Editors’ note: “Who is Syracuse?” is a series that runs in The Daily Orange every spring. It highlights individuals who embody the spirit of Syracuse University. Members of the SU community were encouraged to nominate people they thought fit this description. This series explores their stories.

Wade Whitton reached the bottom of the ski hill and felt weak. It was only the second run of the day but his legs were heavy.

He told his mom, who promptly told the 8-year-old to suck it up and return to the top of the hill. But the pull on his lower body persisted and after his continued complaints, she told him to take a break and build a snowman with his sister.

Soon however, Whitton couldn’t walk. He was dragging himself across the snow on his forearms. Both his sister and mother panicked.

“It’s just the most bizarre story,” Whitton said.

Whitton wasn’t supposed to walk again. With a dual diagnosis of transverse myelitis and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, the combination of which can cause paralysis, he was hospitalized for nine months with no feeling in the entire lower part of his body.

Then one day he woke up to an empty room. Wanting to find his mom, he scaled his way out of his hospital bed using his arms on the rails to hoist himself up.

When his feet fell from the mattress and hit the floor, Whitton experienced a miracle: his toes were cold.

His mother cried.

His doctors were perplexed.

He was just happy to get out of the hospital and start being active.

After months of wheelchairs, walkers and belt leashes, Whitton was finally rehabilitated and decided not to waste that blessing.

Now, the junior psychology major at Syracuse University makes the most of his life by participating in endless extracurricular activities and trying to make as many friends as possible in the process. Friends he would do anything for.

Whitton has been the vice president of recruitment and communication director of the rugby team; an active member of Alpha Phi Omega — the community service fraternity on campus; an orientation leader; a teaching assistant for a philosophy class; and, most recently, a member of the Disability Cultural Center on campus.

Getting involved with the Disability Cultural Center is something that was important to Whitton. He helped out with the center’s annual event, Orange Ability, which allows students to participate in activities such as wheelchair basketball, power soccer and other adaptive sports.

“Adaptive sports really hit home, you know,” Whitton said. “I can relate with these kids.”

He said he eventually wants to go into corporate nonprofits, and work with disabled communities or addiction and abuse populations, but he stressed it’s a blessing that SU has finally helped him to realize it.

Whitton doesn’t do it for the recognition or to get hired — he generally just wants to try as many things as possible.

But it wasn’t always easy for Whitton. After being super involved in high school, during his freshman year of college he reverted to binge watching movies in his room as opposed to joining groups while dealing with personal problems at home. After realizing he was wasting his time at college, he consulted his adviser and began joining a plethora of organizations.

Even when he wasn’t involved on campus, however, Whitton was always eager to strike up conversations with new people. Whitton met his current girlfriend Charlotte Ochs on the first day of freshman year by simply sauntering into her room and asking her about the breast cancer tattoo wrapped around her finger.

“My mom died when I was 9, and I forgot that people here didn’t know,” Ochs said. “So I said to Wade, ‘Oh yeah that’s for my dead mom,’ and he didn’t even flinch. He was so invested in me and my story, and so genuine.”

From there, Ochs said Whitton “implemented” himself right into her life as he does with so many people on campus.

Both she, a junior social work major, and Hunter, a junior history and economics dual major, have endless stories of Whitton making friends on the fly and genuinely desiring to help the people around him.

Once, Whitton and Ochs were walking home from a party. It was late and they passed a girl on a set of stairs wheezing and bawling. As the girl shook with emotion, Ochs thought to herself that they should call for help, when she turned to tell Whitton, he was already seated with the girl, rubbing her back and offering to go get her inhaler from her room.

When the door of his house was kicked in, Whitton went to the hardware store and mended it on his own.

When his bike broke, Whitton bought the parts to fix it himself even though everyone insisted he just take it to a shop.

Coming into SU as a broadcast major, Whitton left the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications after his first class. He then tried sport management, geology, education and sociology. He is now settling into psychology solely because it’s where he has amassed the most credits and had to declare a major so the administration would let him register for classes.

“Man, it’s been a fun whirlwind of trying to figure out what I want to do with myself,” Whitton said, making light of himself and then proceeding to explain his favorite class at SU was the aqua Zumba class he took last semester.

And although he is a friendly face on campus many recognize, Ochs believes he is deeper than what meets the eye.

“He’s so much more than that nice kid who talks to everyone,” she said. “A lot of thought goes into what he does, and it is planned to make sure someone feels good. He’s very smart and really good at reading others. He is a really, deeply thoughtful and sensitive person.”

Banner photo by Bridget Williams

Published on April 26, 2016 at 12:49 am

Contact: ararcham@syr.edu