Back At School, Injured Player Fights On After Fateful Tackle

When Devon Walker returned to the Tulane University campus last week, he was greeted with kisses in the hallways. Students and faculty applauded him. One year ago this weekend, in the second game of the football season, Walker, a team captain for Tulane, went in for a tackle and broke his neck. He was paralyzed from the shoulders down. For months, he recovered far from home in two different hospitals. But now he's back in Louisiana and re-enrolling at Tulane, in New Orleans. When asked how he's doing, Walker keeps it simple. "I'm fine, I'm fine," he says. He usually doesn't go into the details: the challenge of using a ventilator to talk. How he can't sleep at night because he just can't get comfortable. Or about the searing nerve pain he suffers all too often, his whole body burning like it's on fire. There was no need to rush back to school. But Walker did. "I guess I'm pretty stubborn when it comes to a lot of things. You can ask a lot of my friends and stuff; they can attest to