Parkland student will walk at graduation after years in wheelchair

In a wheelchair for years, Jared did physical therapy to help him walk again so he can walk for his diploma at Parkland's graduation.

Jared Brown is a handsome, 6-foot-2-inch, Parkland High School senior who will walk across the stage at Stabler Arena on Monday night with a few hundred of his classmates to receive his diploma the reward for four years of hard work and a slate of straight A's.

What will set the 17-year-old apart is the very act of walking. It's been a long time since Jared did it, at least in public. He has relied on a wheelchair since age 14, when a worsening of involuntary muscle movements from his cerebral palsy combined with the added weight and mass of an extraordinary growth spurt 8 inches in a year made walking virtually impossible.

It's still not easy, by any means. Jared will cross the stage with a walker, modified with foam padding to protect his legs as he moves. The padding is decorated, naturally, in Parkland red and gray.

"He said, 'I don't see what the big deal is because I'm just going to walk across the stage like the other kids,' " said Jared's mother, Jana, sitting next to her son in the kitchen of their North Whitehall Township home last week as Jared, clearly relishing the prospect, grinned and nodded.

Jared's story is an unusual one. When he was born, nothing seemed to be wrong. His Apgar scores standard assessments of a newborn's breathing, color, pulse rate, weight and so on were normal.

As he grew, though, his parents noticed unusual things. Jared wasn't achieving typical physical milestones.

"I kept saying to the pediatrician, 'He's very strong, but he's not crawling,' " his mother said. "He was only rolling one way."

At 14 months, Jared was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. It's an umbrella term for movement disorders, sometimes caused by birth trauma. Jared had no such trauma, so his case likely stems from a genetic disorder.

The condition is physical and hasn't affected Jared's cognition, though some of its effects made learning difficult. When he reads, for instance, the letters tend to double up because of problems with his eye muscles.

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Parkland student will walk at graduation after years in wheelchair