Life is full of detours, of course.
But following the unexpected off-roads taken by Steve Snyder reminds me of Holy Week’s emotional journey – where so much suffering and darkness eventually breaks into the hopeful rays of an Easter sunrise.
At least that’s what came to mind as I made my way through the Oswego man’s recently published book, “Detours: Finding Strength After the Loss of Your Child.”
Not that I have ever been through anything close to that kind of detour. Still, his beautifully-written book, only 70 pages, is filled with wisdom that has relevance to anyone who is facing hurdles in life and looking for paths that will lead to strength and healing.
“The model is the same,” said Snyder when we spoke on Wednesday, a few weeks after the book’s release. “If you can survive the death of a child, you can survive pretty much anything.”
Snyder, a sales manager with Dun and Bradstreet, a global database that supplies business information and research, will be the first to admit he did not set out to become a grief expert or an author. And the 73-year-old Oswego man “with no construction experience” never thought he would become one of the original leaders of the Ronald McDonald House near Loyola Medical Center, actively involved in the building, planning and operation of the facility in Maywood for over 15 years.
But Snyder also did not expect little Stuart Chandler, who wife Sandra gave birth to by cesarean in March of 1984, to die before that year had ended.
The baby had a heart defect known as transportation of the great arteries, which according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention affects about 1,153 babies born in the United States each year. Stuart gave doctors plenty of reasons to believe he would survive the tubes and the incisions and procedures that followed this devastating diagnosis.
The baby also provided plenty of joy in the eight months he lived. As his open heart surgery in December grew closer, the couple went to Disney World with Stuart and big brother Michael. And they dedicated their sick but beautiful infant in a service at Calvary Church on the border of Aurora and Naperville, where they continue to actively worship.
The surgery that Dec. 2 went as well as could be expected at Loyola University Medical Center. But detour after detour popped up: A high fever led to kidney issues which impacted the baby’s brain. Just as the dialysis to remove the excessive fluids seemed to be working, however, Stuart coughed up phlegm that got caught in his breathing tube, which resulted in his death by suffocation on Dec. 13.
Forty years later, Snyder writes in raw detail about the grief that swallowed him and how it impacted each family member. But the author also describes the support the family received from his church, his family and friends, and in his own personal faith that he insists led to other positive detours, including the “miracle” adoption of their daughter Margo.
It’s in chapter seven, which he titled “Turning Grief Into Something Good,” where the author introduces how he became so involved in a new Ronald McDonald House.
It all began with a Snyder family donation to Loyola University Medical Center in Stuart’s name that paid to redecorate the hospital’s echocardiogram lab. But Snyder had “a hunger” to do much more, so he reached out to the pediatric department, asking for ideas.
Eight years later he received a phone call from Dr. Craig Anderson, the head of pediatrics, who told him, “we would like to build a Ronald McDonald House here at Loyola and we could use your help.”
Remembering their own harrowing schedules shuttling back and forth to the hospital, often spending anxious hours in those then-“smoke-filled” waiting rooms, Snyder gladly met with a group of interested people. Eventually he led the search for an architect and builder, and became supervisor of the construction of this child-centered Disney-like facility that sits on two-and-a-half acres on the campus of Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Administration Hospital.
Snyder’s adventures with this project are nothing short of inspiring.
One of my favorites: At the 1995 opening of the Ronald McDonald House, he led a tour for Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of the Archdiocese of Chicago, who, at the conclusion, prayed over the work of this project as the two men sat together on a bench in the “secret garden.”
It was then that Snyder suggested the cardinal think about building a Loyola children’s hospital, an idea that he told me strongly resonated with Bernardin. And the following year, thanks to a substantial donation from McDonald’s Corporation, a wing of Loyola University Medical Center was turned into the Ronald McDonald Children’s Hospital.
“As I reflect back, I can see if we hadn’t been confronted by the detours, none of this would’ve been possible,” writes Synder. “I believe with all my heart this was all part of God’s plan.”
He also gives credit to a higher power for this book even getting written.
Snyder says it was while flying home from a business trip that he suddenly realized there was more he could do to help families who have lost children. A self-described “C student” in college English classes who had written nothing but business proposals up to that point, Snyder ripped up the first version of the book, and gives credit to God that in the few weeks since its publication he’s received so much positive feedback.
Snyder insists the goal is not to make money – it sells for $10 on Amazon and the e-version is free on the “Detours” website – but to “get it into the hands of as many people as possible” who have lost a child or someone dear to them. So far, hundreds of copies have been given away, he estimates. And Snyder, along with son Michael and daughter-in-law Debra Marsalisi, also started an online Detours Ministry, which will soon “go on the road.”
No doubt there will be other unexpected forks that pop up.
On Wednesday, Snyder underwent surgery to remove half of a kidney that contained what doctor’s perceive to be a cancerous growth. Because he’d just gotten home from the hospital when we spoke, he admitted any movement resulted in a sharp, stabbing pain in his side.
Still, Snyder was eager to talk about the book, and did so in a conversation that could only be described as animated, upbeat, hopeful. After losing a child, he noted, all other detours pale by comparison.
Besides, he concluded, “I still have too much to get done.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
