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Faith gives strength, purpose to Steve Becker

Catholics are fond of talking of the "crosses"they have to bear.

Few have had to bear crosses of the weight,size and  duration of those hefted by Steve Becker.

Fewer still have borne them with so much faith, courage, and determination to serve God, no matter what the cost in pain and suffering.

By the time Steve was in first grade at Shrine of the Little Flower School in the Belair-Edison section of Baltimore, he was so short compared to his classmates, his parents knew something was very wrong.

Doctors diagnosed him as having vitamin D-resisting rickets.

"When I consumed food and liquids,about 90 percent of all the vitamin D, calcium and neutraphosphorusin them was excreted in my urine," Steve explains.

As a result, his bones were softened and his growth stunted, and he experienced great pain in all his joints.

Steve's parents took him to the endocrine clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital,where the doctors told them that although there was no cure for this type of rickets, they could treat it with oral overdoses of the vitamins and minerals that he lacked, in the hope that his body would retain at least some of them.

The treatment worked somewhat; Steve grew more, and his bones stopped hurting when he was in the second grade.

"They used to make fun of me in grade school; they called me 'shorty' and 'midget,'" he recalls with a rueful smile.

His bones were still soft, and by the time he got to City College high school, his legs were so bowed,kids would joke that they could put a basketball between them.

Throughout high school, he never had a girlfriend, never went to his proms or other school dances.

"It was very painful," he remembers.

The summer after high school graduation, Steve underwent four operations one every five weeks, in which surgeons put leg pins in both femurs, and straightened his tibias by breaking them and then putting them back together.

He was in a cast from his neck to his toes.

After his leg operations he entered the Community College of  Baltimore. His painful childhood had left him with a giant inferiority complex .

Sitting in the cafeteria one day the young freshman noticed a sign announcing the student government elections.

"I said to myself, 'I want to run, Lord, to help change this world and make it the way it should be. But, Lord, if you want me to win this election, you've got to take away this inferiority complex and tell me what to say."

"Immediately, I was healed, right there in the cafeteria,boom!"

Steve ran for president of freshman class and won. In his second year he ran for vice-president of the student government and won again "hands down," he says.

I had my normal knocks in collect, but all the name-calling was over; people really respected me-not only the faculty, but the students."

After receiving an associate of arts degree from BCC, Steve enrolled at the University of Baltimore, studying business administration with a major in economics.

When he was 6 credits short of receiving his B.S. degree, with the impetuosity of youth, he dropped out to marry his wife, Barbara.

The young couple lived on Dudley Avenue, one block over from his childhood home on Kenyon Avenue.

Steve adopted Dominic, Barbara's son from a previous (annulled) marriage, and they had a daughter, Jessica Marie.

Steve became a beer, wine and liquor salesman for Quality Brands Inc., and McKesson-Churchhill.

In 1989, when he was 40, me for a managing job," he says.

But that year he started feeling pain in his wrists and all his joints, signaling the onset of a serious worsening of his condition. He had to stop working.

"I would lie in bed or sit in chairs,but I wasn't totally crippled; I could get about with a cane," he explains.

In the years that followed, Steve, always a devout Catholic, became heavily involved in his parish. He served on Little Flower's parish council for eight years,and on its pro-life and evangelization committees.

He took part in Rosary and Divine Mercy chaplet devotions, Eucharistic Adoration and novenas, and devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of  Mary.

He was also lay director of a prayer group at Our Lady Queen of Peace Church, a member of the charismatic prayer group at St. Stephen parish in Bradshaw, and vice-president of the Catholic Men's Fellowship.

And he took part in pro-life activities led by Jack Ames and Paul Melanson.

In 1997 Steve made two pilgrimages to the Eternal Word Television Network head quarters in Birmingham,Ala. He was deeply moved by the spiritual atmosphere and the work being done at EWTN.

On the second pilgrimage he attended a taping of Mother Angelica's show.

When the taping ended, she came down to the audience, put her hands on his head and shoulders and said, "Do not be afraid. Confront the issues. The Lord is with you."

"I felt like the Lord was saying to me, 'You've learned a lot of things, but now I want you to do something else," says Steve.

On his birthday, January 7, 1998, he received a call from EWTN's east coast marketing manager, who asked him to be in charge of evangelizing for the cable network in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Steve threw himself into his new mission,dropping almost all his other church activities so he could devote all his energies to promoting EWTN.

He called on local cable companies,visited all the parishes in the archdiocese,and led pilgrimages to EWTN.

But in the last months of 1999, he started feeling "pins and needles" in his back, and falling down--ominous signs that he was becoming paralyzed.

In January, 2000, he underwent surgery at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda to try to stop the paralyzation.

"It stopped it partially,"says Steve. "I could have lost my ability to speak and my eyesight. I could have been brain dead."

But, except for slight movement in his left hand, he was paralyzed from his neck down. Unlike a typical quadriplegic, however, he could feel pain in every part of his body.

In addition, he had a tracheotomy and wasn't able to eat or drink for a year. He could not talk for three or four months.

Steve remained three months at NIH,followed by a month at Good Samaritan Rehabilitation Hospital.

Then he was moved to his present location at University Specialty Hospital in downtown Baltimore.

Steve says that after his "trach" and oxygen tubes were removed and he could eat, drink and speak again,he was doing "okay."

But last Easter Monday, his best friend and,spiritual director, Fr. George Restrepo, came to visit him and found that he had "straight lined." "My eyes were open, but I didn't respond. He went with me in an ambulance to University Hospital, where they kept me for a week and treated me for pneumonia, then sent me back here."

Two days later he was rushed to Harbor Hospital, where doctors said he hadn't really recovered from the pneumonia.

Steve was sent back to Specialty Hospital,only to be rushed off for a third time, this time to Mercy Hospital, for a week of treatment for a seizure.

A month later he was rushed to Maryland General Hospital when he went into septic shock for a urinary tract infection, running a 106-degree temperature.

"I nearly died four times, but I've been okay now for about a month," he says.

"Okay" for Steve means suffering continuous, intense pain. In addition to rickets,he has arthritis in almost every joint.

"My right arm hurts the most I have no idea why,"he says. "But the pain moves, from my hips, then my ankles, then my toes, then my fingers. It doesn't stop."

Steve takes morphine sulphate to ease the pain. "If I didn't, I would be screaming; I couldn't make it," he says.

He is able to sleep about five hours a night. During his waking hours he spends much of his time praying.

In 1989 he consecrated his life to the Holy Trinity and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

"God takes all my joys, my prayers, my sacrifices, pain, everything," he says. "When I consecrated my life, I saw an increase in my prayers being answered."

Many people call Steve on his cell phone for advice and prayers. He suggests that people consecrate their life as he has, using the book, The Secret of Mary, by St. Louis de Montfort as a guide.

Steve is grateful to the many people who came to the benefit concert given for him in July.

Donations from the concert are going to pay for a heated, air-fluidized bed that will help prevent painful bedsores.

He is also grateful for the good care he receives from all his caregivers at Specialty Hospital. But, he says, he is alone for

many hours. "I would love to have people come and pray and read the Bible with me. That would really pick up my spirits!"

Steve's cell phone is 410-206-2751. He is at University Specialty Hospital, 601 South Charles St. Visiting hours are noon to 8p.m. every day.