Echo Times

Issue date: 10/9/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Peg Barrows Neill Todd McCleary shares a laugh with a fellow radio club member in the quad during a day of music.

Todd McCleary almost died. What came instead of death was a new approach to life.

If you go to school at College of Marin, you have probably seen or heard from McCleary. Although he has only been enrolled here since fall of 2006, he is very active and says he "keeps his life a full plate." Besides being a full time student, McCleary is also the president of the radio club at COM. McCleary is 43 years old and is majoring in psychology. He has his sights set on transferring to either Dominican or Sonoma State University.

It took some courage for McCleary to come back to school. "My self perception was that I couldn't keep up" said McCleary, "but through experiences in school, I found out it was not about what my head was telling me. We are all here for the same thing."

Born in Charleston, Missouri and raised with his 13 brothers and sisters, McCleary said he was "a real country boy, independent. Nobody ever had to show me my way in life. I have an old soul. When I was young I spent a lot of time with elderly people. Even they called me 'old man.' I have a nickname 'Grampa,' that some of the students here call me." He doesn't have kids of his own, but he does mentor young adults.

He moved to California in 1984, a year after graduating high school in Missouri. He was active there also, but says he was "mainly popular for mischievous deeds." His brother had moved to California before him, and he also was "fortunate enough to find a second mom", said McCleary. Both his parents passed away over ten years ago. A woman here in California took McCleary under her wings.

McCleary worked in retail for a while, but what he really wanted was to come back to school. He thought this would not be possible because of financial difficulty. Suddenly this concern was over shadowed by something more immediate. "I walked through the valley of the shadow of death with a near death experience," he said.

"It started with a cough, progressed into a bad cold, then double walking pneumonia," said McCleary. He spent a month in a coma with collapsed lungs, suffered a heart attack, a stroke, and his liver began to shut down. McCleary remembers hearing the doctors from his comatose state. "They were talking about me as if I was not there" he said. "I could hear them saying I may not ever walk again and that I would most likely be a vegetable if I did survive." At one point, they gave McCleary hours to live and notified his family. "When my family showed up to say goodbye, I opened my eyes. I just came out of it, I couldn't lie there anymore. I had to beat the odds and prove that the doctors were wrong, by the grace of God."

Continued...

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