Until
he was 17, Jeffrey Zielasko was like every other teenager. "People
perceived him as an ordinary boy, likable but with few outstanding
characteristics," says his father. Then in the fall of his senior
year of high school, he was diagnosed with leukemia--and it all
changed.
Rather
than wallowing in self-pity, though, Jeff chose a positive tone.
"Okay," he said. "I've got it, so let's do something about it."
Jeff
remained fiercely positive throughout his illness. "Not until
the leukemia struck did we realize that deep inside him flourished
strengths that lifted him above the ordinary," Ernest Zielasko
writes of his son in the new book, Jeff's Denial: The Moving Story
of a Teenage Son Who Fought Leukemia By Attacking Life.
"I
wrote this book to tell others about those strengths," says Zielasko.
"I want the story of Jeff's battle to inspire others to fight
devastating afflictions with his kind of courage." The story of
that courage unfolds in Jeff's Denial. Zielasko touchingly and
emotionally writes of his son's life before and after his diagnosis,
including the time that he spent as a student in RIT's School
of Printing Management and Sciences. "His dream was to get into
RIT. He had never even visited but knew that's where he wanted
to go. He called it the ëCadillac of graphic arts schools,'" says
Zielasko.
Following
debilitating treatments, Jeff's doctor declared him in remission
near Christmas 1977, though a final phase of chemotherapy would
be necessary. By September 1978, Jeff had convinced his family
and his doctor that he could manage college and his health far
from home in Hudson, Ohio. He arrived at RIT and made it through
the first and second quarters without a problem. But a relapse
in March, which cut his chances of survival from 50 to five percent,
necessitated his return to Ohio.
Although
still out of remission, Jeff insisted on returning to the Henrietta
campus for fall quarter 1979. Unfortunately, his stay was short-only
about a week. He died on Oct. 9, 1979.
Several
years after writing Jeff's Denial and shopping for publishers,
Ernest Zielasko decided to publish it himself. The retired editor
and publisher of a rubber industry publication says that he hopes
people will be inspired by the way his son faced leukemia, an
attitude reflected in the book's title.
He
explains that Jeff's Denial goes back to his own reading of the
Thomas Wolfe classic You Can't go Home Again. In a letter to a
friend, the novel's protagonist says that while man is born to
live, suffer and die, "we must, dear Fox, deny it along the way."
In
memory of his son and his love of RIT's printing school, Zielasko
founded the Jeffrey W. Zielasko Memorial Scholarship Fund for
undergraduate printing students. To contribute to the fund, call
RIT's Office of Development, 716-475-5500. Jeff's Denial is available
for $14.95 from Harbortown Press, P.O. Box 624, Hudson, Ohio,
44236.
