For as far back as John McNulty’s memory will allow him to gaze the West Windsor resident can see himself running. He started as a freshman on his high school track team in Nanuet, New York. On a full college scholarship John ran cross country for Rutgers in New Brunswick. He ran the streets of the city as a graduate student at NYU, where he earned an MBA in finance. McNulty ran marathons — New York, Boston, Jersey Shore — and Yonkers, which he won in 1982.
His best marathon time, 2 hours and 19 minutes, earned him a spot at the 1980 Olympic trials. Though he never made it to the Olympics — the U.S. boycotted the 1980 games in Moscow, and by 1984 he was immersed in his career — he was at the time among the top-ranked athletes in his field. Today, he sits slouched on his sofa, his head wrapped in surgical gauze, an IV administered down his arm. These days McNulty is part of a more grueling kind of race.
John suffers from hydrocephalus — “water on the brain” — a rare disease that causes an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in his brain. And while his condition has curtailed his running career, his family has taken up his hobby, and his cause.
Led by John’s son, Sean — a successful runner in his own right — family and friends will gather at the New Jersey State Triathlon on Saturday, July 20, at Mercer County Park in West Windsor to compete on Team Brainy Mac and raise money for the Hydrocephalus Association. Other team members include his daughter, Katie, his brother- and sister-in-law John and Carrie Oesmann, and his nieces Kelsey and Jackie Oesmann as well as family friends and running buddies. Each competitor will swim 500 meters, bike 10.1 miles, and run 3.1 miles.
McNulty was born in Nyack, New York, where both of his parents were also born and raised. His parents met when they were working together at the local New York telephone company. They moved to the Nanuet area to raise John and his four sisters.
In 1962, when McNulty was five, he contracted bacterial meningitis. The resulting scar tissue on his brain caused water to accumulate, and that year he had a craniotomy to insert a five-inch tube at the of his skull to drain fluids. Doctors gave him a 5 percent chance of surviving. He beat those odds, and went about his childhood, his only limitation a prohibition on playing contact sports.
Fortunately for McNulty, running is not a contact sport. In eighth grade he was cleared to attend gym class. He started running then and never looked back.
In college at Rutgers McNulty met his future bride, Sue Quinton, a graduate of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School, Class of 1978, Douglass College. Quinton earned a master’s at New York Medical College in clinical nutrition. She has taught courses at Mercer College and TCNJ in nutrition and has worked at Princeton House Behavioral Health as director of food services for more than 20 years.
In 1992 Sue, John, and their two children, Sean and Katie, moved to West Windsor and purchased a house in off Rabbit Hill Road. “I was home again,” said Sue. “I loved growing up here and knew the school systems were among the top ranked in the country. The local train station had provided my father a great path into the city for work and would do the same for my husband.” The tow path was close for cross country runs and life was wonderful.
John, now 55, worked at Prudential Insurance for nearly eight years and later served as vice president of company compliance at Guardian Life Insurance in Manhattan.
But lives in this picture-perfect family were turned upside-down after coming home from a family cruise in April, 2003. John McNulty had been experiencing dizziness and headaches, and his running had slowed. He went to his doctor because he thought he had an ear infection. On Easter Sunday a phone message from the neurologist instructed John to get to a neurosurgeon immediately. Life began to focus on brains, shunts and recovery. “It was not until 2003 that we had ever heard of hydrocephalus,” says Sue.
Hydrocephalus was not well known in the 1960s, and John’s doctors then had given no follow-up instructions for the now-obsolete catheter in his brain. The often fatal condition is now known to cause increased pressure inside the skull and progressive enlargement of the head, convulsions, tunnel vision, motor function difficulties, and mental disabilities. To date John has had more than 215 brain surgeries.
John worked through almost all of it — even scheduling his surgery at NYU Hospital on Thursdays at 5 p.m. so he could work all week and go back to work on Monday. Shaved head, wiring sprouting from him, John would have business material FedExed to the ICU. He was finally forced to go on permanent disability leave in February, 2009.
While John was working hard, his wife Sue was rallying as her husband’s personal patient advocate. Sue has been at his side every moment and in constant contact with all of John’s doctors, surgeons, nurses, and home health aides. She has become an expert in cranial fluids, ventricle pressure, and neural activity. Sue runs his agenda, tracks medications, schedules surgeries, and manages his new life like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
There were plenty of bumps along the way. Emergency trips to the hospital and battles with insurance companies and bill collectors became all too common. Sue would be caught in the city with her husband and wonder how she would make it home to have dinner ready or how their kids would afford taking a class trip or get home from after school practices. “All of our neighbors and counselors at High School North pulled through for us,” said Sue. Friends brought dinners, cleaned the yard, gave rides, paid for class trips, and planned fund raising events all to keep the family afloat.
“We can not have selected a better community than WW-P to help take care of our family,” says Sue. Friends, neighbors, the family’s church, St. David’s the King, and local businesses have all stepped up. John O’Shaughnessy, John McNulty’s one-time flag football buddy, works as an attorney in the division of Johnson & Johnson that engineers and produces the shunt that is in John’s head.
“We have had a connection to resources all over the world to help solve the problems about shunting, infections, and hydrocephalus. A local business — Integra Neurosciences — from Plainsboro actually made the device used to drain John’s brain fluids when they were infected,” says Sue.
