I first wrote this article in the fall of 2008. Fifteen years later, so much has changed, yet much remains the same.
I thought it would be nice to share this story again, nearly a decade and a half later, about a Belleville High School connection that indeed has stood the test of time.
If you saw the play, ‘Jersey Boys’, there’s a famous line which read ‘It all started in Belleville, NJ’.
Keep that in mind, as you read this.
This is the story of a bond between a coach and player that has transcended time. It’s the story of friends who came together at a critical time, in the life of a colleague.
Most of all, this is the story of a true miracle, of a young woman who received a second chance at life after most doctors felt she had no chance just nine months earlier.
The story begins in the early morning hours of March 25, 2008. Twenty-seven year old Sarah Bakka, a graduate student at the University of Maryland in College Park, was found unconscious on the floor of her dorm room at 3:30 a.m. by her roommate, Mahreen Yasin, who immediately called 9-1-1. Bakka was taken by ambulance to Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
For a month leading up to March 25, Sarah Bakka had been complaining of headaches and doctors had felt it was a sinus infection. She had been due to go for more tests the following week.
At the hospital, Sarah was seen by the neurosurgeon on call, who was not optimistic about her chances to survive the night. The doctor took quick action to stabilize Sarah, but knew that long term care would be needed at a larger facility. The decision was to Medevac her to Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
At about 6:35 a.m. on March 25, Bill Bakka, a veteran science teacher at Belleville High School, was preparing for work. He was in the shower when the younger of his two daughters, Katie, left a distressing voicemail for Bill, advising him that Sarah was seriously ill. Within 10 minutes, Bakka was in his car and speeding toward Bethesda, some 220 miles south.
“Honestly, that entire ride was a blur,” Bill Bakka recalled. “All I remember was being in the shower, getting the message from my daughter, then receiving a phone call from my ex-wife (and Sarah’s mother, Laura Heller) and taking off for Bethesda.”
Bakka does remember calling Anna Marie Perna, an administrator at Belleville High whom the teachers call when they won’t be at work. Perna, in turn, advised Annie Calabrese, a longtime colleague of Bakka and herself a graduate of Belleville, of Bakka’s plight. Annie had gotten Bill’s cell phone number from another colleague, Cheryl Marion, and promptly called Bill, who had just arrived at Suburban Hospital, at around 9:25 a.m.
“Obviously, Bill was extremely upset when I got him on the phone,” Calabrese said. “My brother is a neurosurgeon in the Maryland, Washington, D.C. area and I asked Bill if he wanted me to call my brother.”
Bakka remembers the conversation well.
“Yes,” Bakka implored Annie. “Please call Edy.”
Annie Calabrese is the former Annie Aulisi, and her brother, Dr. Edward Aulisi, a 1980 graduate of Belleville High School, is today a successful neurosurgeon in suburban Maryland.
“I called Edy right away and left a message, telling him that the (Aulisi) family was okay, but that I needed to speak to him right away,” Annie recalled. “Within two minutes, Edy called me back and I told him what happened to Bill’s daughter. Before I could finish the story, he said to me ‘don’t tell me you know her?’”
It was indeed Dr. Edward Aulisi who was the neurosurgeon in the early morning hours of March 25 who first saw Sarah Bakka, and was able to stabilize her in those critical minutes. He had also made the key decision to move her to the Georgetown Medical Center, a decision that Bill Bakka readily said saved his daughter’s life.
“I gave Edy, Bill’s number and asked him to call Bill right away,” Annie said.
Edward Aulisi, the Valedictorian of his class at Belleville High, a star quarterback for the Bucs from 1977-1979, as well as a standout basketball and baseball player, had gone on to Princeton University, where he pursued his dream of being a doctor.
Aulisi then attended The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, D.C. where he became a neurosurgeon. Aulisi is today a board certified neurosurgeon with advanced training and interests in tumors of the skull base, neurovascular microsurgery, complicated spinal surgery, neurotrauma and computer-assisted neurosurgery.
When Aulisi was a freshman at Belleville High, in the fall of 1976, one of his freshman football coaches was Bill Bakka.
“I had no idea that was Bill’s daughter,” Ed Aulisi said. “As soon as my sister called me, I was like ‘I just saw her a few hours ago.’ And it wasn’t good.”
Bill Bakka had arrived at Suburban Hospital to find out his daughter had been transported to Georgetown. In a state of shock, he needed some kind of information and got it from Eddie in a phone call.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” Bakka said. “It was so frustrating. Edy then called me and said it wasn’t good. He was straight with me, and said she was probably going to die. As devastating as that was, I was so glad to talk to him. I needed some kind of answer. He also said he’d do whatever he could for me, and gave me his cell and pager number.”
Bakka quickly left Bethesda and when he arrived at Georgetown, he found out that Aulisi was a man of his word.
“Ed made one call and believe me, there were doctors swarming over Sarah,” Bakka said. “Edy had saved her life in the emergency room that night by stabilizing her, and then making the decision to move her to Georgetown. Now, he was able to get every doctor possible to look at her.”
When Aulisi first saw Sarah in the emergency room, he had correctly diagnosed her condition as Venus Sinus Thrombosis. In essence, she had severe blood clots in the veins leading to the brain.
“Venus Sinus Thrombosis is sometimes caused by a type of birth control,” Aulisi said. “With Venus Sinus Thrombosis, there are really two diagnoses. The patient either makes a full recovery, or dies. There really isn’t a lot of in-between with it. The early diagnosis and treatment is critical. If the patient is placed on a ventilator to control the breathing, they have a chance. But as I told Bill that morning, it looked like she was not going to make it.”
Sarah’s overall health had been good, and Aulisi attributed that fact to her body’s ability to overcome the initial attack, which is often fatal. The average intracranial pressure of a healthy individual is between 5 and 15. When Sarah was admitted on March 25, her pressure was over 80.
