MDI’s DeMuro flourishes in new job Ex-coach recovers from stroke, takes ‘Y’ post

Lenny DeMuro has a desk job.

And that’s fine with him. It’s something more than he thought he would have this summer, when he suffered a stroke and spent more than a month recovering at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.

DeMuro, a former MDI High School swimming head coach and assistant football coach and longtime MDI YMCA swimming coach, is now the executive director of the YMCA in Bar Harbor.

He also owns a hotel in Trenton and a restaurant in Southwest Harbor, but DeMuro has turned over the day-to-day running of the hotel to his son Tony, who is now the MDI High head swimming coach, and the restaurant to his daughter Debby DuBois and her husband Dan.

Life behind a desk isn’t ideal for a man with an active lifestyle. But it’s a sign that DeMuro has emerged from the ordeal.

“Having this job has distracted me totally from the stroke,” said DeMuro, sitting in a chair on the YMCA pool deck as the MDI High teams were warming up for a dual meet against Bangor recently.

“I don’t spend all day sitting in my chair watching ‘The Price is Right’ and thinking, ‘I wish I could go jogging again.”‘

DeMuro suffered the stroke in April 2003. He spent a week in the hospital in Bar Harbor and then was sent to EMMC. He went through two sessions of therapy a day. Doctors told DeMuro he had a 20 percent chance of ever walking again.

On May 5, about 31/2 weeks after the stroke, DeMuro got out of the wheelchair. Although the left side of his body is still weaker, earlier this year he put aside the cane he had been using for support.

“That made a big difference,” he said. “Now I can go shopping and do normal things again because my one good arm isn’t holding a cane.”

The therapy helped, of course, but DeMuro realized that having the support of wife Rita Johnston was even more important for his recovery.

Johnston wheeled DeMuro to and from therapy sessions and was able to stay in DeMuro’s hospital room with him every night. And because of that, he believes, he didn’t get depressed about his situation.

DeMuro realized that on a day Johnston took a quick trip back to the island to do some paperwork.

“I told her when she came back that night, ‘I know why I’m not depressed, it’s because you’re in the room with me the whole night,'” he said. “I had somebody to blab with and watch TV with all day.”

DeMuro, who coached the MDI High girls to a Class B state title in 1982, equated therapy and the recovery process to the way he worked with his swimmers.

“You do a lot of work and you improve a little bit,” said DeMuro, who earned Coach of the Year honors in 1982 and 1984. “It’s sort of like the same kind of sales job you do on the kids all the time: just keep going. It’s like a blind faith thing. There are no guarantees.”

But once he had recovered sufficiently DeMuro wasn’t sure what he would do to keep himself busy. He had turned over care of the Sunrise Motel in Trenton to his son, and his daughter and son-in-law were running the Top of the Hill restaurant in Southwest Harbor.

An opportunity popped up at the MDI YMCA in October when the executive director resigned on short notice. The YMCA advertised for a replacement, and DeMuro filled out an application. Three interviews later, DeMuro had the job – despite the fact that he doesn’t have the professional requirements of the national YMCA.

What DeMuro did have was plenty of experience. He had run the YMCA from 1974-87, and considering that he owns his own businesses, he said the board felt he was more than qualified for the executive director position.

“My line was, you stop moving for six months like I did and your whole life will go by around the second time,” he said. “And here I am.”

This winter he watched as Tony DeMuro coached the MDI boys to their first-ever Class B state title in February and was also named the Penobscot Valley Conference Coach of the Year.

Having his father around was invaluable for Tony DeMuro, who consulted with his father frequently during the season.

The championship meant even more to the DeMuro family after Len DeMuro’s stroke and the death in July of Len’s mother, Josephine DeMuro, who was 84.

“The biggest thing is that we have him here, because he almost died,” Tony DeMuro said. “And I guess it’s a little extra special to win a championship. It wasn’t a very good year for our family in general and just to have a new year start so well, have him around and come to all the meets, it was good for us. I loved having him there.”