There’s a lift attached to the bed in Gunnar Burns’ bedroom, a carpeted space in the finished basement of his family’s home in Idlewild.
These days, though, the device doesn’t get much use.
“I just sit in his wheelchair, I grab his feet, and I put him on the bed,” said Gunnar’s mother Leslie Burns. “And then I hook his arm and put him on the bed, we’re done. We don’t use that big old lift anymore.”
Nearly a year after Burns suffered a spinal cord injury during a James Monroe High School boys’ lacrosse regional playoff game, he and his family are reasonably well adjusted to their new reality. Some changes are more conspicuous than others.
In the driveway sits a mammoth white vehicle with accessibility features that Leslie Burns refuses to call a minivan.
“It is not a minivan because I don’t drive a minivan,” she said. “It’s ‘The Beast.’”
A somewhat-freshly poured concrete sidewalk leads from the right side of the house to the back door, where Gunnar can reach the basement without using a lift.
Gunnar acknowledges that he’s on a different path than the one he envisioned for his senior year. While many of his fellow classmates — high school graduates, actually, as of Friday evening — are preparing to leave home for the first time, he finds himself counting on Leslie, his primary caregiver, more than ever.
“That’s probably the worst part, relying on others,” he said. “I was basically completely independent, now I’m completely dependent. It’s definitely frustrating.”
In the past year, he’s lost the ability to walk, regained some wrist strength, and never, at any point, relinquished his wit.
“I’m still the same person,” he said with a laugh. “I just can’t move.”
A long road ahead
Oh, Gunnar had jokes — quips about hot girls in the stands, one-liners to reassure his worried-sick coaches, barbs about EMT response times — but what he couldn’t summon as he lay on the field in Mechanicsville that evening in May 2024 was even the slightest bit of feeling in his extremities.
“Because I couldn’t move, couldn’t feel anything,” he recalled.
A short time later in the ambulance, he felt a twinge in his right arm, the first indication of mobility.
“And I was like, ‘Damn, that felt great,’” he recalled. “Or I could feel it, but I was like, damn, at least I can move something.”
He spent the next two weeks at VCU Medical Center and the next three months at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, a world-renowned facility specializing in spinal cord injuries.
When Gunnar’s head hit the turf, his neck compressed, shattering off bone fragments in the process.
“It was almost like an accordion,” Leslie Burns explained.
Surgeons inserted a cage to reduce pressure on the spinal cord and fused together his C3, C4, C5 and C6 vertebrae. Doctors told Gunnar that the spinal cord heals just a millimeter a day, a recovery as incremental as they come.
In the months following surgery, he’s taken on a myriad regimen of therapies: electrical stimulation, physical therapy (PT), occupational therapy (OT) and, most recently, a custom strength program at Green Fitness in downtown Fredericksburg.
To date, Gunnar hasn’t regained any fine motor movement in his hands, though his wrist strength has improved to the point that he can, with some effort, pound out a fist bump. Texting isn’t easy, either, but his knuckles can usually get the point across.
“They’re trying to teach him how to, like, move blocks from one side to the other,” Leslie Burns said of her son’s recent goals in OT.
‘Still a part of the team’
No sooner had the white minivan (sorry, Leslie) pulled onto the grassy lot at Maury Stadium on May 3 than the Yellow Jackets paused their pre-game stretching routine.
“Go take a picture with Gunnar,” shouted a coach.
A sign attached to the bleachers at Maury Stadium honors Gunnar Burns on senior night. (Photo by Suzanne Carr-Rossi)
The two dozen or so lacrosse players didn’t need to be told twice. They bounded over to greet the former long-stick midfielder, who was back for senior night. As part of the festivities, Gunnar’s No. 3 was shown on the field and on a banner up in the bleachers, the latter display marked by a neat, if slightly crude, drawing of a wheelchair with trailing flames.
A few minutes later, Gunnar, flanked by Leslie and his father, Bobby, rolled out onto the field as the PA announcer outlined his plans to take a gap year while focusing on his recovery. Then, he plans to attend VCU and pursue a career in an IT-related field.
That evening, a sweltering sort of Friday, the Yellow Jackets were hosting Fredericksburg Academy.
When the game began, Gunnar positioned himself just behind the home bench, his view of the action disrupted from time to time by a teammate rushing off the field. He pointed out it was a non-district game, that coaches chose to start mostly seniors, some of whom were playing out of position.
“If we lose, I’m never coming to another game,” he joked when James Monroe fell behind by a couple of goals early.
They didn’t lose, though, and it was clear that despite his absence from the sidelines this season (he attended just a handful of games), Gunnar hadn’t lost his rapport with his teammates. When one of his legs spasmed (a common occurrence) the closest Yellow Jacket turned around to reposition his heel back on the wheelchair footrest.
Gunnar Burns, center, hangs out with his JM teammates in the locker room following the team’s Senior Night on May 3. (Photo by Suzanne Carr-Rossi)
“He’s still a part of the team,” said McLean Maynard, Gunnar’s teammate and best friend since fifth grade. “Of course he is. He is definitely part of the team and part of our lacrosse family.”
‘Still the same person’
The scene that played out in a cul-de-sac in Idlewild one afternoon this past October illustrated two things: Gunnar hates being slowed down by his injury, and his friends, well, they’re never going to leave him behind — at least not metaphorically speaking.
At the time, Gunnar was trying out a new power wheelchair and wanted to test its capabilities. Maynard lined up next to him in a sprinter’s stance, the rest of the group counted down to three, and they were off.
As it turned out, acceleration was not this particular chair’s strong suit.
“That’s not ****ing fair,” Gunnar grunted with a laugh, as he finally got up to speed.
During the school year, a group of Gunnar’s friends came over on such a consistent basis that Leslie Burns dubbed them “the B-Day gang,” referring to the class schedule at James Monroe. Maynard even stayed in Atlanta during the earliest stages of his friend’s recovery.
“He’s still the same person, still the same sense of humor, still super fun to hang out with,” Maynard said.
Though he’s young for a senior — still 17 — Gunnar had wrapped up most of his graduation requirements prior to suffering the injury. Annie Langdon, a Fredericksburg City Schools teacher who handles some homebound cases for the division, visited twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays to help him complete the work for his remaining classes.
At one point, Langdon was helping with college essays — though Gunnar revealed that he shied away from the low-hanging fruit of a prompt: “What’s the biggest adversity you’ve had to overcome?”
Three days following his injury, the Fredericksburg community rallied at Maury Stadium, lighting tea candles to pray for Gunnar’s recovery. A month after that, friends and classmates lined a road near Idlewild to celebrate his return home from the Shepherd Center.
And on Friday evening, Gunnar received a standing ovation as he received his diploma during JM’s graduation ceremony at the University of Mary Washington.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been forgotten,” he said, before adding with a smirk, “unfortunately.”