After four days of tests, Sarah would undergo a procedure called a Hemicraniectomy, where a portion of her skull would be removed to alleviate the pressure on her brain, by Dr. Andrea Douglas. During the healing, Sarah would wear a helmet for protection, and carry the portion of the skull that had been removed in her abdomen to allow for the bone marrow to remain alive. The portion of the skull would be reattached after a few months, once the swelling in the brain subsided.
On March 29, ironically Bill Bakka’s birthday, the procedure was completed, but not without some complications. Sarah had suffered a stroke during the surgery and would come down with pneumonia shortly after the procedure, spiking a 104 degree fever. She was also placed in a medically induced coma, to help the healing process.
“I had just driven home to get more clothes, when I got the call that she had developed pneumonia,” Bill Bakka said. “So I hopped in the car and headed back to Georgetown.”
During those early days of Sarah’s illness, Bakka had slept in the hospital waiting room, and on occasion, his car.
Despite the obstacles following surgery, Sarah continued to fight. On April 12, she was taken out of the coma and allowed to breathe on her own. For the first time since she was stricken, her eyes opened and she was able to recognize her father, mother and sister.
“Unreal,” an emotional Bakka recalled. “She still had a battle ahead of her, but she was back. Ten years ago, I don’t think she would have made it, but what medical science has accomplished over the last decade is truly incredible.”
Eleven days later, Sarah was discharged from Georgetown and transferred to Kessler Rehabilitation Center in West Orange for the start of an aggressive rehabilitation process. In addition to rebuilding her muscles, which had atrophied for a month, she had also fractured her foot upon collapsing on March 25.
“She had worked her way through a lot,” her father said with a nervous laugh.
From April to June of 2008, Sarah went through rehabilitation, in essence learning how to walk and talk again. On June 5, she underwent the surgery to reattach the skull at Overlook Hospital in Summit. For the remainder of the summer, Sarah, who stayed with her mother in Oak Ridge, NJ, would continue outpatient speech and occupational therapy.
On Sept. 23, she returned to Virginia, where she resides with her boyfriend, Grant Breithaupt.
“She’s doing great,” Bill Bakka said of his daughter. “She’s still working through some things, but it’s truly a miracle.”
Sarah Bakka would agree.
“I’m feeling very well and very lucky,” she said in 2008. “I’m back at work and living in Alexandria. As far as the experience, I have definitely been left with a new appreciation of my health and my ability to endure and overcome whatever comes my way. I am grateful every day for things I never thought about before, like being able to walk and talk. After the blood clots and stroke, I had pretty severe aphasia (difficulty speaking and making sense when I did speak) and was unable to walk or even get out of bed. After months of therapy I am walking just fine and even jogging a little with little to no speech problems.
“I am, of course, grateful to my family and all my friends that stood by me through this ordeal. I am very happy that I have my independence back, but feel that I learned the importance of leaning on family and friends during tough times and accepting help when it is offered or, in my case, needed.
“I was never particularly religious before, and although I’m not exactly orthodox now, I do have a different perspective about the power of prayer and positive thoughts. Many people told me that they were praying for me, and I do credit all of that positivity in assisting to help me get where I am today. Basically, I am almost back to where I was before this all happened on March 25.”
As a doctor, Aulisi has saved numerous lives. However, this particular life had an even bigger perspective, if that’s possible.
“He was my freshman football coach,” Aulisi, his voice cracking ever so slightly, said. “When people influence your life at an early age, it leaves a great impression. Men like Bill did their jobs, not for the money, but because they loved sports and loved working with kids.
“I’ll forever be grateful for that. My job is to save lives and that night I did what I was supposed to do. Bill Bakka is a wonderful man and was a great coach, and what he did for me is something I’ll never forget. It’s amazing how things come around some time, isn’t it?”
Thirty-two years after Bill Bakka made a contribution to the life of a freshman football player at Belleville High, that player returned the favor in an extraordinary way.
So, that was the story, from 2008.
Let’s see what’s happened since.
Sarah is now Sarah Bakka Breithaupt. She and her then-boyfriend, now husband, Grant, have two beautiful daughters and Sarah is in good health.
Annie Calabrese, Ed’s sister, is now retired. A proud grandmother, she and her husband Carlo, have celebrated the marriage of all three of their children, two daughters, and most recently, the couple’s youngest, a son.
Dr. Edward Aulisi is continuing his brilliant career as a neurosurgeon. In 2019, Edy was the team’s quarterback and also starred for the BHS basketball and baseball teams. He also played football and baseball at Princeton University. He serves as Chairman of Neurosurgery at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, in downtown Washington, DC. A husband and father of three, Aulisi and his medical team made history on June 10, 2020, performing the first spinal surgery, in the nation, using Brainlab’s Cirq Robotics.
Anna Marie Perna is retired from her job at Belleville.
Cheryl Marion retired as an educator at Belleville High in 2022.
And in what can only be described as incredibly poignant, Bill Bakka died on Aug. 2, 2009. In a year that he had been elevated to department head of Science, at Belleville, and after his daughter fully recovered, Bill would become ill late in the 2008-2009 school year.
My last conversation with him was just a few months before his passing. He said he wasn’t feeling great, but was confident he’d be fine.
Always that man with the goofy grin and upbeat attitude, Bill Bakka would live to see his daughter regain good health, and for that, we can all be grateful.
A few years later, Bakka Court would be built at Belleville High, as a testimonial to Bill’s love of nature and science.
And somewhere, there’s no question that Bill Bakka is smiling at the good fortune of his family.
Because, as Bill always said, “It’s All Good.”
A Coach.
A Player
A Miracle.
This was truly a Belleville, New Jersey story of love and perseverance.
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