By SAM HARPER/Murphy News Service
Fifteen-year-old Duke Pieper sat in the Hill-Murray School hockey team locker room and took his skates off prior to the team’s first game. It was December 2008. He had headache-like symptoms.
He went a doctor. He was diagnosed with a non-cancerous tumor that had led to bleeding on his brain. Surgery was required. Doctors said he had a 5-percent survival rate. For sure he would never skate for Hill-Murray again. And he didn’t.“I couldn’t have known that in that moment my hockey dream was over,” Pieper wrote in his new autobiography ‘I’m Alive: Courage, Hope, and a Miracle,’” “Or that I would enter a confusing and devastating journey into a mysterious world that Iwill never come to fully understand—a world of pain, make-believe and lifelong ramifications.”
Pieper had made the Hill-Murray varsity squad as a freshman after playing hockey at Shattuck-Saint Mary’s. Having made the varsity in his first year was a long-shot. Most of the team members were seniors who had won the state tournament the previous year. But Pieper was already nationally known. He was ranked high on college talent lists and was already being scouted.
“This happened to me. At least I think it did. Sometimes it seems too crazy to be real. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of the end of life as I knew it,” read the first sentences of his book, co-written with Jim Bruton.
Pieper had obviously beaten the odds he had faced going into that surgery seven years ago. But there were serious complications. He had an infection of the spinal cord. It left him paralyzed and unable to walk, eat, drink or talk.
“You name it, I had to relearn it,” Pieper said.
It was through Minnesota hockey legend Lou Nanne that Pieper connected with his co-author Bruton.
“I had heard his story,” Bruton said. “but not a lot.
“Very frankly, I wasn’t going to do the book,” Bruton added. He said he was busy working on other projects. But he agreed to have lunch with Pieper and his father, Mark. That was all it took, Bruton said.
Pieper’s passion and purpose for writing the book changed his mind.
Bruton said he was impressed Pieper had survived and dealt with his life-changing experience.
“He was a kid in the ninth grade who had colleges recruiting him,” Bruton said. He had everything going for him. His family made funeral arrangements twice… it has an effect on you.”
After his surgery and its devastating after-effects Pieper focused on surviving as some of his Hill-Murray teammates went on to play in the NHL.
Left behind, Pieper pulled his life together and began to think about telling his story. The chapters for “I’m Alive” began to come together as he and Bruton met many times at a secluded table of an Applebee’s restaurant. Bruton would ask Pieper tough questions, such as, “What are all the things you could do before that you can never do again?”
Pieper made sure to try to keep a positive mindset about his circumstances.
“If I’m just upset about it, what am I going to do about it?” Pieper asked. He said he would always try to fit in extra rehab exercises and would work to keep his mind in a positive place. “Mind over matter,” he said.
Many people came to talk with him while he was hospitalized. “I tried to be polite,” Pieper said, “but (thought) you don’t know anything about my position.” But those interactions helped inspire him to tell his story — his way.
Pieper said he felt obligated to share his message.
“A bunch of things that helped me can help others as well,” he said.
Pieper included survival tips in his book that are intended for people with all types of life issues and problems.
“This book is for everyone,” Bruton said. “Everyone has issues, you can’t escape that.”
The book had a profound effect on Mark Rosen, the WCCO-TV sports director and KFAN radio commentator.
““Often our use of the word ‘hero’ is misplaced,” Rosen wrote on the back cover of “I’m Alive.” “In the case of Duke, it doesn’t come close to describing a young man who just refused to succumb to a tragedy that nearly took his life.”
Reporter Sam Harper is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.