Adam Taliaferro

Adam Taliaferro, the former Penn State football player whose recovery from a paralyzing tackle gripped the nation, has been chosen to replace retiring Gloucester County Freeholder William Wallace on the Democratic ticket in November, according to party officials. "He is an energetic and grounded individual. He has a very compelling story, and he is ready to give back to the community that supported him," Robert Damminger, the county freeholder director and a fellow Democrat, said Tuesday.

Hundreds of Penn State faculty, students, staff and fans attended a rally yesterday in State College, Pa., for partially paralyzed football player Adam Taliaferro. Taliaferro, a freshman defensive back from Eastern High in Voorhees, Camden County, has been unable to move his fingers or his legs since he injured his spine making a tackle last week at Ohio State. He had spinal-fusion surgery Monday and was transferred from Ohio to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia on Wednesday.

For all the accolades he achieved during his football career at Eastern Regional High School, Adam Taliaferro received even more plaudits yesterday for his character off the field. "Whether he plays another day or minute of football again, that won't change what kind of a man he is," said Donald Jones, Taliaferro's freshman high school coach. Taliaferro, a freshman cornerback at Pennsylvania State University who was The Inquirer's all-area football player of the year last season, was seriously injured Saturday when his head hit the knee of an Ohio State player he was tackling.

At Eastern High, Adam Taliaferro left an indelible impression before graduating last June. And not just because he scored 62 career touchdowns or because he was also an outstanding basketball player. You see, in addition to being perhaps the best athlete in the Camden County school's history, the always-smiling Taliaferro had an effervescent-but-oh-so-humble personality that made him so endearing and so well-liked. Yesterday, for the first time since a frightening Sept. 23 football collision left the Penn State freshman cornerback partially paralyzed, Taliaferro returned to Eastern in a wheelchair.

Several years removed from his football days in South Jersey and at Lafayette College, Ed Carter rolls his wheelchair toward his pets' cage, opens the door, and plops one of his two ferrets atop his lap, gently nuzzling and kissing the one he calls Slinky. "These guys," he said, nodding at the cage that sits in a dining room that was converted into his bedroom, "have helped me get through a lot. " For Carter, 30, a man who barely escaped death four years ago, this holiday season is special.

Adam Taliaferro, smiling broadly while seated in his motorized wheelchair, raised both of his arms and greeted everyone with a wave. Biting back tears, Andre Taliaferro, Adam's father, watched his son and insisted that this story would have a happy ending. Less than six weeks after suffering a severe spinal injury while playing for Penn State in a game at Ohio State on Sept. 23, Adam Taliaferro, an 18-year-old freshman from Voorhees, Camden County, spoke publicly about his condition for the first time yesterday.

Their voices strained by sorrow, Penn State coach Joe Paterno and some of his football players said yesterday that the condition of severely injured freshman Adam Taliaferro had left the struggling Nittany Lions emotionally devastated as they tried to prepare for Saturday's Big Ten Conference game against Purdue at Beaver Stadium. Meanwhile, Wayne Sebastianelli, the university's director of athletic medicine, provided the first details of the cervical spinal-cord injury suffered by the 18-year-old cornerback from Eastern High in Voorhees, Camden County, late in the fourth quarter of Saturday's 45-6 loss at Ohio State.

Throughout the painful hours of rehabilitation, hours that stretched into weeks and months and tested his resolve more than any football game in which he had played, Adam Taliaferro imagined what a night that seemed far into the future might be like. At night during his three-month stay at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia, where he worked diligently to overcome a spinal injury that left him temporarily paralyzed, Taliaferro would close his eyes and envision the emotion that would fill his heart if he could only get well enough to lead Penn State onto the field at Beaver Stadium for the 2001 season opener.

A little more than three months after a football injury left him partially paralyzed, Penn State freshman cornerback Adam Taliaferro walked out of the Magee Rehabilitation Hospital on crutches late yesterday morning. In a scene right out of a movie, Taliaferro smiled as two dozen cameras documented each step, and friends, relatives, hospital personnel and strangers applauded. About 40 people, including hospital workers, stood on a balcony at the Center City rehabilitation facility, cheering and whistling.

Somewhere on the way from the Eastern locker room to the waterlogged football stadium after halftime, Adam Taliaferro must have found a phone booth. That's probably what it seemed like to Cherokee fans who braved the rainy weather last night. After an ordinary first half, Taliaferro was extraordinary in the second as he scored on three long touchdown runs to lead seventh-ranked Eastern past No. 3 Cherokee, 24-13, in a battle of Olympic Conference American Division unbeatens. Taliaferro, a junior, led Eastern's charge to first place in one of South Jersey's most rugged conferences.

