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How a TV Doctor Saved the Life of a Man with Special Needs





I’m kneeling on the floor of a cheap roadside motel somewhere in western Tennessee. Next to me, leading me in prayer, is a large middle-aged man with cerebral palsy named Ronnie Simonsen.

He says, “Bless my mother, my brothers and sisters, and my pastor back home in New Hampshire. God, bless Bob Hope and Cher … and all three of Charlie’s Angels. Especially Jaclyn Smith.”

And then Ronnie says, “And Lord, please help us get to California quickly, where I know I’m going to meet my spiritual brother, Mr. Chad Everett, the star of CBS’s drama Medical Center.”

And here, I interrupt Ron. I say, “Ron, you know, we might not meet Chad Everett. We’re not sure that’s 
going to happen.”


He says, “Yeah, yeah, I know, but keep praying. Keep praying.”

I first met Ronnie about eight years before that. I was working at a summer camp for people with disabilities. I was a counselor there, and I had brought along a video camera because I was also interested in making films.

Ronnie came right up to me and wanted to talk about movies and TV. He had cerebral palsy in his legs, but he also had a combination of autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder. It manifested itself in this fascination with television and movie stars from the 1970s, which is when he was a kid. Learn the things you should never say to a parent of a child with special needs.

Ronnie goes on the road to track down his TV idol—as if his sweatshirt didn’t make that clear.
Courtesy Arthur Bradford

Ronnie goes on the road to track down his TV idol—as if his sweatshirt didn’t make that clear.

He spent most of his childhood in hospitals, and he became particularly obsessed with the people who played doctors on television. He took comfort in their calm voices. There was one man, above all, whom he held as sort of like a god, and that was Chad Everett, who played Dr. Joe Gannon on CBS’s Medical Center.

I really liked Ron. He was fun. He was great on camera—he loved to be on camera. We made lots of videos together at the camp.

Some of the most popular videos were these newscasts we would do. (We made our own news show.) Ronnie was fantastic at that, especially when we could go downtown and he would interview people on the street. He was this large man, and when he would talk to people, he couldn’t stand up for too long, so he would lean on them for balance while he was asking them questions. And he would get them to do skits. He had this real ability to bring people out.

These films that we made developed this underground popularity. Eventually I was able to get some funding to make a film where we would drive across the country with five people with disabilities from this summer camp.

We were going to go from their houses in New England all the way to Los Angeles. Everyone on the trip had their own hopes and dreams for going to California, a place they’d never been. But Ronnie’s dreams overshadowed everybody else’s.

To him, California was the Holy Land. It was the place where he was destined to meet Mr. Chad Everett, his spiritual brother. It was his biggest dream. (He told everybody, “It’s my biggest dream.”) These quotes about dreams prove that no dream is too big.

He took this biggest-dream mission very, very seriously. It kind of stressed him out. I felt like this whole situation was mainly my responsibility as the director of this ridiculous film, and I decided I would be Ronnie’s roommate across the country.

And that’s how I ended up in this hotel room in Tennessee, praying with Ronnie Simonsen.

As Ronnie prays, I say my own little prayer. I’m not a very religious person. I had never really prayed much before. I’m 29 years old, but this is the first time I pray in earnest. I say, Please, help us get to California safely. And please, when we get there, give me some guidance. Help me to solve this mess that we’re going to have when we get to California. Because I have this secret that I haven’t shared with Ron. I probably should have shared it with him, but I just can’t.

I’d gotten in touch with Chad *Everett’s agent before we went on the trip, and I’d asked if we could set up a meeting between these two people. I knew it was going to be a fantastic moment on film.

But his agent made me understand that Chad Everett was a very busy man, and that he wasn’t going to have time for something like that. In fact, he didn’t really wanna encourage his obsessive fans.




A man with cerebral palsy was determined to 
meet the star of his 
favorite medical drama—and no one could've expected what happened when he did.