Louisa-Muscatine's Mashek vows to return to coaching after suffering stroke

By Matt Levins, Burlington Hawk Eye


FRUITLAND, Iowa — It was just another September day, like any other autumn day for Tom Mashek.


Mashek, after putting in a day of work as a teacher at Louisa-Muscatine Junior High School, spent some time at home with his family — wife, Julie, son, Max and daughters, Madison and Mallory. After a full day, Mashek went off to bed, ready to get up and do it all over again the next morning.


The next eight hours forever altered Mashek’s life, turned his world upside down and inside out.


Sometime during the night, the longtime varsity wrestling coach for Louisa-Muscatine High School suffered a massive stroke. The vision in his right eye was cut in half. His short-term memory was lost. The world as he knew it was altered forever.


Suddenly, the things that meant the most to him in the world were gone. He feared for his family’s survival — “What if I die?” He was told he would never teach again. And coaching wrestling? Well, that was simply out of the question.


At the age of 44, Mashek was beginning to wonder if the best years of his life were already behind him.


Now, two months later with his 22nd season of coaching about to begin, Mashek finds himself in a new fight, a fight to regain the part of his life that was lost. And the former state-qualifying wrestler for Don Bosco and All-American for Buena Vista University is using the same principles and character-building traits he learned from wrestling.


While Mashek won’t be in the corner for the Falcons’ season opener on Dec. 4 at Washington High School, he vows to be back before the season is over, and he plans to be better than ever.


Mashek already is hard at work making sure that is possible.


“Working out has definitely helped me get back to where I am,” Mashek said recently from the comfort of his family home in between physical therapy sessions, which he undergoes five days a week, three times a day. “I definitely think wrestling and the other sports I played helped. My attitude is that I will be better than ever when I am through with this because I went through a lot in wrestling and it made me better.”


Yet Mashek will be the first to tell you he was scared, plenty scared, and with good reason. When he woke up that Tuesday morning, he knew right away something wasn’t quite right. He wouldn’t know he had had a stroke until later that day.


“I woke up and went to get ready for school and I was having trouble seeing out of my right eye, like I had lost my vision. So I laid back down in bed. I thought maybe I was dreaming,” Mashek recalled. “My wife was getting ready for work and I told her. We weren’t sure what was going on, so she took me to the eye doctor. While we were waiting at the doctor’s office I started having a really bad headache. The eye doctor knew right away something was really wrong. My wife drove me to the hospital in Iowa City and they told me I had a stroke. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe it.”


The next nine days are a blur for Mashek, who spent them lying in a hospital bed, tubes and machines hooked up to him. 


If Mashek needed a wake-up call, he got one early on when one of his doctors gave him a dose of reality.


“One of my doctors at the first hospital told me I would never coach or teach again, that I would have to find other things to do with my life,” Mashek said. “That upset me quite a bit. I thought about that for the next four or five days. ‘What do I do when the things that are most important are taken away from me?’ When someone tells you you can’t do the job you’ve done your whole life, it hits home pretty hard.


“Looking back on it, that might have been the best thing that could have happened. I realized that I could still do it, It was just going to take a lot of hard work. That became my motivation — to get back and show people that I can still teach and coach.”


Not only were the effects of the stroke taking their toll on Mashek, but the drugs that were being injected into him left him dazed and confused. His father, Hall of Fame wrestling coach Dan Mashek, and his mother, Linda, spent plenty of time in the hospital. Part of the time, though, Tom Mashek couldn’t comprehend what anyone was saying. 


“One day everything was so jumbled up that I couldn’t understand what people were saying,” Mashek said. “My mom and dad were talking to me and I had no idea what they were saying. It was all from the medicine they were giving me. It all went away eventually, but it was pretty scary there for a while.”


After nine days in a hospital bed and 12 days total in the hospital, Mashek finally was released to return home.


But the hardest work still lay ahead. And being a wrestler, Mashek does not shy away from hard work. In fact, he thrives on it. So when his physical therapy sessions began, he was quick to get down to business and even asked for homework.


Bring it on.


“I have between one and three sessions a day five days a week,” Mashek said. “I do a lot of memory work and reading. My reading is getting better every week. They told me that for every day I was in the hospital it would take a week to recover. I have a long way to go still, but I’m happy with the progress I’ve made so far. When I leave there, I tell them I want to do more. I make them give me homework to do. I want to do as much as I can, work as hard as I can to get back as fast as I can.


“One Sunday night I sat down to do my homework and my son Max, who is in seventh grade, came over and asked me, ‘Dad, when did you get that homework?’ I told him I got it on Friday. He said, ‘And you waited until Sunday night to do it?’ We all started laughing because Julie and I are always getting on the kids about the same thing. That was one of the lighter moments.”


Mashek’s family has been by his side every step of the way. He spends two days a week in Eldridge with his parents while he does physical therapy in the Quad Cities. The rest of the week is spent back home where his in-laws, Don and Nellie Turnbough, drive him to his physical therapy appointments in Iowa City and Muscatine. 


Through it all, Mashek has come to find out who his true friends are and how many lives he has touched.


“My wife and kids have just been awesome through all of this. They are so supportive of what I am doing. My wife has been amazing. She has stayed by my side the whole time. My parents, my sister, my in-laws — they have all been amazing, making sure I get to my appointments, making meals for our family, making sure I take my medicines at the right times,” said Mashek, who turned 45 last month. “This whole thing has allowed me to reconnect with people. It’s amazing how many people you cross paths with in 45 years on this planet. I have been very fortunate to meet a lot of great people through the years.”


While his friends have rallied to help raise thousands of dollars to offset the mountain of medical expenses his family is incurring, the one thing that has been disheartening to Mashek is people’s reaction to him in public. He said people are often afraid to approach him in public, for fear the stroke has left him unrecognizable or in some sort of vegetative state. Nothing could be further from the truth.


“People I have known avoid me in public. They’re scared to approach me because they think I’m some kind of monster or something,” Mashek said. “They think I can’t talk right or my facial features are totally different. I’m just the same as I was before.”


For now, Mashek is working his way back, thanks in part to the strong work ethic and determination he learned through wrestling. He recently got his driver’s license back and the sight in his right eye and short memory are coming back, slowly but surely.


Chad Hahn and Ben Brade will take over the Louisa-Muscatine wrestling team until Mashek is strong enough to get back to the sport which has been such a big part of his life. He recently attended a Louisa-Muscatine junior high practice, the first time he has seen the Louisa-Muscatine kids since the stroke. He received a warm welcome back.


Through it all, Mashek has gained a new perspective on life.


“Sometimes in life you just get in a rut. You just live life and take things for granted. It’s sad when you have to nearly die to learn how to really live and appreciate the little things in life,” Mashek said. “I am so thankful for the time I get to spend with my mom and dad right now. I am so thankful for the time I get to spend with my family, just chilling and watching movies and talking.


“I’m a very lucky person. I have a great family. I teach at a great school where I have been for 22 years. I love my job. The community and all my friends have been great with all the letters and cards and emails. It’s just amazing how much support I’m getting. It’s actually a blessing in a lot of ways that this happened. But I’ll be back. I’ll be back and better than ever real soon.”