Alum honors late brother by founding nonprofit supporting individuals with spinal cord injuries

For two decades, Bob Graul ’78 was a San Antonio divorce attorney. Wanting to follow the path of giving back to the community that Alvernia University’s Bernardine Sisters always fostered, he also took on pro bono family law cases and later represented abused and neglected children.

“They instilled a love of learning, the idea that you’re more than just an individual,” said the 71-year-old originally from Reading and now living in Port Angeles, Wash. “You’re part of a community.”

After graduating from Alvernia, the English major studied law at the University of Houston Law Center at the urging of pioneering educator Sister Mary Pacelli Staskiel, OSF. Graul thought he would change the world as an international human rights attorney. Instead, he came to realize that one’s impact doesn’t have to be a big, precedent-setting case but can happen one individual at a time.

“If I can make the world better for one person, one kid,” he said, “maybe I lived a good life.”

Now, Graul has brought that same energy to Terry’s Legacy, a nonprofit he began in 2021 to honor his brother, Terry, who died in 2017 from complications of a spinal cord injury. The organization, which the O’Pake Institute for Economic Development and Entrepreneurship helped establish, provides
grants to individuals with spinal cord injuries in Berks County and beyond to foster independent living by covering home modifications. Besides Graul, four other Alvernia graduates — his wife, Therese O’Connor Graul ’78, also an English major; Kevin Rudy ’80; his brother, Christopher Graul ’83; and Jaclyn Nagle ’26, Ph.D. — sit on the group’s board.

“The whole idea,” Graul said, “is for people to get home and start living their lives again. Terry always stressed for himself and others independent living and accessibility.”

Terry Graul was a student at Shippensburg University and working a summer job at a battery plant when the brakes failed on a forklift he was operating and rolled over on him, leaving him a paraplegic at just 20 years old. He was paralyzed from the waist down, with two metal rods in his back and constant pain.

“He just stayed positive,” Graul said, adding that his brother never thought of himself as disabled. “He didn’t like us to use the word inspiration, but that’s what he was.”

After rehab, Terry came home to a house fitted with the bare minimum: a ramp and a lowered sink in a back bathroom, Graul said. Terry would face other accessibility issues, such as the elevator failing in his apartment building. The experiences made him an advocate for independent living. Terry became president of Abilities in Motion, a Reading nonprofit that offers services to those with disabilities, while working at his father’s insurance company. He also lived life, playing wheelchair basketball, traveling the country in a van with hand controls and marrying.

“He kept going,” Graul said. “I would have given up a long time ago.”

Last year, Terry’s Legacy gave out $20,000 in grants. Bob Schmell, 63, who suffered a C5 spinal cord injury when he fell out of bed, was one of three recipients, getting two chair lifts to allow him access to his split-level home in Sellersville.

“It was a godsend to us,” said the retired bookkeeper. “We wouldn’t have been able to pay out of pocket.”

For Graul, Terry’s Legacy is not only a tangible way to remember his brother but also to live the values instilled by his parents and Alvernia.

“The nuns fostered a desire to do well for the community,” he said. “You can make a difference, no matter where you start.”