Roll On

Today's column is a tribute to Josh Winheld, a Facebook friend, who died Dec. 5, after three decades of living with Duchenne.

I was visiting my parents when he died, and I couldn't get back in time for the funeral. I was feverish when I wrote this piece on Friday, but there is no way a bad cold was going to make me miss marking his passing.

Not when I thought about what Josh went through every day.

In the end he carried a ventilator on his wheelchair. He had a trache inserted in his throat and a defibrillator in his chest to regulate his racing heart.

None of that slowed him down - a memoir, a master's, speaking all over the country when not touring its classic baseball cathedrals - he used his time with a vengeance. As a boy he read he would likely die by 20. He filled 31 years.

So for Josh we cue up a favorite song of mine. I looked for the Ronnie Lane version on YouTube. It had glitches. So here's a Vetiver version. "Roll On, Babe."

Posted by Daniel Rubin @ 5:30 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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About Metro Mashup

Metro columnist Karen Heller has been an Inquirer staff writer since 1986. She has won national, state and local awards for feature writing, investigative reporting and criticism, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. E-mail Karen here; read her columns here.

An award-winning columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Annette John-Hall’s twice weekly metro columns always illuminate. Her topics and storytelling challenge readers to reflect on their own perceptions, to turn off the auto response and forge a different kind of conversation. She has been nominated twice by the Inquirer for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. E-mail Annette here; read her columns here.

Kevin Riordan’s daily newspaper byline debuted in 1972, when he was a child prodigy. He got his first real newspaper job four years later, and joined the Inquirer in 2010. A native of western Massachusetts, he lives in Haddon Heights, NJ. E-mail Kevin here; read his columns here.

Since joining The Inquirer as a staff writer in 1988, Daniel Rubin has reported from 27 countries, but most of them were small. He's a metro columnist and has been the European Correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers. For two years he sat at home and wrote Blinq, the paper's first daily blog. Dan began newspaper work in Norfolk and Louisville, Ky., after getting his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Northwestern University. He has lived in all four commonwealths, most recently in Pennsylvania. He teaches urban journalism at the University of Pennsylvania. E-mail Daniel here; read his columns here.

Monica Yant Kinney joined the Inquirer as a suburban reporter in 1996, moved to the City Hall Bureau two years later and was named a metro columnist in 2001 at the age of 30. As a columnist, Kinney speaks to, and for, the curious and infuriated masses, writing often about gun violence, casinos, politics, pop culture and parenting. She logs so many miles reporting in the city, suburbs and South Jersey, she finally bought a Prius. E-mail Monica here; read her columns here.

Visit Blinq 1.0 here.

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