Travis Matthew Roy (April 17, 1975 – October 29, 2020) was an American college ice hockey player, author and philanthropist.
In 1995, he was injured in his first shift as a college hockey player for Boston University and was paralyzed from the neck down. He later created the Travis Roy Foundation, which gives grants to enhance the life of people with spinal cord injuries and for research. His autobiography, Eleven Seconds, was published in 1998.
Childhood
Travis Roy was born on April 17, 1975, in Yarmouth, Maine, the son of Lee and Brenda Roy.
Roy grew up playing ice hockey and dreamed of playing for a Division I college hockey team. He attended Yarmouth High School as a freshman, then transferred to nearby North Yarmouth Academy (NYA) in order to pursue an athletic scholarship. Roy transferred again and graduated from Tabor Academy and received an ice hockey scholarship to Boston University (College of Communication, Class of 2000).
Roy also had family connections in Vermont. Elisha Goodsell, Roy's great-grandfather, ran ferries on Lake Champlain, and lived on Malletts Bay, where the Roy family continues to spend time in summers.
Injury
On October 20, 1995 – just eleven seconds into his first-ever shift for Boston University men's ice hockey team – a 20-year-old Roy lost his balance and fell head first into the boards after checking University of North Dakota player Mitch Vig. The awkward impact with the boards resulted in Roy's cracking his fourth and fifth vertebrae and leaving him a quadriplegic.
Subsequently, Roy regained movement in his right arm.
After a difficult convalescence, Roy returned to BU the following year, and graduated in 2000 with a degree in communications. He remained a supporter of the Terriers men's hockey team, and forged a life-long friendship with head coach Jack Parker.
The Travis Roy Foundation
In 1996, while still attending BU, Roy started a foundation called "The Travis Roy Foundation" to help spinal cord injury survivors and to fund research into a cure. Roy sought to help others who had less support and fewer resources than he did.
As of October 2020, the Travis Roy Foundation had given roughly $9 million to individual grants and to research projects and rehabilitation institutions. Individual grant funds have been used to modify vans and to purchase wheelchairs, computers, ramps, shower chairs, and other adaptive equipment to help those with paraplegia and quadriplegia live their lives. As of October 2020, these grants had helped over 2,100 people with paraplegia and quadriplegia. Donations from athletes, corporations, and community members have made it possible for the foundation to make these grants.
Roy believed that providing grants for adaptive equipment to people with spinal cord injuries was a way to help people live better quality lives. In a Boston Globe article, he was quoted as saying, "It's never about the wheelchair...It's a little piece of independence, a little piece of dignity." According to statistics from 2008, there are approximately 250,000 people currently living with a spinal cord injury and 13,000 new injuries each year in the United States alone.
In October 2015, Sargent College Dean Christopher Moore announced, at a fundraiser for the foundation, that a group of anonymous donors gave a gift of $2.5 million to establish the Travis M. Roy Professorship in Rehabilitation Sciences at Sargent. This would provide the foundation with office space on campus and a $50,000 annual stipend towards staffing for the next 10 years.
The Travis Roy Foundation has collaborated with professional athletes in its fundraising efforts. Chris Drury, a former NHL player as well as a former teammate of Roy's at Boston University, organizes an annual charity golf tournament, which has raised over $1 million toward spinal cord injury research for the Travis Roy Foundation.
Speaking career
Like many young hockey players, Roy grew up dreaming of being in the NHL. With this dream now out of reach, Roy looked to find a new career, a new purpose. Even after receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations after his incident, he also needed to find a way to make money for himself. He turned to public speaking. Roy was paid to tell his story at schools and businesses.