Burr Ridge man finds peace through photography, then shares it

Outside David Boxell’s window, in the cool morning, the animals in the woods emerge in the dawning.

Boxell, a resident at the King-Bruwaert House, a senior residence in Burr Ridge, sits watching, a camera in hand. He is thinking of the day to come and he is thinking of days gone by. He is thinking of his body.

“I look out and I watch the wildlife, and I just look at nature and I look at trees and sometimes I’m praying and most of the time I’m reminiscing about yesterday or the day, but I’m listening,” Boxell said.

Outside his window squirrels, birds, deer and other neighbors pass by. He grabs a quick photo. Through window glass he gets close, but later in the day he gets closer. He goes outside, into the woods on walks where he often stands and waits, camera still in hand.

Sometimes the animals come to him. Day after day, they see him, they grow curious and they inch up. More photographs. The camera, the meditation, the walks, the nature — it’s therapy that helps keep the 86-year-old stay focused and in tune with his body. And it helps him connect with his human neighbors as well.

For months now Boxell’s photos have hung on the King-Bruwaert House walls. They change with the months, with the weeks, with the seasons—every day, he takes more, and each week he gets the best ones printed at the drug store and hands the paper envelopes over to the King-Bruwaert House staff. Those are the ones for the wall.

“I do photography every day, I do it as therapy. The people here think I’m doing it to be nice to them,” he joked.

But people do notice and they do look forward to the photos. As Boxell discusses his photography, another resident’s son walks by and tells Boxell he’s looking forward to the next batch of photos.

“You don’t know if they’re just being nice,” Boxell said, after the man left. “You don’t really know. But what happened was, if you didn’t bring them, people would say, ‘Oh, you didn’t bring any today.’ So, I knew they wanted to see them.”

He didn’t always know of that impact, and he didn’t really care, he did it for himself and that was enough. When he walked in nature, when he looked for animals to photograph, he was still, he was calm and he was patient.

He wasn’t always still or calm and while he climbed ranks at the Wrigley company, while his body began to betray him. By the time he was in his 30s, doctors thought he had a neurological condition.

“They thought two things, they thought it was Lou Gehrig’s disease or multiple sclerosis,” he said. “But no, they said it was not that, it was something similar.”

Even now, he’s still not exactly sure what’s been bothering him his whole life. He sees doctors and they still don’t know what to call it really.

“I have a neurological issue,” he said. “Even now, I’ll go to Rush and I go to the neurological department and they define it as a neurological issue. When I was about 60, they thought I had early dementia. No, it’s not dementia. It’s a neurological issue.”

He described the symptoms as coming and going — and they affected his muscles and his ability to move. On top of that, he had a stutter, he was dyslexic and he had attention deficit disorder, born in a time when those things weren’t treated in school. No accommodations were offered, and so kids that needed learning help simply didn’t get it. But despite it all, despite, say, not reading particularly quickly and seeming awkward growing up, he had a passionate drive to accomplish whatever task was set before him. He wouldn’t give up and he wouldn’t slow down — until his body began to do just that.

“I have this tremendous drive, it’s a gift from God,” he said. “I don’t know when I’m tired. I don’t know when to stop. And the next thing you know, I’m having these problems. So, I’ve learned to listen to my body.”

He learned that from a country doctor when he lived in Georgia for a while. He’d been prescribed a raft of medications, each one for a different symptom, but buried under the pharmacological hum, he couldn’t hear his body, let alone its needs.

“I was put in touch with this old mountain doctor in Gainesville, Georgia,” Boxell said. “This guy gave me advice that I should get off all medicines and let the body take care of itself and let my body run myself. … This doctor worked with me a long time to figure out ways to get control of my body.”

The doctor suggested he practice meditation, take walks and get into photography.

“He suggested just a Browning camera,” he said. “You had to do the fine tuning and you had to maneuver your body to get the right light and more than that you had to be perfectly still. The gimmick was patience — control of your fine nerves. I would get control of my fine nerves and I could control my hands, and with my hands I could control the camera. I still have to practice that today. When I go out to take pictures, I do that for a reason and it’s as much therapy as it is a hobby.”

It’s a hobby that heals.

“I do that for therapy,” he said. “I couldn’t control my muscles if I didn’t do that. Birds are rascals. They won’t sit still. So, I have to watch them and watch them and watch them and the concentrating makes me pay attention to my body.”

It’s a hobby that helps.

All Boxell’s life, he’s tried to help others. For decades he volunteered with Habitat for Humanity.

“It wasn’t very long ago and I’d check in (with Habitat) and they’d say, ‘We have a bunch of kids from Notre Dame and were afraid they’re going to kill themselves — would you oversee them putting on a roof?’” He recalled. “So you go from that to, ‘there’s a guy hanging cabinets, and would you help him,’ so you assist the guy hanging cabinets and from there one day they say ‘David they need a guy to help clean up.’

“And slowly you realize you’re doing nothing but showing up and you’re not really contributing. Maybe you’re a little more clumsy, maybe you’re a little slower, so I honored that.”

But if he couldn’t build roofs and hang cabinets and pound a hammer he could, at least, be still. He could do that. He’s not too old to meditate outdoors, camera in hand. He’s not too old to wait. He’s not too old to stay fit, to listen to his body and, in all of it, help his neighbors.

Leslie Grey-Lippold is the lifestyle director at the King-Bruwaert House. She’s the one who picks out Boxell’s art and hangs it throughout the residence, and she’s seen how Boxell’s photos have helped other residents. Some residents can’t get around so well so he brings to them the outside world — at least the world within the house’s grounds. Other residents who can get out and about, he’s created something of a critter scavenger hunt.

“In the summer and spring and fall we do golf cart rides through our trails (with residents) and the fun thing now is, I think our residents can see these pictures and see what wildlife they can pick out from the pictures. But to be fair, Dave is very patient, so you may or may not see all of the wildlife he is able to see because he’s able to sit for 15 minutes absolutely still until the bullfrog is able to come out and isn’t afraid of him. We’re not that patient.”

Jesse Wright is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.