School is back in session for Matt Cruz, even if he won't be attending in person just yet. The 16-year-old Neshaminy High School sophomore, who remains paralyzed from the chest down following a bus crash in Boston in February, said at a news conference Monday that this week was going to be his first hitting the books again, as he continues recovering from his injuries at Magee Rehabilitation Center in Center City. Sitting next to his mother, Megan, who held his hand as he spoke, Cruz talked with reporters for the first time since the bus driving him and more than 40 others to Harvard University for a visit struck an overpass along a Boston road on Feb. 2, causing the roof to collapse.

Several years removed from his football days in South Jersey and at Lafayette College, Ed Carter rolls his wheelchair toward his pets' cage, opens the door, and plops one of his two ferrets atop his lap, gently nuzzling and kissing the one he calls Slinky. "These guys," he said, nodding at the cage that sits in a dining room that was converted into his bedroom, "have helped me get through a lot. " For Carter, 30, a man who barely escaped death four years ago, this holiday season is special.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Monday's announcement of NCAA sanctions against the Penn State football program was met with bewilderment and anger by a large cross-section of current and former players. But nothing seemed to bewilder and anger former Nittany Lions more than the disclosure that all of Joe Paterno's 111 wins over a 14-year period from 1998 through 2011 were vacated, meaning they won't count in the NCAA record book. Adam Taliaferro, the South Jersey native who was almost paralyzed after being involved in a devastating hit in a 2000 game at Ohio State but made an inspiring recovery, couldn't control his disbelief on Twitter only a few hours after the NCAA delivered its penalties for the actions of university officials in the Jerry Sandusky scandal.

Adam Taliaferro inspired Penn State students and alumni everywhere in 2000 after he was paralyzed in a football game against Ohio State and made a storybook recovery despite dire predictions. It appears many of those same fans once again have put their faith in Taliaferro, now 30 and a Cherry Hill lawyer, to help their alma mater in the aftermath of the child sex-abuse scandal still rocking the campus. Taliaferro was the top vote-getter among candidates for three open alumni seats on the Pennsylvania State University board of trustees in the most highly contested race in the school's history.

Penn State's board of trustees this afternoon announced the winners of the most highly contested race for three alumni seats on the board in the school's history. Adam Taliaferro, a Cherry Hill lawyer and former football player who was injured and made a storybook recovery, was the top vote getter. Anthony P. Lubrano, a wealthy donor from Glenmoore who waged an expensive advertising campaign, came in second. The third seat goes to Ryan J. McCombie, a former Navy SEAL captain.

For his initial question on his first of 18 stops through seven states with the Penn State coaches' caravan, new Nittany Lions football coach Bill O'Brien was asked, "What do you predict your record will be this season?" Talk about a somewhat offbeat opening Monday to the scheduled Q-and-A session at a Center City hotel with an audience made up almost entirely of Penn State alumni. But O'Brien resisted the temptation to roll his eyes and answered. "I talk all the time about us playing 12 one-game seasons," he said.

More than 80 Penn State alumni, from near and far and in a variety of prestigious professions, will compete for three open seats on the university's board of trustees in one of the most highly contested races ever at the school. Many candidates were on campus Wednesday when ballot positions were announced. To be eligible, candidates had to secure 50 alumni signatures. Voting online begins April 10 and closes on May 3, with winners to take their seats on the 32-member board by July 1. Lawyers, academics, executives, bankers, a U.S. judge and a Baltimore, Md. investigative TV reporter are among those seeking a seat in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal involving former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Eli Woodard is fast. He is not in a hurry. But everybody wants to rush The Next Big Thing. Everybody wants to know where Woodard is going to play college football. Will it be national champion Alabama? Ohio State? Notre Dame? Rutgers? Woodward enjoys all the attention. He also would like to finish his junior year in high school, and then maybe enjoy his senior year, too. "I know I'm only going to go through this once, so I'm trying to enjoy it," said Woodard, a junior at Eastern Regional High School in Voorhees.

Adam Taliaferro only played a handful of games for Penn State before suffering a career-ending spinal injury in his freshman season, against Ohio State. Originally expected to be paralyzed for life, Taliaferro is moving freely, at a fast pace these days. He is an attorney and was elected in November to the Gloucester County Board of Chosen Freeholders. And the former Inquirer South Jersey football player of the year from Eastern High, remains a staunch supporter of his college coach Joe Paterno.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Penn State interim head coach Tom Bradley appreciated the way fans at Ohio Stadium treated his players before and during Saturday's game against Ohio State. "You've got to take your hat off to them," he said, "and I actually did that, walking off the field after warm-ups, when they stood up and cheered us. That was first-class. This is a first-class university here. " The Ohio State student body encouraged fans at the game to support the Nittany Lions in light of the child sexual-abuse scandal that surfaced on campus two weeks ago. The fans booed the Lions as they would any visiting team, but there was no bitterness or negative behavior.