STORIES
“I am so hopeful. It gets me up in the morning. Thinking we’re going to make a difference today. We’re going to understand something. We’re going to make that discovery.”
Matt’s Story
In 1999, Matthew Dahl was a sensitive, curious five-year-old when he fell from a second story window and was rushed to Harborview Medical Center. While his parents, Bob and Linda, waited by his bedside, they were told to prepare themselves for Matthew to be a very different child. Yet, when he was moved off life support and emerged from the coma, he seemed to be himself.
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“He had a strong emotional intelligence,” his mother remembered. “He could, from a very early age, tell us how he was feeling.” His father shared that Matthew “always had a good idea of who he was.”
For many years, Matthew’s family assumed that his recovery had been complete. Matthew grew up and graduated from high school. He was accepted into the Architecture Program at the University of Washington, but in the fall of his sophomore year, he knew something was wrong. He called his mother saying, “Something is happening. I can’t make sense of things.”
Matthew was diagnosed with depression and was treated with many therapies over the next five years, but nothing seemed to help him break free from the increasing confusion. His mother observed that her son “seemed to be slipping farther and farther away from himself.” Matthew himself was convinced there was a missing piece. He expressed his frustration: “There’s something wrong with my brain. I can’t put two and two together. I can’t understand.”
After Matthew’s death in 2019, his parents continued to fight to understand their son’s debilitating illness. They donated his brain for research, hoping to discover if there was a link between his childhood brain injury and his recent struggles with depression. Dr. Keene, the lead scientist of NEW-HOPE-TBI, said: “I remember the first day I met Bob and Linda and seeing how much they loved Mathew and how much they yearned to have answers.”
The work of the NEW-HOPE-TBI team provided those answers. Their observations of Matthew’s brain revealed the extent of his TBI, including evidence of injury deep inside his brain. Through science, Dr. Keene validated Matthew’s assessment of his own condition: “Matt wasn’t wrong. He knew there was something happening to his brain.”
Jonte’s Story
Born in Tennessee, Jonte Willis was the “baby” in a big, noisy family with five older brothers and five older sisters. An affable jokester and gifted young athlete, he captained his junior and senior high school football teams. When he was nineteen, his interest shifted to boxing. He advanced rapidly to prominence as an American heavyweight boxer, winning the US Amateur Championships in 2006. He also won the USA Boxing National Championships in 2006 after the first place finisher was disqualified.
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Sometimes called Jonte “Rock Steady” Willis, he posted impressive showings in the 2006 Police Athletic League National Championships, 2006 World Cup Tournament, and 2007 Pan American Games qualifiers. Jonte won the 2007 Tacoma Golden Gloves and 2007 Nevada Golden Gloves. He reached the semi-finals at the 2007 National Golden Gloves.
Like many athletes in high impact sports, Jonte suffered multiple head injuries during the course of his eight-year boxing career. The impacts of these injuries were evident in his personal life and contributed to his retirement from boxing in 2014. He struggled to get appropriate and prompt care for his TBI-related cognitive challenges. Jonte Willis passed away in 2022 when he was thirty-eight years old.
His sister, Kathy, volunteered to be part of the NEW-HOPE-TBI Community Advisory Board to honor her brother’s memory. She remembers his kindness. In addition to being a boxer, Jonte was a father, an uncle, a son, and a devoted brother. Kathy saw first hand the devastating effects of TBI on her brother’s mental and physical wellbeing. She hopes that the research being done by NEW-HOPE-TBI will help others get better care.
Conor’s Story
Conor Gormally’s personal experience with multiple head injuries motivated the mission of Concussion Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting people with concussion as they manage recovery and advocate for proper care.
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Conor sustained their first diagnosed concussion at 16 during a preseason wrestling practice, and they spent the next three months struggling to recover from intense headache, fatigue, and mental health symptoms. Conor sustained two more concussions during high school and a fourth during new student orientation week of their undergraduate studies. This fourth concussion forced them to take medical leave from their freshman fall of college, and when they returned to Seattle to seek care, they found a consistent lack of answers and proactive care from medical providers.
Conor and their mother Malayka Gormally, a constant advocate throughout these injuries, were frustrated by the lack of information and treatment options for persisting symptoms after concussion (mild TBI) in spite of how common this injury is.
Based on their own experience struggling to find proper information and care about mild TBI, they founded the nonprofit Concussion Alliance, where they work with physicians, scientists, and advocates to create accessible, evidence-based, patient-facing resources that inform and empower people with concussion and their support networks. ConcussionAlliance.org is now the largest source of evidence-based resources for concussion patients anywhere in the world, with over 56 pages about concussions, treatments, and community-specific resources.
Steve’s Story
University of Washington Law Professor Steve Calandrillo is lucky to be alive. After a head-on collision in 2021, he was admitted to the emergency room with the lowest possible score on the Glasgow Coma Scale. His family was given little hope that he would survive, let alone thrive. Today, after many surgeries and an arduous path to recovery, Steve is teaching again. Despite some disabilities, he has returned to living a pretty good life.
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“I want other TBI survivors to know that you can come back from catastrophic injury,” says Steve. “I’m so grateful to the first responders and medical providers who saved my life. I’ve reached out to as many of them as I could, and now I’m committed to helping researchers like the team at NEW-HOPE-TBI, who give hope to people like me.”
As a dedicated advocate for other TBI survivors, a member of the NEW-HOPE-TBI Community Advisory Board, and a registered brain donor, Steve wants others to know that positive outcomes are possible. He hopes that the research at NEW-HOPE-TBI will demonstrate that, while brain injury changes a person’s life, those changes don’t all have to be bad.
“The big choice that people face is whether you are going to see yourself as a victim or a survivor. I see myself as a survivor. My kids helped me see that I was a different person after the accident but not a worse person. I’m more open, more expressive, and more loving. I’m different now because I’m trying to make the most of my life.”