen to me.’”
He says he wanted to be a firefighter to help people, but these days, his routine consists mainly of watching television in his living room and trying to learn to walk without stumbling and talk without stuttering.
People often have a hard time understanding what he’s saying.
On a recent afternoon, the father of two had been watching “Divorce Court” when he stopped to talk about the night that altered his life.
He’s been making strides toward recovery. He started out in a wheelchair, upgraded to a walker and has just recently been able to walk on his own some. He still uses the walker when he goes to Wal-Mart or the mall.
He used to play basketball with his 13-year-old son at the goal that sits in the driveway of his Hickory Hill home. He doesn’t have the coordination to play ball anymore, or play the bass guitar or drive - three of his favorite things to do.
But it’s his goal to do those things again.
“If I sit around and act like I can’t do this and can’t do that, I’ll never do it,” he said. “I look at it like, well, you’re down now. You’ve got to get back up.”
A month after Hell Night, six fire training officials - three lieutenants, one driver and two chiefs - were transferred out of the division after an investigation into the Oct. 12 session.
Coleman said he believes he was a victim of hazing.
“I hope they realize the mistakes they made and I hope they made some changes.”