DULUTH — Longtime Duluth sports journalist John Gilbert was with his son, Jack, at a motorsports event May 23 at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, in which participants were allowed to take all kinds of cars out for a spin.
It was a nasty day, with gusting wind and rain and 50-degree temperatures, and John wasn’t feeling up to driving so he went for a ride with Jack in a new Toyota Supra.
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After a lap Jack dropped his dad off at this little tent and went to get another car. John started walking but quickly ran short of breath and dropped to one knee.
“There was this guy under the canopy who said, ‘That guy’s in trouble,’ and Jack, who just got back, said, ‘That’s my dad,’” John Gilbert recalled. “I was on one knee for no more than one minute and I was in the ambulance.
“They must have been parked right there, and if it would have been five minutes, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”
Good thing they were at a race track.
Gilbert flatlined three times
The incident at the track was just the beginning of John’s troubles. He was rushed to the hospital in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, just over a half hour away.
Gilbert, who turned 80 Sept. 1, had two partially blocked arteries and a third, the left anterior descending (LAD) artery, dubbed the “Widowmaker,” was 100% blocked. As harrowing as that sounds, the Gilberts had no idea what they were getting into.
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“I got to the hospital and at that point he had a gown on and was just sitting on the bed that they were going to roll him around on,” Jack Gilbert said. “He was sitting up and everything seemed normal so we talked for a second and I gave him a fist bump and said, ‘You got this.’
“Then like three hours later he’s got tubes in him, monitors hooked up, all sorts of madness and all these doctors on him. He was completely out.”
John Gilbert was in a drug-induced coma for about a week and was in the hospital for more than three weeks.
In that first week he suffered “asystole,” aka flatlining, the worst type of cardiac arrest in that there is a complete absence of any detectable heart activity, the first which his son bore witness.
“I was sitting in the hospital with him when suddenly the machine goes, ‘grrrrrrrr,’” Jack Gilbert said. “Then the alarm went off and he flatlined. That’s a strange thing to be part of and they were like, ‘Get out of here!’ Then the guy came in with an electric thing, ‘bam!,’ to jump start him, and it didn’t work, so this bigger dude had to come in and do it manually.
“They made me get out but I saw most of that one, with the electronic thing not working. So then I was in the waiting room freaking out, going, ‘What the hell?’ Then the pastor came out, and I’m like, ‘This isn’t a good sign.’”
John Gilbert had a short stint as a sportswriter for the Duluth News Tribune before working 31 years for the Minneapolis Tribune (later Star Tribune) and became good friends with hockey icon Herb Brooks. Gilbert, who is considered an authority on the 1980 U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team and the “Miracle on Ice,” was in need of a miracle himself.
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Jack was soon joined by his brother, Jeff, who drove 39 hours straight in his pickup truck from Bellingham, Washington, and Joan, John's longtime wife.
“Three times they restarted my heart, and the doctor actually said to my wife, ‘I don’t want to scare you, but if it happens again, I doubt we bring him back,’” John Gilbert said.
“He said, ‘We can bring him back again but you have to recognize that he might have brain damage. You have to decide, do you want him back with brain damage or do you want to pull the plug?’ That’s quite a choice. My wife said, ‘Bring him back a fourth time and then we’ll decide.’”
Fortunately, the third time was a charm as John Gilbert's health improved steadily from then on.
Gilbert had three stents put in. He said he never felt an ounce of pain even though they broke his ribs once reviving him. He was on dialysis for about three weeks at the Fond du Lac hospital and another two months in Duluth. He also had to wear a defibrillator vest, all day, every day, for three months but was finally able to remove that Sept. 22.
Gilbert has never drank, smoked or used drugs, which he said helped him survive his ordeal, and he has never had any serious health issues. Just last year the doctor gave him a clean bill of health at his checkup.
When Gilbert came to, he thought it was the next morning, not a week that had passed. He told fantastic tales of flying around the Twin Cities in a one-man jet-powered helicopter unlike the world had ever seen, hallucinogenic dreams no doubt amped up by his intolerance to drugs. Gilbert joked that’s what using acid must feel like.
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Despite his goofiness, the medical staff knew he was alright.
“I woke up and told them, ‘You guys put these stupid pajamas on me,’” John Gilbert said. “I said, ‘I wore them out. They’re just little patches left, like Daisy Duke shorts.’ And they laughed like hell. Every time I told these stories they were all laughing like crazy but the nurse said they knew I didn’t have any brain damage because I was really sharp. Even though it was far out, I was very articulate in describing everything.”
Gilbert became a favorite of the nurses with his stories and also won the hospital poll for being the most likely not to make it.
“They had all these different experts and they were brilliant, they were fantastic, every one of them,” Gilbert said. “One doctor came by afterwards and said, ‘Geez, I remember you. I worked on you when you were out.’ And he said, ‘I never thought I’d see you like this again.’ And I said, ‘Like what?’ He said, ‘Alive.’”
The 5-foot-11 Gilbert even lost some weight.
“It was wonderful,” Gilbert said, drawing a laugh. “I’m 187 pounds. I haven’t been this weight since I was out of college. I was trying to get under 220. I’d be up to 224 and down to 218, but now I’m 187.”
That’s a hell of a way to lose weight.
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A lifetime of sports
Gilbert said the experience also made him even closer to his family. Seeing them all there, the support he got, his son Jack, whom he said was like a guardian angel, holding his finger, a show of affection he had never seen before, was overwhelming.
Gilbert, a 1960 Duluth Central graduate, said he was “virtually born with a love of sports.” He is the son of one Duluth’s most famous athletes, Wally Gilbert, who played professional baseball, football and basketball in the 1920s and ’30s, including playing for the legendary Duluth Eskimos traveling football team during the "barnstorming" era.
Sports are the only thing John Gilbert has ever known and he passed that onto his sons as a mentor and a coach.
After returning to Duluth in late June, it wasn’t long before John Gilbert was back at the ballpark covering Duluth Huskies games and writing for the “Reader.”
“He’ll never stop,” Jack Gilbert said. “People always ask me, ‘Are you ever going to take over driving cars for your dad?’ Well, he’s never going to retire or quit. He could be 94-years-old writing stories about new electric cars and stuff.”
John Gilbert has been on the sidelines with his trusty Lumix camera for Minnesota Duluth football and volleyball games and prep sports this fall, covering a variety, as is his norm. He also still occasionally lands a freelance motorsports gig.
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Jack Gilbert said while other motorsports journalists write about cupholders and just scratch the surface, his dad gets down to the nuts and bolts and writes about what really makes some of these exotic cars tick.
“You go to these car shows, including the Chicago Car Show, and he’s the only journalist who ever asks questions about drivetrains and the new motors and the new technology,” Jack Gilbert said. “Nobody else gives a (crap) about that. It’s so weird. What’s your interior like? How about, who cares? There’s really nobody more knowledgeable.”
While John Gilbert certainly hasn’t let this health scare slow him down, he does take more time these days to enjoy the simple things in life. He enjoys his walks and he’s got his favorite chair at his country home in the village of Lakewood, on the same site where he grew up.
Gilbert pays more attention to the sky and the trees and the lake. For a person who survived thanks to a miracle, he’s going to enjoy this new lease on the miracle of life even more.
“You certainly appreciate the important things in life,” Gilbert said. “When I got back to Duluth, I sat in my chair and looked out the window. I saw the new buds on the trees and the blue sky and the puffy clouds and thought, ‘I could very well not be seeing this.’ It’s like a miracle that I’m seeing this, but when you factor in how many times they restarted my heart, and the incredible timing of the ambulance, to me, it’s more like four miracles.”
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