John’s daughter Katie, 25, graduated from High School North in 2006. In college at Penn she earned a degree in actuary science and now works for Towers Watson in Manhattan and lives in Cranford.
“When my dad first began experiencing problems with the shunt, I don’t think any of us really knew what to expect. It had been so long since his first surgery that we all just assumed this would be no big deal, and at first it wasn’t,” says Katie McNulty. One afternoon in fall, 2003, John had his first shunt replacement, and days later, he showed up to her lacrosse game with half of his head shaved from surgery. “That was exactly the way my dad wanted it. He was so set on making sure his health problems wouldn’t impact our lives,” says Katie.
Running was always the activity that made her father feel like everything was still tolerable. Throughout their high school years Katie and her brother Sean ran races with their father. The plan was always the same — Sean would race competitively while John and Katie would pace themselves to get the job done.
Today whenever Katie runs and happens to spot someone ahead she can hear her father’s words — “Let’s just get past that person then we can slow down sweetie.”
“I should have known better,” says Katie. “My dad always picked up the pace the last mile of his run.” John explained to his daughter that the objective was to exhaust yourself to a point where no one would think they could go any further. “The adrenaline would take you the last quarter mile when you thought your legs would stop working,” says Katie.
In the past few years, as her father’s memory has faded, their relationship has also changed. Most days he doesn’t remember simple things like how old his daughter is, and it takes John some reckoning to get him to admit that his 5’10” daughter looks a little old to be 12. Despite the memory loss, John’s passion for racing has never waned. “He still tries to drag me out for runs, rather walks, when I visit him on weekends,” says Katie. “I bring my dog Bruno, and he keeps things at an even pace.” Those strolls are the best time for them to talk. At times John’s memory finds him lost in his childhood, and, says Katie, “it’s become an interesting way to learn more about my dad.”
As she gets older she is beginning to realize how strange her childhood was. “I thought it was very normal to play in the high jump sand pit while your father completed his track workouts. I assumed every kid knew what a good day it was to watch their father sprint home from the train station after work,” said Katie.
“That was probably the best gift my dad ever gave me — the realization that you can have it all, the job, the family and the passion. Because of him I know it’s never worth settling for a life where you aren’t happy,” adds Katie. Her father always made it home for dinner, always coached whatever teams he could (despite never playing any sport besides track), and he always got in a run.
“The most amazing thing to me is that despite all of the struggles he faces every day now, he is still happy. His face lights up more than ever when my mom walks in the door. He loves ordering a Guinness with Sean and he adores playing with Bruno,” says Katie.
So what is the family mantra? “Run fast, take chances! This is the McNulty family motto,” says son Sean, 24. The 2007 North graduate lettered in cross country, indoor track, baseball, and basketball. He is living at home this summer to help his mother with his father’s schedule and care. This fall Sean will return to the University of Kentucky, where he will resume his studies in special education and behavior disorders.
Sean has followed his father’s footsteps around the track. At one time the holder of 14 school records in track and cross country, Sean was the first runner from North to qualify for the state Meet of Champions. He won the state triathlon in 2009.
When he returns to school Sean will coach high school cross country for Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kentucky. Sean’s mentor in Kentucky is Coach Frank Gagliano, John’s former cross country coach at Rutgers. Coach “Gags” is currently coaching Olympic hopefuls in the tri-state area.
“In the past, I never went to the starting line of a race without one or both of my parents saying to me ‘run fast take chances.’ As time has worn on, this motto has grown into a way of life,” says Sean.
“As my family has overcome different obstacles in life we have grown closer than most. This is something that I despised at first. I resented the fact that I lived my senior year of high school practically on my own. I hated that my dad missed me winning my school’s first ever sectional cross country title. I couldn’t stand that I would spend my birthdays, most holidays, and just about all of my free time in the NYU hospital,” said Sean.
“As my dad’s health and more specifically his memory have faded from surgeries I have learned to embrace and find the best in every day,” said Sean.
One morning Sean and his father went out for a walk around the neighborhood. John still wakes up each day looking to do his normal 16 to 18-mile run, but his brain is writing checks that his mind and body can’t cash these days. As this father and son team trekked through the neighborhood John stumbled and fell. Sean hurried over to help him, but as he offered him his hand John looked up from the asphalt at his son like he was crazy.
“I can do it,” John insisted as he put one hand on the ground and tried to stand. He got halfway up and fell back to the hot black pavement. Sean knew he would continue to refuse help until he was able to get to his feet on his own. Before his father fell a second time Sean scrambled behind him and gave him a little nudge to get his momentum going forward. Nose over toes John rose to his feet and took off running. “As I fell back in stride next to him I thought of what my dad shows me every day ‘why do we fall?’ — to prove to ourselves we can get back up,” says Sean.
“My dad shows me how to get up after one falls. I may fall a few times but I can get up and keep going. I simply remember to run fast and take chances,” says Sean.
New Jersey State Triathlon, Mercer County Park, Old Trenton Road, West Windsor. Saturday, July 20, 7:30 a.m. 500 meter swim, 10.5 mile bike, and 3.1 mile run. www.cgiracing.com.
New Jersey State Triathlon, Mercer County Park, Old Trenton Road, West Windsor. Sunday, July 21, 7:30 a.m. Olympic event: 1,500 meter swim, 25.5 mile bike, and 6.2 mile run. www.cgiracing.com. us.’”
