Jon Wilson ’05

When Jon Wilson arrives at Homecoming this fall for his 10th reunion — which he plans to do with wife Amy Salm Wilson ’05 by his side — he, like many of his classmates, will be in a very different state of mind than he was at graduation.

One year after graduation, Jon was living on Cape Cod, working for a politician and doing carpentry on the side with his brother. On a job site one day he felt a tightness in his left leg.

“I was running at the time, too,” he said, “and I thought I pulled a muscle so I went to the doctor.”

The diagnosis: a pulled muscle.

A month passed. His leg didn’t feel better so he returned to the doctor, who gave him the same diagnosis, but sent him on to a sports orthopedist.

The “pulled muscle” turned out to be epithelioid sarcoma, a rare form of soft tissue cancer typically found in young adults, and it had spread throughout his leg. Treatment options are limited due to the cancer’s rarity, so doctors recommended amputation.

After surgery, cancer was still showing up “on the margins,” Jon said, so doctors put him on Nexavar, a drug typically used for liver or kidney cancer, to see if it might help. He would be on the drug for at least a year, and the doctors gave him one warning: “Don’t try to get pregnant on this, because we don’t know what it does to you.”

In the week before Jon took his first dose, he and Amy conceived their first child. “[It] was miraculous to us, and it was pretty special,” he says.

What also was special was support from friends. Soon after the amputation, Jon wanted to try riding a bike.

“That was something that was really important for me, to stay active, and to instill some confidence. After losing your leg, your whole self-image changes.”

Unfortunately, between ongoing treatment and being out of work for awhile, Jon said they took a financial hit, and he didn’t have much disposable income
for biking equipment. Friends pitched in and purchased an adaptive road bike for him.

It was a step that would not only kick off a serious love of adventure sports — attending a whitewater kayaking program for cancer survivors, participating in 100-mile bike rides,  and, with help from a friend’s mom, learning to ski — but one that also opened his eyes to a broader issue.

“I figured there was a need for cancer survivors — a financial need to get adaptive sports equipment and to try to challenge themselves in the hopes of building confidence through an active lifestyle.”

About five years ago he started the AKP Foundation — named for his mantra, “Always Keep Pedaling,” which he’s been president of until just recently, when
a series of incidents gave him pause.

Last June, Jon broke his collarbone while mountain biking. “Having one leg and a broken collarbone, it’s a bit inconvenient,” he said, “but that was fine.”

Then a month later, he was road biking and got hit by a car. “That guy just wasn’t paying attention. He T-boned me, split my bike in two. It was pretty scary.”

Jon said although he was in bad shape for several months, neither accident left him with long-term issues. But they were very much a wake-up call.

As a full-time high school social studies teacher at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester, Vermont, which he attended as a student, plus being a grad student, husband,  father to two daughters, cancer survivor, and AKP president, Jon realized it was time to focus on his health, family, and teaching career, which he said is his No. 1 passion.

So a few months ago he stepped down from running AKP (though he still holds an advisory role), and is learning to look at life differently.

“I look back at the time of my treatment and everything not with scorn or regret, but with a quasi-fondness, just for the perspective I gained and the intensity of emotion. Learning the habit of living in the present.

“If I could go back in time and change things around, I would not. I would still choose this course of life.”